My Life and Mission by Reiner Vincenz
Our beloved brother, Reiner Vincenz, ascended to the spirit world early on Sunday, January 18, 2015. This story is Reiner Vincenz’s personal account of becoming a Unificationist and working closely with True Parents on their mission.
Read more about Reiner’s life and legacy
I would like to write my own legacy and testimony about the greatness of our True Parents, in order to give glory and a thousand thanks to our True Parents for the life they have given to me through their Holy Marriage Blessing in 1969 with my wife, Barbara, and then through my daughter’s Marriage Blessing in 2007.
My wife, Barbara, was the fifth member in the United States to join, in 1963. She was Barbara Koch then. She is from Germany, but she had been studying in San Francisco. One day some friends invited her and many other young people over for a fun evening. Her brother Peter was studying engineering in Berkeley and he also came along. That evening, a German girl started talking about the Divine Principle, the core text of the Unification Church. Barbara and Peter both began to study. Over the next few days, Peter especially was desperate to hear more. He studied with Young Oon Kim, one of the first Korean Unification Church missionaries in America. Peter had many visions and dreams about True Parents. Barbara said he was gone every evening and would come home having learned so much more. He became a full-time member after 14 days. It was Peter who introduced me to the Unification Church and Divine Principle. So we were a spiritual family before we became a physical one.
Barbara and Peter came back to Germany with four other missionaries to teach Divine Principle in Europe. I had escaped to West Germany from East Germany at age 17. I worked at a machine building car dealership where I met Peter Koch, who also was working there. I asked Peter, “What did you learn in America?” Peter said he had found something new in America. I thought it was some new invention or machine; I was really excited. When I found out it was the Divine Principle, I began to study it with him.
I wanted to meet with Peter every day, but Peter seemed to have no time. Peter was actually preparing for three months to teach me the Divine Principle. He was fasting and taking cold showers as conditions for preparing his heart. After three months he said, “On Saturday you can come see me.” He said it would take all day to teach me the Divine Principle. There was no book at the time; it wasn’t printed yet. Peter actually translated it into German later. He used stories and discussion to share the teachings. One evening, we studied the Parallels of History three times, and that’s when I knew this was the truth. The Parallels of History really got me hooked.
It took years to get the ball rolling as far as membership in Germany. It wasn’t easy. Father Moon came to Germany in 1965, and he said that to develop Germany, he had to send three missionaries out to Spain, Austria and France. The late Paul Werner was the missionary sent to Austria. Ursula Schumann went to Spain. They needed one more person to go to France. I volunteered, but I had been in the church for only six months and at 25 I was the youngest member there. Peter did not want me to go; he thought that if I went to France I would lose my faith. I asked Peter, “Can I write to Father Moon and ask him?” So I wrote a letter to Father Moon, and when he saw it, Father got excited and said, “Yes, of course he can go to France.” When I got the news that I could go to France, I jumped almost to the ceiling! I was so excited. I wanted to go to France because it was the enemy country of Germany. I didn’t know one word of French when I went. I spoke only German, and I had no money.
I had many enemies when I came, but I made up my mind that even if it would take 21 years to find one French person, I would not give up. I worked at a hotel during the day and taught German lessons. That’s how I started to meet people. My salary was $10 a month, so I ate bread and President cheese [an inexpensive brand of cheese] every day. Brie is still my favorite.
At the time, I was fasting every other day to set a condition to make a connection with someone, to make a relationship. After three years, I finally did. I had met many people, but no one was willing to listen to the Divine Principle, but one night when I was on my way home, as the train left the station, my spiritual eyes opened and I saw little lights on the map indicating that I should go in the opposite direction. I followed the lights and got off the train.
There was a man there, and he promised to come visit me. When he did, I experienced for the first time a French person arriving on time! This man was Henri Blanchard. Divine Principle had not yet been translated into French, so I drew diagrams. I made three diagrams: one to teach him the Three Stages of Growth, one to teach the Four-Position Foundation, and one to teach the Parallels of History. When Henri walked in and saw the images, he said, “Oh, this isn’t really a German lesson.” He was interested in learning, though, and later went to Germany to meet a French-speaking member who could teach him the Divine Principle. When he came back to France, he was a member. After three years of witnessing in France, including a six-month preparation period before leaving for France, I finally made a successful connection.
I was very happy when I met Henri; for ten months I didn’t focus on anything else, just on Henri and building our relationship. I told Father Moon that I wouldn’t see him again until I had one member, so I didn’t know when I would see Father Moon again. It ended up being in 1969 at the Holy Marriage Blessing Ceremony.
Barbara and I were blessed in 1969 in the 43 Couples Blessing, after which she came to France to support the mission there. She did not speak French and so witnessing was very difficult, so she stayed in the center in a supportive role. Everyone was asked to teach Divine Principle, though, whether or not we were good at it. This was our course until 1972, when Father called us to America to support the International One World Crusade (IOWC).
In 1968, I had one member, but promised to establish 120 members in France. Barbara and I planted seven church centers in France. The mission in America was hugely different. We were put into teams for the Day of Hope Tour campaign and had to travel. We were on the road every day. We supported Father Moon at his speeches. We traveled and lived in vans and centers. We were on the road all the time, while also having to take care of our teams at centers. Barbara chose to stay at the centers and do housework, while I went out with the team and did outreach work. Barbara did many little thoughtful things in the background. She sewed everyone’s names on their socks so that they wouldn’t lose them.
