Desperate Prayer Moves Heaven

By Umberto Angelucci

Umberto Angelucci recently completed a 21-day condition of night prayer vigils and service at the HJ Heaven and Earth Cheonbo Training Center. Group night prayer vigils at Cheon Shim Won have been ongoing for 500 days. Toward the end of his 21 days, Mr. Angelucci gave the following testimony.

My name is Umberto Angelucci, I am from Italy. I belong to the 1982 Blessing (2,075 couples) and together with my wife Marilyn, we have 2 sons and 6 grandchildren.

My mission experience started in Korea 1989 for one and half years. I delivered the Segye Il Bo daily newspaper and worked for the Unification of North and South Korea. I later became national leader of Romania for 4 years. After that, in 1996, I became national messiah to Afghanistan where we stayed for 6 months before moving to India in 1997, where we helped Afghan Refugees. In 2005 with my family, we returned to Afghanistan and stayed for 5 years.

In 2010 we moved to the Philippines for 5 years, and in 2015 True Mother appointed me as Regional President to the Middle East and we moved to Turkey for 7 years. Currently I am living in Lebanon with my wife and our children and grandchildren are in the USA.

I would like to share my testimony about the power of mobilizing the spiritual world, which I will entitle “Desperate Prayer Moves Heaven.”

After attending the special Cheon Il Guk World Leaders’ Assembly and the 2-days special devotion requested by True Mother I felt, important to make a 21-day condition of devotion with vigil prayer.

The purpose of this condition was to breakthrough in the middle east. I must find a way to bring a spiritual revolution in the entire region. So, that we can fully support our beloved True Mother to establish Cheon IL Guk. During the first 7 days of the condition, I felt deeply in my heart to repent for not being able to breakthrough in the middle east but most important, I could not clearly testify to our True Mother and I could not boldly testify about True Parents.

While doing Jeongsung and the vigil prayer with the elders at the Cheonshim Won prayer hall, day by day, my heart started to open up.

One day, during the internal guidance given by the President Kiseong Lee, he was saying that “when we face life and death experience, we are desperate to find a solution and look for God’s intervention.” At that moment I remembered my life and death experience when I was a national messiah at Afghanistan. So, right after that, President Lee Ki-seong asked me if I had any experience of desperate prayer in facing life or death.

In October 1996 my wife and I attended the 40-day workshop for National Messiahship. At that time under True Parents’ direction, we prepared ourselves to be dispatched to the world as True Parents’ representatives in order to accomplish national restoration.

The 40-day workshop was held at the HJ Heaven and Earth Cheonbo Training Center. All participants made special conditions of Jeongseong, including 7 days fasting, Chanyang sessions 3 times a day, and walking to the Holy Ground with an attitude of repentance. At that time Heung-jin nim and Daemo-nim encouraged us to have absolute faith, absolute love and absolute obedience. We should believe that as we are dispatched to the different nations, everything will be prepared for us, and we shouldn’t worry about anything.

My wife and I decided to quickly move to our chosen nation of Afghanistan in December 1996, along with our two sons. With the help of the Japanese missionaries, and the Korean and Japanese national messiahs, we carried out many activities to serve the people of Afghanistan.

After only 5 months of staying in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Taliban soldiers decided to take over our city, aiming to take over the entire nation. At that time 3,000 Taliban soldiers entered the city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The United Nations allowed only mothers and children to evacuate the country and my wife left with our two sons. The rest of us 5 people, 2 Japanese missionaries, the daughter of the Korean National Messiah, one Afghan brother and myself, stayed in the city.

Suddenly we found out that a group of Taliban had taken the house next to our residence to use for their headquarters. We did not know what to do and we were very scared and at any moment we could have been killed. All our members kept praying and making conditions of devotion.

After a few days the local people started to resist the armed Taliban. The fight became extremely intense and for three days and three nights we could hear the sounds of rocket launchers and other guns fired nearby.

It was a very dangerous and a critical time, so I decided to move everyone to the basement of our house and took True Parents, Heung Jin Nim and Dae Mo Nim’s picture, and the Holy Candle with us and started to offer desperate prayers. We were afraid and feared for our life but we knew that only Heavenly Parent and True Parents could protect us.

After 3 days of this fighting, I came out of the house with our Afghan brother. On the street we saw  many dead Taliban soldiers, the road was full of blood. More than 700 Taliban were killed by the local people.

It was so painful for me to see such scene, my heart was excruciating, how can brothers kill their own brothers? How can I help to stop this war? “Heavenly Parent I will give my life to help to bring peace and liberate these ignorant people. They do not know what they are doing…”

Heavenly Parent was worried for my life. How could He ask me to stay? At that time the memory of our True Father in prison came to me. I remembered that True Father never asked Heavenly Parent to help him, but instead True Father wanted to comfort God’s suffering heart.

I told Heavenly Parent, please do not worry about me because I will not die. I will stay and liberate the Afghan people from their suffering.

As we looked at the situation, we realized that something extraordinary had happened, how could  3,000 Taliban soldiers, who were well equipped, be defeated in only three days by the local people?

We started to hear reports from a VIP contact, the head security officer of the city, that something extraordinary made the Taliban act abnormally. Reports from the Taliban prisoners were saying that they saw in the sky a young oriental man riding a white horse, chasing them. By seeing this phenomenon, the Taliban became confused and some 700 of them were killed and another 700 surrendered, while others escaped.

As we shared this story to the former Japanese missionary to Afghanistan, Mr. Shighehiro, who was there with his wife from 1975 to 1988, he said that this phenomenon is the intervention of Heung-jin nim. Mr. Shighehiro explained that during their mission in Afghanistan, before they left the country his wife had nights of deep prayer, and she had a vision of Heung-jin nim riding a white horse. In the dream Heung-jin nim promised her that she should not worry about Afghanistan, that he would protect the country.

As we heard these words, we knew that Heung-jin nim had stopped the Taliban soldiers taking the city and he was the one that protected us. Without the intervention of Heung-jin nim, we could have been killed.

As we reflect on this event, it reminded us how important is to mobilize the spirit world. By our sincere devotion and desperate prayers Heung-jin nim came to help us.

In these days we are all facing difficult challenges in our mission to accomplish True Parents’ ultimate desire to establish Cheon Il Guk by 2027. We are seeing wars, conflicts, misunderstandings, and other difficulties that are trying to disrupt our devotion and support for our beloved True Mother, the begotten Daughter of God.

By sharing this experience, we are all reminded that Heavenly Parent is working from the spiritual realm, our True Father, Hyo-jin nim, Heung-jin nim and Daemo-nim are waiting for us to call them to help us succeed in restoring our nations and fulfill Cheon Il Guk.

We need to make sincere conditions of devotion and desperate prayers to mobilize the spirit world.

I am so grateful to Heavenly Parent and True Parents for giving me this chance to offer these 21 days of sincere devotion at the HJ Heaven and Earth Cheonbo Training Center. During these 21 days I was able to revive my heart and spirit. I am sincerely grateful to each and every staff member at the HJ Heaven and Earth CheonBo Training Center; I received so much love from each one of them.

I am especially deeply grateful to President Lee Ki-seong for his internal guidance and the Cheon Shim Won elders, for their sincere devotion.

Now I am ready to return to my region and challenge to make the impossible possible. Heavenly Parent showed me during this 21 days that by our sincere devotion and desperate prayers we can mobilize the spirit world. I am expecting to see many miracles that Heavenly Parent and True Parents have prepared for us in Europe and the Middle East.