How God protected True Parents and all who were with them
Sun-jin nim speaks on July 25 during hoondokhwae at Cheon Jeong Peace Palace. For much of the time she spoke, Sun-jin nim was on the edge of tears. After apologizing in Korean, she spoke in English with Yeon-ah nim interpreting. We have edited the content for the written presentation.
I just want to share a few words about what we have experienced these past few days. You’ve all heard the news about the helicopter, and we’ve received all your prayers and all your words of concern and hope, and we’re so grateful for that.
I just want to share with you my first experience when we heard about the accident. When we first went into the hospital room, Father was alone in bed and it was dark. I went to Father, wondering how this could happen and so worried and crying. Father just said, “Don’t cry; don’t worry.” He was comforting me and saying, “This is truly a miracle and God protected us. So, don’t cry. This is an amazing day.”
Because Father was comforting me and he looked fine, I was just so grateful because everything seemed okay. Mother was out of the room at that time getting checked by CAT scan. Father kept asking, “Is everybody okay? How are the brothers and sisters who were also on the helicopter? How is Mother?” He just kept on asking. He said, “Hold my hand and stay here until Mother comes back.”
I thought, “Oh, Father is all right. He’s saying he has no pain.” I said, “Abonim, after a shock, if you have any pain, please tell us because we need to know so we can help you.” And Abba was saying, “I’m fine. I’m okay. Where is everybody else? Make sure everyone else is okay. Make sure Omma is okay.”
Everybody survived, and it’s really a miracle. There were only a certain number of doctors on hand and everybody wanted to help the sister who was the most injured amongst everybody. So, all the doctors went to her. Because Father and Mother wanted to make sure the members were taken care of first, they were taken care of after her.
Mother needed to be attended to, so Father remained as if he were completely fine. It wasn’t until Mother came back, until all of it was clear, then all the children came up to greet our parents and we told Father that everybody was fine. Then Father started experiencing difficulty, a little bit. We found out that Father, too, had pain. The impact of falling from four stories hurts everybody. Everybody had pain, but Father held his pain in while making sure everybody else was okay, so everybody else could be attended to first. This is True Father’s heart. This is the heart of True Parents. In many ways, their entire lives have been like this. They’ve been holding their pain in so that everybody could be saved first.
Throughout Father’s sacrificial life, you’ve all supported Father; you became his children first. In many ways, he had to let go of his own children to serve the Cain children and save the world first. Always—no matter what—before himself, his family, anything—Father puts the world, the members and going forward with God’s mission first. Even when the doctors say he has to rest, to lie down so he can heal, he’s still observing hoondokhwae. He’s saying that the word is the most important; the members are the most important. We have to move the world. This is what he keeps saying.
This experience was an eye-opening one for me and for our family—seeing our parents not thinking of themselves, even in this moment, constantly thinking about the world. Father is eighty-nine years old; Mother has had fourteen children and has followed Father her entire life, and no matter what, this is their mission till death. No matter what. This heart of True Parents, we have missed as a family. As you know, because of the accident, every single one of our family members here on earth has come to be with True Parents.
Even though the doctors stress not to go into their room and to let our parents rest, when we go in to greet them, Father gets up, and even though he’s in pain he gives us hoondokhwae for three hours. Even though he’s in pain, because he sees us there, he says he has to teach us. Even though we say, “Father, please rest. Please lie down so you can heal. It is so important to take care of Mother and you.” Father will yell at us and get mad at us, saying “Just listen. This is important. This message is important.”
Seeing that, we all understood as one family that this is the most important message, and I want to share that message with you. The main message that Father kept giving us is that everything in the providence and what we hope for in the future will only be realized if we have unity.
If you look at Father’s entire life of service to the world, it’s always been centered on unity and oneness with God. Because you are all brothers and sisters who have inherited True Parents’ word, you all already know about true love, true life and true lineage, which True Parents teach, and that we have to be one with the vertical straightness of God in our four positions. Until now, we’ve all been receiving from True Parents. We’ve received the word; we’ve received salvation; we’ve received the truth and we have gotten so much from them—even their lives. Even in moments when they could pass away, they’re still giving the truth, giving nonstop to us.
