Blessing Story: We Found Ways to Connect
Worlds apart, literally and culturally, Hyomi and Godis made the leap.
HYOMI
I was working as the overseas coordinator for a young Unificationist gap year program when I met Godis. The summer of 2012, I had graduated college, and I spent the summer at a spiritual retreat in South Korea. The last day I was there was the same day that Rev. Moon passed away. It was totally coincidental, but I took that period of time as a new starting point. There were a lot of transitions that we were going through as a movement at the time. I kind of took that as a sign. As it turned out, 2012 was definitely a year of changes.
My first assignment for the gap year program’s service project was in Guyana. It was my first time in the Caribbean or South America. I met Godis's parents first because they had been managing a children's home for 25 years that we were working at. Godis and I were introduced by another staff member from my program. Initially, we didn't talk that much. He and I had very limited interactions for maybe less than five minutes. I was very busy with the team and he was studying at university at the time.
“Initially, we didn't talk that much.”
The following year in 2013, I was deployed to Swaziland as a Peace Corps volunteer. Ironically, it was when I was even further away, geographically, that Godis and I ended up connecting. I would say it was his initiation. He started messaging me periodically, in a friendly way, on Facebook. About six months into my service, we started talking more. It was almost exclusively at that point over Facebook Messenger.
Just to give you a little background, where I was posted in Swaziland was this very rural community. I had this little brick Nokia phone that was very limited in terms of what it could do. Text and Facebook were the only ways to communicate. That December we started speaking more frequently. On my end, I had started to talk to my parents about Godis. It hadn't really turned into anything, but just that he was on my radar. I found out later that Godis was also mentioning me to his parents.
“I started to talk to my parents [that] he was on my radar.”
By January, we were pretty much talking every day by text or phone. I'm the kind of person who really values communication upfront. We'd be talking about anything and everything: our personalities, our hopes, our dreams, things that were important to us, what we valued or did not wish for in a partner. We were very open about that yet still kind of beating around the bush of talking about the matching [an intentional engagement process] directly.
While I was letting my parents know generally what was going on, they were very hands-off about the process. I think I can say, for both of us, our parents were just really relieved that we were interested in the Blessing tradition, talking about it, and taking initiative.
“He comes from a very different culture…but we found ways to connect.”
He comes from a very different culture. I'm American. He's Caribbean-Guyanese. The way we think about things is different some of the time. He also speaks a slightly different brand of English. So sometimes, we have communication things that come up. But we found ways to connect despite cultural differences as well as the six-hour time difference that we were dealing with while I was in Swaziland.
We actually wrote and produced a song together. He raps and produces music, and I sing, so we had something to bond over. That would become the first of many collaborations. In terms of spiritual preparation, we did a fast and prayer together. Two months after we started communicating, it was just a kind of inspiration because there was a Blessing ceremony coming up, I broached the topic finally. I upfront told him that if he was interested, I would also be interested in pursuing this.
“That…would be the last time I would talk to Godis’s father.”
We basically decided that same week that we were just going to go for this. You know, take the leap of faith. Our parents were very supportive of it. Godis visited me for the first time in August 2014. We had our engagement ceremony with the very small Swasey Unificationist community, just two families, who helped us officiate the process. Our parents tuned in via tablet. That was a really special moment because it would be the last time I would talk to Godis’s father. His father passed the following year, a few months later. I still remember his face and how excited he was for us to be getting engaged and taking this step.
GODIS
That was actually the only moment or the last summer Hyomi got to speak to my dad directly. It was bittersweet for me coming into 2015. When we took our relationship to the next level and planned on receiving the Blessing. It was a lot for me, emotionally, knowing that. The last words my dad said to me when I decided to go to the Blessing were, “I am very proud of you that you're taking this process on and moving forward.” The fact that he wasn't there to see us get Blessed in person was a bit of a bittersweet moment, but I knew he was watching on from the spirit world.
“The last words my dad said to me...were “I am very proud of you.”
So after getting engaged, it was a long-distance relationship for a short period after me visiting Hyomi in Swaziland. We were getting to know each other a bit more and getting more and more serious. We were both at university at the time and trying to find a perfect time that we both would have left in order to go to the Blessing in 2015. A year later, we got legally married.
“I was there and not there at the same time.”
The first time I met her parents and family was when we got Blessed. Again, it was a bittersweet moment, seeing her dad and then remembering that my dad should be here to see this and see us go forward to the Blessing. It was a lot for me going through that entire process. At that point in time, I was going through the motions, trying to take things lightly, and trying to grab what was happening, but I was there and not there at the same time. But I knew that it's something that I wanted, and I knew something that also my family would have been happy to see me conclude, or go through and achieve.
Hyomi decided to move down to Guyana after she graduated from grad school in 2017. We went from long-distance to living in one space together. We could now decide together how we wanted to move forward. How we are going to plan our family into the future and develop our relationship.
