By June Darby
June Darby is originally from South Africa but joined in Europe during the early days of the church there. Since the late 1960s, June has done missionary work in many countries around the world. She wrote the following testimony more than 30 years ago.
Part 2 (Click to read Part 1)
While I was working in the Netherlands, I genuinely felt that the Dutch were the most wonderful people in the world, and I was so grateful for the privilege of working there. I felt that no other people in the world were better prepared to accept and follow the Lord of the Second Advent. Subsequently, when working as a missionary in other countries, I have had similar experiences after asking God to help me love that nation as He did. It was amazing. I felt how God’s love makes us feel so unique and special. I realized that I had to love people in a similar manner if they were to experience True Parents’ and Heavenly Father’s heart through me.
After the blessing of the 43 couples in 1969, True Parents asked some representatives of Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and Austria to go out as missionaries. Britain sent George Robertson to Malta, Carl Redmond to Australia, and me to Jordan.
Meeting challenge of working alone
I was very grateful to be chosen to go to Jordan as the national representative of Britain. Dennis and Doris Orme had told me that I would really learn God’s suffering heart through the suffering of the many refugees who had poured into Jordan from Palestine after the Israeli-Arab conflict in June 1966, and were still living under extreme poverty and hardship in refugee camps.
At first I found it difficult to love the people of this country. However, through my love for the creation there, I could begin to appreciate the people’s good points, and I grew to love them as I had loved the people of the Netherlands. I visited refugee camps accompanying those who were giving aid to the refugees, and my heart was deeply moved by their suffering. I experienced the suffering of Heavenly Father in my prayers and I would cry uncontrollably,
It was also incredibly lonely for me in Jordan. I could begin to understand Heavenly Father’s lonely heart. I felt how much He loves us and wants to be loved by us, and to be a part of all our activities and relationships, and yet is completely ignored, left out, unwanted, and forgotten by us most of the time. Because of the atmosphere of tension and fear due to the civil war, people were afraid to go out at night. It was very difficult to teach people, and this made my work so lonely. Although I received many invitations to visit patients whom I had nursed at the hospital where I worked, I only visited people for the purpose of witnessing or teaching. Then because I was so very lonely, I began to contemplate visiting people just for company. I felt that that would be wrong, that I was weakening as a result of being on my own, and I asked Heavenly Father to help me overcome. At that time, I went to the Post Office, hoping against hope for some mail as I hadn’t received any letters for months and months. Great was my surprise and delight to find a copy of the Way of the World magazine[1] from Korea!
I eagerly read Father’s sermon and was so surprised to find an answer to my prayer. Father said: “No matter how difficult or lonely our situation, we must never deviate from the religious path but always stay faithful to God and comfort His suffering heart.” I cried as I read it, for I knew then that True Parents were with me and understood my situation. I was grateful for their love and concern to help me overcome my struggles.
Later when I was in Korea for the Blessing in 1970, Mrs. Won Pok Choi told me that True Parents had been very worried about me in my lonely situation. True Father had many times expressed his concern for me. I was so deeply touched by this substantial expression of True Parents’ love and concern that I cried for a long time. True Parents have so many important concerns and are responsible for the whole world, yet they could still find time to worry about one unimportant little missionary!
Spiritual experiences inspire and raise us
About 6 months after the Blessing, I was sent with Patricia Hardman (Hartley) to begin a mission in Scotland. After a few months, Patricia was recalled and I continued on my own. I was praying about what attitude I must have in order to find spiritual children.
One day I stood looking over the park in Edinburgh as I prayed. I saw this woman running desperately from bench to bench where people were sitting. She ran up to me, she said, “I’ve looked all over the park…. Have you seen my little boy? Have you seen my little boy!?” Tears were streaming down her face.
“I haven’t seen him,” I said, “I’m sorry.” She ran off desperately.
Suddenly, I saw her find her little boy. She picked him up and hugged him as if she would never let him go.
This was my answer. I had to be like a mother who had lost her child, with that heart of desperation.
But the most amazing thing was that when Mother came to speak there in Edinburgh, when the Women’s Federation was being inaugurated, she was speaking to brothers and sisters after the event and she said, “To bring spiritual children, you have to have the heart of a mother searching desperately for her lost child.”