In the time you’ve been observing True Parents, what have they stressed for us to do in our lives? They’ve stressed unity between husband and wife through the blessing, the mission of an individual with God through mind and body unity, and even within Father’s mission worldwide—the bridge and tunnel, what does that mean? It means connecting all the world together. And what is North–South unification? Connecting what was divided by Satan and putting it all together. And when he stressed all these things, he said that as a family we need to come together—not only amongst our brothers and sisters, immediate brothers and sisters, True Parents’ children, but between the first and second generations of our movement, all going forward to build Father’s legacy.
No matter how much we kept telling Father, “Please rest, please rest,” he did not stop. Everybody in the family came yesterday—In-jin onni came; Un-jin onni came; Ye-jin onni was here. Yeon-jin and Jeong-jin and Kwon-jin oppa and Hyung-jin oppa and Hyun-jin oppa and Kook-jin oppa—everybody was together. We were all there to listen to these words of unity. And as a family we were… For many years, we couldn’t unify. It’s important, our having to unify with each other and also with the church but because of whatever feelings we had that our parents weren’t there for us or they were only caring for the members, we realized we really didn’t do our mission. We realized that through the experience of all coming together. We truly felt sorry to True Parents for not being able to realize that and help them even more because we were immature and young.
On the day after Father gave us that hoondokhwae of unity, we all together went to the site where the helicopter went down and that’s when it really hit us. It hadn’t hit us when we went to see True Parents and they were sitting up and they’re still alive. We had no idea what they went through, but when we went to the site it really hit us how much a miracle it was that they’re alive and everybody was saved. We realized that God truly protected our True Parents, as did Hyo-jin oppa and Heung-jin oppa and Young-jin, everyone from our family who has gone before us into the spirit world, especially our older Hyo-jin oppa who passed on.…
We really felt our brothers and sisters in the spirit world protecting our True Parents at this moment. And with Father’s message, saying how we have to be one as a family, we realized the urgency and that our not being able to unite is causing True Parents to go through more indemnity for our inability—our inability to forget ourselves and live for the sake of each other and live for the sake of what they have been teaching us, which we have not inherited fully until this day.
Seeing this all together as one family and understanding, finally, what Father has endured through these tragedies…. It is sad that it always has to be tragedies that teach us, but we realize that this is what we have to do. We have to invest all our energy, and all our resources and our entire lives until death, in that same spirit. That’s what we realized together as one family. I am sharing this here with you today, and I beg you to share that same heart as one family. Share what Father requested in his pain, all of you, take that into your own families and into your own lives; really try to take that message of unity and sacrifice and live this way.
After receiving this message of unity from Father that morning, we all gathered for lunch as one family. I don’t think many of you know us, because we’ve been studying. Father has given us the mission of studying and developing in America, but you all know Hyun-jin oppa; since he finished his studies, he’s been working tirelessly, globally, to promote True Parents and the mission.
Kook-jin oppa has been in Korea at the Foundation. He spoke just yesterday if you don’t know who Kook-jin oppa is. He sacrifices every day, day in and day out. We live together at Hannam-dong, so we see him every day. He is always concerned about preserving the foundation and the value of our church, about being able to fund Father’s mission so that his goal of global unity can be realized.
And as you all know, Hyung-jin has recently been given the mission of president of the worldwide church, centered in Korea. He gives his sermons in Korea all the time. He’s really the spiritual center that Father designated. He has been—not only for the members but also for our family—a source of much spiritual guidance. He might be the youngest but he has been our hyungnim in heart.
Our brothers and sisters came yesterday; all my sisters and everybody who has been living in America and studying—they all came. They’re doing amazing work too. Just recently, In-jin onni was put on the Manhattan Center to protect what Hyo-jin oppa had built. She really loves Oppa. That’s her mission, and she has really been doing a tremendous job there…. We really offer thanks to her and every single one of my brothers and sisters. Un-jin onni came for one day, because she had to go back and take care of her children. She was feeding Mother and Father, and she was really helping them that day. It was the first time in our lives we could spend time and really serve True Parents.
