Famicon 2017 Gave Me Hope for Our Movement’s Future

I attended the recent Famicon 2017 conference in Las Vegas from April 3 to 6, 2017, at the suggestion of Garrun Abrahams, my son and District 6 pastor, in order to give a testimony about my 40-day witnessing and tribal messiah experience in Thailand.

The conference was presented very professionally and inspired me. As our True Mother is focusing on the next generation, the conference was led mostly by “millennials” who truly were on fire and motivated, which gave me so much hope.

It gave me the opportunity to meet and get to know better our president, Michael Balcomb, and also appreciate him much more: his personality and effort and total honesty, as well as his personal family situation. He appreciates when brothers and sisters ask him with heartfelt sincerity how we can help him.

I was grateful to sing songs to elevate our spirit, as we used to do a long time ago, in the “early days.” We have such a wealth of Holy Songs and inspirational songs! Singing them brings all our hearts together. Again, for me the main point was how we can establish the culture of heart, starting with our own heart.

The highpoint of the conference was the testimonies from Dennis and Mayuri Hoffman, Joe and Sun Willett, and Rev. Mark and Edna Abernathy. Each of these couples has reached the goal of giving the Marriage Blessing to 430 couples.

I am so grateful for their effort and example, which show us how God always works silently in the background, unnoticed, patiently, without any recognition. Once we want to be recognized, Satan starts picking things apart, unless he finds something he has to recognize and approve, too. We certainly cannot hide anything in front of him.

These three families also encouraged us to take action more confidently, and they gave us examples of how to go about it.

The other really constructive part of the conference was the breakout sessions, which were very to-the-point and professional. They were very helpful.

We had a big choice of seven or eight groups, and I wished I could have attended all of them! Over the course of the week, I personally attended: “WFWP as a Tool for Outreach” (of which I am a big believer), “The Five Steps of the Blessing” (John Jackson), “How to Make Your Next Event Awesome” (Teresa Rischl), “Ten Easy Steps to Make TED-Talk-Style PowerPoint Presentations” (Jonathan Gullery), “How to Tell Your Story” (Koichi Nakai), “Building Cooperation in the Community” (Michael Hentrich), and “Empowering a Thriving Young Adult Ministry” (Tasnah Moyer).

I am still digesting so much material and information. Clearly our older generation has a lot of catching up and learning to do. I am not on top of any of the technical stuff, and I still give lectures the old-fashioned way, but I never lost the yearning to comfort our Heavenly Parent and constantly wanting to reach out to find that one key person whom only God knows and whom He and the spiritual world prepared.

I questioned whether I was really qualified to go to this conference, or my husband, Gary, for that matter. But somehow Garrun believed in us—hopefully not just because we happen to be his parents—and so the miracle happened, something I have been praying about for so long: Gary and I, by his initiation, have started a to read Hoon Dok Hwe and pray together at 6 a.m. every day, in order to mobilize spiritual support. My husband is very serious about it and also about doing Tribal Messiahship in earnest. We already have visited and contacted many people, and we set our Blessing date for June 24 in Memphis, Tennessee.

I do know that True Father said God equals two that have become one. Therefore this time I feel we can accomplish our goal. I feel joy.

Thank you for letting me attend this Famicon 2017.