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Forty-day pioneering
Beginning July 1, 1957, the members fasted for seven days together with True Father, who continued this fast for a total of 40 days. Then, beginning on July 20 he dispatched the members in two-member missionary teams for a 40-day pioneer outreach campaign in 120 areas throughout Korea. Through this full-scale outreach activity, membership increased and new local churches were established.
In 1958 Father further strengthened the system of outreach. In 1959 headquarters organized three different 40-day workshops to train evangelists. Later, 40-day Divine Principle workshops were held regularly as part of the work to raise leaders.
1. How are we to live when carrying out God's Will? You cannot live just for yourself and be concerned only with solving your problems. You need to go beyond that and be concerned with the issues of the whole. You must make a pure offering of eternal value.
Engage in providential activity as an evangelist of heaven. If you feel called for this mission and go out to witness, God will be with you. If you live with this heart, the historical re-creation of love will surely take place. (002-014, 1957/01/06)
2. A special 40-day outreach campaign started on July 20, 1957. All the members in Korea began a seven-day fast on July 1. Through fasting they made a new start. I fasted with them and announced this special 40-day campaign.
In the Unification Church, we hold a 40-day witnessing campaign starting on July 20 every year. This is during the school break, the hottest time of the year. We need to sweat and work intensely for the providence during the hottest period of the year.
This is a good way to pay indemnity. Indemnity conditions have to be set strategically. That was why I chose this most difficult time for witnessing.
When you go out witnessing, you are not to carry any money with you. If you have money, you should give it away. You have to go to your assigned area and meet your expenses by doing manual labor or whatever jobs you can do that will help the people in your area. By shedding your blood and sweat in activities to help the people, you are undergoing training. (167-240, 1987/07/19)
3. In 1957, when the Unification Church started its outreach activities for the first time, I sent missionaries out to 120 locations throughout Korea. I instructed them to go to their assigned areas with only two changes of clothes and enough money for a one-way trip.
It was during my 40-day fast, and I encouraged them to do a limited fast, such as a liquid fast with a drink made from mixed grain powder. I said they had to start by doing manual labor for their food, then later they could accept the food that people offered them. This is what they did, starting from the lowest position of having nothing and overcoming.
I, too, went on this path. For three years I fasted on my birthday. I ate sitting on the floor, setting my food on a newspaper as if it were a dining table. I ate only a bowl of grains with no more than three side dishes, including kimchi and soy sauce.
This was how we climbed through all the stages. This is restoration through indemnity. Even the clothes I wore were hand-me-downs.
(125-126, 1983/03/14)
4. When the members left to begin the 40-day outreach campaign, they did not complain or ask for money. Even though they were persecuted in their areas, they went from house to save even one more soul. As they went around early in the morning, all the dogs in the village barked at them.
That irritated the villagers, so they would not give our members any work there to earn money. That is why they had to take a bus early in the morning and work far away.
With the money they made from their labor, they bought puffed rice. Then they offered that as a snack to guests before giving lectures. You need to know that practices like these are recorded as part of the providential history of the early days of the church. (215-043, 1991/02/06)
5. During the outreach campaign that we held in 1957, there were memorable moments. When members ran into each other on the street, they were so happy. They shed tears when they said their goodbyes, hating to separate from each other and looking forward to meeting each other again.
This was also the bond that members created with their spiritual children, with whom they spent many hours walking along mountain ridges together. When they had to separate, they were so sad to have to say goodbye to each other.
You cannot buy such moments, not with any amount of gold. Do you feel how priceless they are? If you forget such memories, what do you think will be precious in your life? In the future, you must accompany me not only in Korea but throughout the world, implanting my new teaching and introducing the heavenly tradition.
That will be the source of your pride. Yet, when can you make and collect the precious stories and teaching materials that you will need to share to do this work? There is no better time than now. (051-272, 1971/11/28)
6. Throughout the 1950s, even before the Unification Church was officially launched, I gave members all kinds of training. I directed them to fast, go pioneering, and much more.
In those days members missed me very deeply. They came to the church to see me, staying late into the evening. I would walk with them to their homes, but even then, we could not say goodbye and ended up walking back to the church together.
Occasionally, we spent all night like that, coming and going. And it was not only with me; the members did the same with each other.
