Unification News for February 1997

True Family Festival in Toronto, Ontario

by Mitch Dixon, Toronto, Ontario

We, in Canada, recognize True Parents earnest desire for a great victory of the 3.6 million couples blessing in November 1997. Father and Mother are giving great support to each nation with National Messiahs and 120 Japanese sisters being sent out. Dr. and Mrs. Lee, Mr. and Mrs. Habara, and Diane and I are the National Messiahs to Canada, representing Adam, Eve, and Abel countries. We have not yet been assigned a National Messiah from a Cain country.

I arrived in Canada November 30 from Arkansas. One hundred twenty Japanese sisters began arriving on December 3 over a two week period. As soon as I arrived in Canada, I was told that no new members have joined from here in several years. During December our main focus was workshops acquainting the Japanese sisters with a new country and finding housing for 120 sisters.

Right before, Christmas we heard that Rev. Pak wanted us to hold a True Family Festival (pre-blessing ceremony) before the end of the year. We scheduled on for December 29. With the help of Stoyan and Lilly Tadin, Canadian national leaders, we managed to find one couple to attend, an Hispanic doctor and his wife. We hear reports, coming in from around the world, of large numbers of pre-blessing candidates. We are inspired by this, but we have not yet found this to be the reality here yet especially with the WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) community. On January 25, we held another True Family Festival. This time we had two couples, a Filipino couple and a Korean couple. These couples came through Dr. and Mrs. Lee and Hisako Yokota, a Japanese missionary sister.

We have increased the witnessing activity substantially here in Canada with the help of the Japanese sisters. We have a full lecturing schedule. I have been doing most of the lecturing, but when we had need for more lectures simultaneously, Doug White and Jim Brennan also lectured. I have received a lot of help and support also from Michael Trusilo, Michel Lajeunesse, Guy Delisle, Fumiko White, Abdoulaye and Sybil Wone, and Alex Smyth in other ways. Mike Templeman, Paul Sullivan, Brad Gartner, Victor Martinez, and Dionisije Tadin have offered various helpful suggestions.

A very big support has come from Stoyan and Lilly Tadin, Franco Famularo, and Robert Duffy who have made the move here to Canada quite pleasant and welcomed. I am grateful to all for their help as we march to the goal of 3.6 million couples. The last half of January we started holding weekly ministers conferences in a mini format of what was held in Washington, DC in 1996. In February, we plan to increase this one day format to a three day format with a True Family Festival (pre-blessing) held at the end of each conference.

We are anxious and striving for increasing our numbers. We especially want to establish success among the white Christians. As we compete with Africa for numbers to the Blessing, it keeps ringing in the back of my mind, the Scripture which says, "The first shall be last, and the last shall be first." I believe though, that with the help of God, the white Christians can be saved too. It must be so, I am a white Christian. If I can believe, others must be able to also.

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