This is a transcription of the speech given at the inauguration of the Family Federation for Unification and World Peace.

Thank you for your warm welcome and for coming tonight. I know you all have very busy lives and many responsibilities but on this cool night your came here to honor the founding of the Family Federation for Unification and World Peace in the United States and also to honor my wife and me; so I give my gratitude to you. I of course am deeply honored that True Parents would appoint me to this mission and also deeply puzzled over why I would be chosen, over what it means to me, what my task will be and what I will do. I'm also puzzled over what to say tonight. What I have settled on is actually a rather personal reflection.

I know some of you quite well, but many of you I don't know and you don't know me, so part of what I'm going to say in the next few minutes is a report on my life and a reflection on that. Mrs. Spurgin said I joined our movement in the late '60s-specifically 1967-and was blessed in 1970. From 1967 I spent 13 years really working full-time for the church. During part of that time I was the president of the church. I was able to work closely with Father, I had the opportunity to be deeply touched by Father a great deal, and I found a healing in my life which I had never found. Those 13 years were a very profound experience of God's love and True Parents' love.

However, in the late '70s and early '80s, we had four children at that time in tow and no visible way to provide for a family. Facing all the conflicts for which I needed to find some solution, I decided to go back to law school. I had been in law school in Albany for a year and a half before meeting the church. I decided to go back and finish it up and try to find some way to provide for my family. That was part of the picture. That's what I did, but what I want to say is that in doing that, I went back up to the Albany area, which is my hometown, but I really stepped outside of the structure of the church and outside of a direct relationship with True Parents. I really put myself-to use the analogy of Jacob's course-I transported myself into Haran. That's the way it felt. The children moved up there with us; we lived in a place called Defreestville, New York, a suburb of Albany, and really we felt out of it, very separated from what had been so central, so profoundly a part of our lives. At one point my wife, commenting on the place where we were living, Defreestville, said, "This is not Defreestville, this is Deep Freeze-ville."

So I went back to law school in the beginning of 1981, and I finished up law school in a year and a half. Then somewhere in the late '80s Father said, "Everyone go back to your hometown." So although we had been in Deep Freeze-ville and feeling very isolated, very unclear how to maintain our connection to True Parents, now all of a sudden everyone was being sent to their hometown. I said on another occasion that during those first years we felt as if we were very much at the back of the line, if not at the very end of the line, but if you're at the back of the line and the line turns around, you're in the front. Lo and behold, that happened! Really the Providence somewhat expanded to embrace our situation, and from there really it was very helpful to be there. We were somehow no longer in the position of the black sheep but we were in an accepted posture.

Over those years, the '80s, we maintained our spiritual activity and tried to develop with greater and lesser success. If I think of my course in the church, I grew up in the Albany area and came to New York City and I studied the Principle. This was where I was really touched by members. Although I joined in Washington, D.C., this was my entree to True Parents and Divine Principle, this is where God touched people here in New York City.

When we went into Haran, that was also from New York City. My mission at that time was related to the preparation and publication of the Home Study Course. It was after that that I went back to Albany from the headquarters here in New York City. So I feel it is a circular process going on here, and if I reflect on the time periods, I spent 13 years full-time in the church from 1967 to the end of 1980; I went to law school in 1981-till now that's a 13-year period. So if you put three 13-year periods together you get 39 years, which is very close to 40 years. I hope I can continue to serve God the next thirteen years, whatever course I'm on.

My point though is when I first came from Albany to New York I came as an individual, a searching individual at that. I feel now here in 1994, 26 or 27 years later, coming back from Albany to New York, I am not coming as an individual, but very much coming as a family. My wife, of course, is a great lady and wonderful wife and a wonderful mother, and we also through God's grace and blessing have our children whom we love very much of course, who themselves have been touched by True Parents' children, by Hyo Jin Hyung Nim, and In Jin Nunim, and Kwon Jin Hyung Nim, Un Jin Nunim, Sun Jin Nunim. Our children have been raised more by the True Children than by us, that's the real source of their commitment and spirituality. So it's the great wisdom of having a Messianic family, that the second generation can connect to the second generation of the Messiah's family. Really, our children have the same feeling towards True Children that we have towards True Parents. So it's a great honor.

I do feel that we come to this mission as a family, for it is the Family Federation. And again I use the analogy of Haran. Being in Haran has its own purpose and significance; I'm told my mission here is as a part-time volunteer. I anticipate staying in Albany, I have a law practice up there, and I think that it is important that I stay in Albany, in my hometown area, in my tribal messiahship area. That is the area in which I have to do my work. It's to Haran that God's word has to be brought. So then perhaps one part of myself is in Haran and one part of myself is in Canaan. Maybe that's the way we should be, because through that we can touch people in the larger world who need to be brought into the topics that God is developing so brilliantly and powerfully through our True Parents.

I also want to say this: as Mrs. Spurgin mentioned, I come from a family of lawyers, and it is a family of distinctive accomplishment in the legal field. My father is still alive and no longer practicing, but he was a highly regarded trial attorney in his time. I have an older brother who follows in that tradition, very highly regarded for what he does as a lawyer. So in reflecting on my life, I see that they represent a certain type of excellence in their secular vocation. True Parents represent the highest excellence in their spiritual vocation. So I want to inherit that tradition.

As I said at the beginning of my talk I'm kind of puzzled at what this all means, and what I'm going to do, and it's not just I, but what my wife and I will do, but whatever that is, I want to bring a quality of excellence to it. That's my pledge to you, and that's what I'll be striving for. And so let's gather, let's go forward toward the wonderful vision that True Parents set for us, and the new world that they are holding before us.

We know through the founding of the Family Federation that the new world the True Parents are beginning, the new global society that they have initiated, has at its center the family, and specifically our family of the new history. So let us listen to God in our hearts and respond to that goal. Thank you very much.

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