In those days in Korea, we did not have many vehicles like we do today. Most people walked. On many occasions, as we walked home in the moonlight or at dawn, we shed tears with burning desire and determination, pledging to live for the nation, the world, and heaven.
I have many unforgettable memories of those times. They were circumstances that taught us the real meaning of patriotism, of putting the nation ahead of one's family.
The high spiritual atmosphere moved us in those days. It was stronger than one's first love in the secular world. I will always remember that time.
As church leaders, it is your responsibility to maintain that atmosphere. It has to be one of the goals of your activities. Try to maintain the standard that connects your church to this foundational tradition. Understand how I established this tradition and teach your successor how to inherit it.
Even if you are doing well now, if your successor cannot do better than you are doing today, the Unification Church will decline. The future must always be better than today. Always keep in mind that you need to invest yourself into the members now, for the sake of the future. (184-112, 1988/12/20)
7. It is not enough for you leaders to just speak or lecture about the Word. More importantly, you have to be able to plant the Word so that it yields a harvest. You cannot harvest these fruits instantly. It takes more than three years. That is a principle. That is why you need to work hard for three years.
Hence, in 1957 I chose 120 locations for witnessing activities and sent our members there as missionaries, saying, “Go with the attitude that this 40-day assignment to your area will continue for three years.
Take the position of servants. Be loyal to the people you meet in your village, and work for them as hard as you would if they were paying you to work as an employee. This is how you can teach them the way of loyalty. Don't just talk about loyalty, but demonstrate it through your actions.
Then, even if you do not say anything, other people will contribute to keep the work going after you have left. When people begin to respond this way, your work can truly take root in that village.”
(029-194, 1970/02/28)
Witnessing atmosphere
When True Father dispatched witnessing teams to all parts of Korea, he allowed them to take only two changes of clothes and only enough money for a one-way fare. Not only that, he also instructed them not to eat anything other than steamed barley rice.
Members who went witnessing survived on a drink made from mixed grain powder dissolved in water. Occasionally, they even ate the scraps and bones that were to be fed to dogs.
They carried out their pioneering work in the most miserable conditions possible. In those days, a day's wages were not enough to buy even one meal. At times these members, suffering from hunger, stumbled on the road.
They could not even say that they were from the Unification Church. Instead, they woke up early in the morning and swept the village streets or helped the villagers in their fields. That is how they made connections with them. In the early days, our members sacrificed and abandoned everything when they joined the church. This resulted in intense opposition from their family, neighbors, and friends in the secular world.
Beginning in 1960, members carried out witnessing activities on the streets of all the cities across Korea, as well as in the major parks in downtown Seoul.
8. All of us, young and old, have been waging bloody battles to this day. Many trials have blocked our path, but we overcame them by focusing only on God's Will. We did not have decent food to eat or fine clothes to wear. We put everything into our struggle, shedding blood, sweat, and tears to lay the foundation for victory.
When you started on your first three-year course, I asked you to go to the path of a repentant sinner. In those years, we who were not sinners walked the path as if we were sinners.
I know how hard you fought to protect your area from being taken away by Satan, and how you would not retreat. I know some of you sold your blood for money to protect your assigned area. You worked hard in limited circumstances.
However, there was also incredible spiritual effort behind the scenes to support you. Your toil prepared you for the future, and it is a foundation for advancing toward a new world. (012-270, 1963/06/20)
9. When the Unification Church started witnessing for the first time, the members did not have to witness with words. People were witnessed to through their dreams. In dreams, people were told, “Go to the Unification Church!”
When people did not follow the direction given in their dreams, they were hit with a bat. The spirit world witnessed many members this way. Ancestors said to their descendants, “If you go to such and such a place, you will meet a person called Mr. Moon.” This was how witnessing occurred.
When people resisted, their ancestors kept pushing them and driving them until they went to that place.
This was how the members of the Unification Church were gathered. (049-201, 1971/10/10)
10. During the early days of witnessing, persecution was severe and people who went out to do outreach were extremely lonely. Members had no way of knowing each other's situations, and yet they wanted to stay in touch with each other.
Eventually, some would find a high school or college student who would link them together and through them, they could pass messages back and forth to arrange a meeting.
