This testimony was given at the global pastors’ online conference in the summer of 2021.
I am Pastor Roberto Pascoalato de Azevedo, Brazilian, married to Andreia Mara Alves da Costa. We are from the blessing of November 1997. Thanks to True Parents’ work we became a CheonBo couple and currently, we are pastors at the Central Seminary of Brazil in the city of São Bernardo do Campo.
When the 100-day condition started, our mission was to get 43 couples from among the 430 that received Tribal Blessing, my feeling at first was that 100 days was a short time and it was going to be very difficult as I have only been in this mission in this region for 2 years and 3 months. In the tribal messiah classes that we attended every Wednesday and Friday, my understanding became deeper of how to unite with True Parents and mobilize the spirit world.
So, in addition to individual and public conditions, I started looking for a way to offer jeongseong. I understood from Reverend David Kim that to prepare, do activity and go after people is also a method of jeongseong. When praying I would ask Heavenly Father where and how I could start. I got the answer from the Heavenly Parent that I should start with my daughter Victoria’s philosophy teacher, so I went to him to talk.
The day I went out to meet him I prayed that my ancestors would go ahead and prepare the environment, I asked my ancestors to enable this person to like me. When I arrived at his house, I found out that he was a priest. I don’t usually have good relations with priests, but he liked me very much and he invited me to be part of an NGO that he was starting.
I gave him True Father’s autobiography, and after reading it, he liked it very much, and through this, I was able to start the One-on-One study of the Divine Principle. Praying to discover more possibilities and gain Victory in these 100 days, I had the inspiration to make 10,000 pamphlets, deliver them to people’s homes in the neighborhood, and invite them to meet the Heavenly Parent’s Holy Community.
At that time, we were in quarantine because of COVID-19 and people could not visit us, so besides handing out the pamphlet we took 1500 Whatsapp contacts to send messages about family harmony and spiritual help. This was a foundation for later teaching the content of the Divine Principle.
I looked at all these activities as opportunities to offer jeongseong and so I started to invest in my closest relatives and friends as well. I was studying and deepening my understanding of three points; dedication, jeongseong, and result.
I felt that I should make a condition of 21 days by getting up at 4 in the morning and praying for my ancestors to bring my nephews and nieces to the church. In the prayer, I spoke the names of my physical relatives and asked the ancestors to push them to come and visit me. My relatives live about 15 hours from my mission place. After this condition, my friends and relatives started coming to attend Divine Principle and became members. So far, five unmarried relatives came, attended all the Divine Principle lectures, and became members. They are preparing for the Blessing. Besides the physical relatives, 33 guests who are not relatives have also come and received the Divine Principle.
Through the priest’s NGO I was able to meet good and important people from my neighborhood and city authorities such as university rectors, local school principals, evangelical pastors, presidents of other NGOs, and neighborhood association leaders. On the one hand, I had to dedicate myself to taking care of new members and on the other hand, I had to deepen my Oikos [close relationships] and work with my three John Baptists.
Together with one of the John the Baptist leaders who were neighborhood president, I started to help deliver milk to needy families in the neighborhood, and I was able to establish a relationship with the pastor of the Baptist Church. With this pastor, we are planning to collect clothes to donate to needy families. These social activities were so that I could become better known in the neighborhood.
With the help of the new members, we started collecting vegetables and fruits at the markets and divided the donations into small bags, and shared them with needy families.
With this intense pace of activities and visits, I was getting physically tired and worried. When I received the testimony of the Korean pastors’ best activities, I read this content twice, and I got the answer from Heavenly Parent, that I was not to give testimony, I should be the living testimony, and that this would be possible through victory of jeongseong and connection of heart with True Mother.
I am currently educating 12 people with the content of the Divine Principle and developing social activities to expand the Oikos in my local community to transform it into a Heavenly Parent’s Holy Community, completing the local restoration. By uniting with True Parents and mobilizing the spiritual world, I will advance more and more towards the victory of Vision 2027 in Brazil.