When witnessing, I made many conditions for the spirit world to work and help me find people. I would always pray for God to speak through me, for only He knew the key to move and unlock each person’s heart. Many times I would find myself saying things that amazed me. People would be surprised and exclaim:
“But how did you know that? I just prayed about that this morning!” It is very exciting to find oneself being used as an instrument to bring people to know the love of God and True Parents. For me, this is a most fulfilling and noble purpose to live for.
During that time, Doris Orme asked me to take a picture of Father to a well-known medium in Edinburgh, to see what he could see about Father. (I wouldn’t have done this otherwise!) When I sat down with the medium, and he looked at the photograph, he said, “This person’s your father!” Then he looked at me and said, “But how is that possible? He can’t be…. But he is! And he loves you very much. And yet, how can he be your father?”
From the time I received the Blessing, I had been praying to understand its significance. It was a great testimony to me to hear that True Parents really are our parents.
Pioneering reveals True Parents’ heart to us
After Children’s Day, 1972, I was sent to Ireland. Even though two missionaries had gone to Ireland two years before, they had had many difficulties and there were only two members in Ireland. When I prayed with my central figures, Dennis and Doris Orme in Britain, they cried for Ireland, feeling that they had let Heavenly Father down. I prayed very much to comfort their hearts by bringing many people in a short period. I made a condition to bring 12 people to accept True Parents within 3 months. Great was my gratitude and joy when that condition was fulfilled!
Once while praying in Ireland I had a vision: I saw that all God’s hopes and expectations are centered on True Parents, and that the destiny of all humankind—past, present, and future—is entirely dependent upon True Parents. I saw that if people did not unite with True Parents and enable them to fulfill their mission and establish the conditions to save all of humankind, people would degenerate in a short period of time into animal-like beings with no spiritual sensitivity, causing God and True Parents unimaginable anguish and intolerable pain. I prayed that we could support and help True Parents be victorious in whatever way we could, and to understand their significance and value more deeply.
Because there is generally a deep love for God in Ireland, and the Irish members were so “on fire” for God and True Parents, we had new people joining every month. My deepest desire and prayer was always for one nation to arise soon in the world that could accept and recognize True Parents.
While walking home from the bus stop one day, I was praying about our activities, and I suddenly experienced God’s love. I felt as if love were bubbling through my whole being, and I was intoxicated by the feeling! I didn’t worry who saw me or what they thought as I danced, skipped, and sang all the way home. I was so totally filled with the joy of tasting God’s love!
My next mission was to be the missionary to Malta. Soon after I arrived, I saw a couple of films about physical disasters which are prophesied to take place in the last days. I felt that God was showing me how desperately urgent He feels to save as many people as possible before the final judgement and destruction of evil, when many people will perish in disasters of various kinds.
Later I was sent to help in a mother’s position in Australia. I felt very much that I needed to be totally connected to True Parents in order to be able to express their heart of love, especially that of Mother.
People are hungry for love, and it is only True Parents’ love that can give life and hope to our dead spirits. I prayed to become True Parents’ channel; to speak only what they would have me say, to go where they desired, and to act as Mother would behave.
I think I prefer the pioneering lifestyle more than working where there is an established foundation because through our struggles to establish a foundation in our mission countries, on both the spiritual and economic levels, we are able to experience the heart and raw bone suffering and struggles of True Parents in establishing the foundation for world restoration. One has to struggle to embrace different cultures and peoples, to love them more than one’s own nation. One’s heart develops in order to raise young members with the patience and love of True Parents. There has to be a total commitment to fulfilling one’s responsibilities. Even though you may feel like doing so at times, there is no running away. You have to love unconditionally, for your responsibility is to restore a nation.
It is an awesome and seemingly impossible task, but the beauty and the challenge of it is that in struggling to accomplish it, one can identify so much more with True Parents’ course and heart. For me, the only goal worth living for is to unite more and more with the heart and marrow of True Parents, until we become totally one with their heart and can dwell with them as their true sons and daughters, working with them for eternity to build and develop God’s Kingdom on earth and in the spirit world.
June celebrated her 80th birthday earlier this year. She continues to witness with the same purity of heart and with the same passion.
[1] Way of the World was an early English publication of Father’s speeches and news, and was produced in Korea.