The members' areas were some 20 to 40 kilometers apart, so they would schedule an appointment to meet at a point midway between them. They would choose a landmark that was easy to find, for example at the crossroads, under a bridge, or at a monument.
When they met, did they have anything to eat? Normally, when two friends meet after a long time, they eat lunch or dinner together, but these members cannot enjoy that luxury.
The members were as close as any brother or sister could get. Who can describe the aching hearts they carried back then? They were unable to express their love and heart toward their parents or siblings.
So they would invest themselves in each other. One of them might resolve, “The next time we meet, I will treat you to a chicken lunch.” Then, to raise money to buy that lunch, the member would work for one whole week. But he or she would not say how the money was earned.
Later, when those who were treated to a meal learned about the hard work their brothers or sisters had done, they felt as if their bones were melting. Generally, we try to keep our composure, but when we are about to cry our chins tremble first and finally, we burst into tears. It was like that.
From that time on, whenever they met each other, they did not need to speak words.
They just hugged each other and prayed for God's Will while crying their hearts out. You cannot imagine how loudly they wailed.
They prayed in tears, paying no heed to the local people who might be staring at them. All those experiences became their personal history, which they could share later. (215-043, 1991/02/06)
11. When the members of our church were doing outreach in their pioneering areas throughout Korea, they would work all day long and barely earn enough for one meal. Sometimes even young members would be so hungry that their legs would buckle as they walked.
The members did not receive any money from our headquarters. They needed to make money to eat.
However, if they had worked in their area, the townspeople would have accused the church, saying, “The Unification Church does not even take care of their members.”
If such a rumor had spread, the members and the church would have been persecuted even more.
So they had to go to another town as far away as 40 kilometers, work there, and then return. Many members did that, but they never spoke about it.
Six months or a year later, when the students they were witnessing came to know about our missionaries, they burst into tears. Then they started to give them lunch boxes.
Yet for the older pioneering members, eating the lunch offered by these pure-hearted students made them feel miserable in their hearts. It was painful for the pioneers to have to rely on these young students for food and make them skip meals, when in fact they felt responsible for taking care of the students. Under
these circumstances, the pioneers, and the students helped each other overcome their difficulties, and with the determination, “Let's realize God's Will, even if we die,” their hearts connected. (094-229, 1977/10/01)
12. We have the Sung Hwa Student Association, made up of junior high school and high school students who gave food to our missionaries. When their parents severely opposed this, they began to take turns giving them food.
Thus, if there were 30 students, each of them would give up their lunch only once every ten days. In this way, the missionaries could eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
This was their contribution to support our witnessing activities. When their parents realized what was going on, they were upset. Even so, we had to use this means to move forward.
Those lunches were the students' offering to the missionaries who were serving God's Will for the nation and the world. To this very day, those former students praise those glorious days when they could make such an offering.
(215-042, 1991/02/06)
13. Before those students joined the Unification Church they used to have good lunch boxes, better than other students. But after they joined the church, instead of taking their lunch, they would hide themselves away on the school grounds, walk around, and then come back to class.
Their classmates figured out what they were doing, and when their parents found out, it made big problems. This did not happen just once or twice. Some of them were constantly skipping lunch, so their classmates told their mother, “Your child brought lunch boxes before, but now that they have joined the Unification Church, they do not have them.
Why are you not making lunch for them?” Then their parents would say to their children, “I heard you did not eat your lunch at school. What happened?”
Then the students had to admit they had given their lunch to the missionaries, which caused the parents to oppose our church even more severely. This often happens all over Korea. Christians would oppose us, especially severely, saying that a pack of wolves had come to steal God's sheep.
How do you think I felt as their leader, having placed the missionaries in that situation? (094-230, 1977/10/01)
14. We have been walking a suffering path to remove the nation's wall of bitter pain that has blocked us in external areas. I want to dissolve this bitterness of the people of Korea. Furthermore, I know the Will of God.
Therefore, I willingly and gladly accept any kind of hardship. If someone asks, “Who shed the most blood and sweat, and who embraced God's heart and offered loyalty to Him?” we are the ones who can confidently assert that we have the truth and have offered conditions of devotion centered on God.
That is why I am saying that we are the only ones who can receive the heavenly fortune that is coming. (035-311, 1970/10/30