50 Years in America: Honoring Our Japanese Missionaries

Photo courtesy of Toshi Tagawa

Japanese missionaries of the Unification movement were recently honored during a commemorative event held at the East Garden estate in Tarrytown, New York, on November 4 and 5. The missionaries, who first came to the U.S. 50 years ago to answer True Parents’ call to save America, endured persecution and myriad challenges, including language and cultural barriers. Still, they faithfully left behind their homeland to dedicate their lives to securing the future of God’s Providence in the United States.

The program “50 Years of Extraordinary Devotion,” organized by the HJ International Graduate School, illuminated the significant course, great faith, and personal testimonies of our Japanese missionaries, and imparted deep appreciation for their boundless determination and sacrifice. As True Father established worldwide missions in the 1970s, he urged members to pursue their providential work tenaciously, and noted that facing and overcoming hardships brings us closer to God and understanding His heart.

True Father’s 1973 message “Be Serious About Your Mission,” which he delivered to missionaries at the Belvedere estate, continues to ring true now more than a half century later, with words that benefit us all. Below is an excerpt from True Father’s speech.

Excerpt:

When you confront hardship, trouble and suffering, this is a symbol that goodness or happiness shall come through this hardship ... Hardship and trouble are necessary for us to overcome ... Trouble is for future happiness. Then, if you get through the persecution and the trouble, when you pass through, happiness comes, success comes — there is a real feeling of success. There is value right there, because you have a comparison: hardship is overcome, and then success comes.

When you have more hardship, more persecution, more rejection, then you expect more success, more happiness, more good results. That is the way you have to dive into this thinking, this kind of positivity. You will have the attitude, “What kind of trouble is coming, what kind of hardship is coming?” You are interested to know what will be next; you look forward to the problems. If you are scared, you are right there a victim...

There is a seriousness in everything ... If you become serious with your five senses, in everything, then naturally your being, yourself, will fit God’s overall plan, dispensation or Will. It is supposed to be fitting ... [If God’s Will is not fulfilled] then the whole nation will be destroyed, not just families and individuals. If there are no groups in this nation who are this serious, then God will find people in another country... 

How serious are you about centering on God’s Will? The Heavenly Father and our [Creator] are seriously looking at everything, perceiving everything centered on God’s Will ... We are different from worldly people. We have to be serious in centering on God’s Will, not on our own... 

In the Principle, you must be more serious than God, more serious than anyone else to do your mission in the best way possible ... If you have this kind of heart, if you [persevere] this way, it in fact shall happen — spiritual cooperation will come...

You can learn more about the providential foundation of our Japanese missionaries in True Father’s autobiography available here.