We are grateful for all your love too. We feel so thankful for all the leaders and other members, who in our position, actually, have been serving and taking care of True Parents all these years. In many ways, we offer our apologies to you to for your having to sacrifice and go through a difficult course to serve and love our True Parents. For that, we as a family are tremendously grateful to all of you brothers and sisters. I realize we have to take responsibility and we have to honor your work as well as work together with you. That is our heart and that is our gratitude to you. We can have only hope and true love for every single one of you, who have had true love for our True Parents. For the lives you lived and for loving True Parents, we can only honor you and love you back in that same way, and we offer our apologies for not living up to that standard too.
It’s very difficult to get everybody together at once, but we were able to gather and share at the table during lunch, for the first time just experiencing every single brother and sister—there is elder and there is younger—but all supporting each other, all supporting each other’s work and no one taking any credit for themselves. It is all about True Parents….
All these years, they’ve been doing it by themselves, and all these years with your help and your sacrifice they’ve been doing it. We realize that it’s our mission—our mission and our hearts—to start building this for True Parents and protecting and creating the future for the church and for all of you and your second generation. We owe that to you because just as our True Parents could not spend enough time with us, many of you in the first generation could not spend enough time with your children, so we share the same heart in many ways.
Because our True Parents brought us together as one, we are one family. There’s no one here who is not my brother or sister. All of you leaders are my brothers, my oppas and onnis as is everybody else here, so we share that. With that heart, we ask for your help, to share your wisdom and your support for our True Parents and the family—and all the work that you are doing now to support Father’s mission on earth and realize that dream. I’m sorry I’ve been speaking so long because… [turning to Yeon-ah nim who is trying to write down several paragraphs to interpret at once] Yeon-ah, Choisong hamnida! [I’m so sorry!]
Everybody thought True Parents were going to retire. We were going to build a place where True Parents could retire and rest, but actually Father hasn’t spent even one day resting. All the time that he’s here, he’s been flying all over the world. Even when he’s here, he has to meet with leaders, and he cannot stop working for God’s mission even at his age. And as you who come on buses know—by car, Cheongpyeong is a very long way from Seoul, where the airport and everything is. The international headquarters and all the leaders are in Seoul. Everything—the politics and the culture, everything that they’re trying to change for God’s work, is in Seoul, so they actually have to go there all the time. And they don’t have a place in Seoul any more because of us; we moved to the house in Hannam-dong to do our work in Korea. True Parents actually gave their room in the Hannam-dong house to my brothers and sisters who are working hard in Korea.
When we think about the significance of our True Parents on earth, we realize that Father will not stop and that Mother will not stop, loving and living for the sake of others. So we realize we need to build a place, a safe haven and sanctuary not only here, which is built on Halmoni’s and everybody else’s tremendous sacrifice, but also in Seoul. We need a place that can be used to move the world and move Father’s mission forward. All the government offices, all the culture, arts and media—everything is in Seoul. We need to organize and mobilize there, with all the membership, to make a training center, to have one church in which people can attend True Parents, that we can offer to True Parents, where they can be protected and also live and work for their mission….
For so many years, we’ve been somewhat lost in the wilderness. It’s the same as many of the members who’ve been lost in the wilderness and suffering on the path of indemnity. Now True Parents have suffered through this major indemnity incident; their lives have been a testament to the law of indemnity. We need to take on this mission all together, with the leadership and with the church. In Hyung-jin’s heart, it’s not only a matter of mobilizing and going forward but of creating a safe haven for the members. It would not be just a place for attending our True Parents but also a place where the members can come easily to train and learn.
I have so much gratitude for all of you and for our beloved True Parents and all my brothers and sisters. I’m most thankful to God and my brothers who have passed away for saving our True Parents, saving all of us and for making us realize what we haven’t been doing. And with all that, we apologize to you and we pledge to you to do our best and to live this life of true life, true love and true lineage. The other day Father was holding his hands like this [Sun-jin nim shows her hands, clasped together, to the audience.] and saying, “Coming together is the important thing, not only to praise God but to praise and take care of each other; you cannot separate! You become stronger when you are like this; alone, it’s not one.”
I just want to ask you in closing—after Yeon-ah interprets—if we can all join hands together, brothers and sisters all together. And Hyung-jin can offer a prayer, and we can pledge to unite and to live our lives so that True Parents no longer have to suffer and we can really carry on their mission and make it on earth. That’s what I ask of you, to please understand.
And we offer our apologies and our gratitude.
Kamsahamnida.