I would often say, “Okay, now we have to go to the next city,” while Barbara would say, “Wait, we have to do their laundry first.” She kept in mind the necessary earthly matters, while I was always thinking of the spiritual.
At first, all the IOWC teams were all-German or all-French. Our team volunteered to take on a mixed team of people from different nations. That is what Father Moon really wanted, international teams, not one-nation teams. It was very well organized, though it was intense traveling. We went on a 31-city tour and then an 8-city tour.
I always hoped to go back to France, but missionary life in the early days of the church in America was never ending, so Father Moon permitted me to go only once in a while. When we first reached Seattle, Washington, Father Moon said, “Reiner, we have two more cities to go— San Francisco and Los Angeles— and then we need to go to Japan.” Father needed many members to organize a 45-city tour in Japan over the course of four to five months, so I had to wait to go back to France. I led a team of 300 people to Japan. By the time we got to Japan, the team had grown to 600.
I wasn’t sure how to approach outreach work in Asia as a Western member, so I asked Father Moon what was the best approach in Japan. He said, “You should work in Japan the same way you did in America.” I knew Father Moon had confidence in me, but I didn’t have full confidence in myself. At least we had a translator. When we completed the grueling 45-city tour in Japan, Father Moon said, “Now we need to go to Korea.”
When we arrived in Korea, we learned Father was waiting for us in Pusan. The next morning, we had 3,000 members waiting to join a 9-city tour campaign. The team kept expanding. The tour took two months. I wanted to go back to Japan, but Father Moon had one more mission for me in Korea.
True Father invited me to climb a small mountain near Seoul with two or three members. The reason why True Father wanted to climb this mountain with me was in order to talk with me regarding the upcoming Yoido Rally. He was explaining to me the vision of the rally. I was very distracted that day, and Father Moon noticed this. Finally he turned to me and asked, “Why are you so distracted?” and I said, “I dropped my camera somewhere.” I always had with me a small camera and a small tape recorder. For some reason I had misplaced my camera and all my worries had been about the camera and not on True Father’s speech. True Father knew my mind and decided that he would look for my camera. After a short while he came back and had found it. I was so overwhelmed. “Okay, now you can pay attention to me,” he said.
Now True Father could speak with me freely. Here I was worrying about my little camera and True Father was worrying about the success of his biggest rally yet! I had other moments like this as well. One time later when I came to Belvedere to visit True Parents, I could not find them and I left my suitcase at the main building. Then, looking all over the Belvedere area, I finally found Father and he walked with me all over the land. Then returning to the main house, suddenly True Father took my suitcase and brought it up to my room. I was so choked up—here is our Lord and he carried my suitcase to my room. I remember that in that moment I was speechless.
On the mountain in Korea, Father said, “I want you to lead the Yeouido rally campaign, and I want you to find more than 1 million people to come to this rally, because Billy Graham just came to South Korea and 900,000 people came to his rally. I need to surpass that.”
He gave me 18 days. We worked day and night. On the day of the rally it was raining all over Korea except at the Yeouido rally location. One of the main goals of the rally was to show that the Unification Church members would support South Korea in the reunification of North and South Korea, so it was a patriotic rally. Many people were really stirred up.
We were used to being on the move, it was the life we knew, but we did have a lot of problems in the background with the team. Food was especially a big challenge. The Japanese members on our team didn’t think we would need meat, and so we would eat only rice and something to go with it. I told them we needed to change the diet to include meat. There was a big argument about this matter. It was just so difficult for our Japanese members to understand that we could not make it without meat, and for us to understand how they could go without it.
From Korea we went back to Japan. A little while later, Colonel Bo Hi Pak telephoned and told me, “Father is beside me, and he wants you to come back to America.” I was unhappy about this. I wanted to stay in Japan a little longer for witnessing and follow-up, but the next mission was the Yankee Stadium Garden rally.
It was exciting to see so many new faces coming every day, especially since I began as the only member in France and just one of six in Germany. But it was also discouraging because many people came, but many left. We were going too fast for the newcomers to establish a foundation.
After that I was sent to Germany as national leader in 1978. True Father came to England for Home Church in 1978. I was called to England. In 1976, True Father bought the New Yorker Hotel and made me responsible for its restoration. That was at the same time that I was one of the leaders responsible for the Washington Monument Rally.
It was actually difficult going back to Germany after being in foreign countries for so long. While I was in England, I went back to Germany every month for three days. I also spent time in France and at one point went all over South America.
The nature of the movement in South America was very good. Father sent me as his ambassador in 1988 to 10 countries in South America, particularly in Uruguay. When I was young, I always dreamed of going to South America one day to dig and find gold. That was my plan right before I met the church. So when Father asked me to go to South America, I was very excited to finally get to go. I visited ten countries in South America as Father’s ambassador.
I traveled so much, I even spent time in North Korea in 1994. In North Korea they had people who would show us around. They were our tour guides, and one person was assigned to each of us. These people were actually security for the North Koreans who wanted to monitor us at every moment. Before we went to bed each night, the North Koreans would check through all our belongings to make sure that we didn’t have any special recordings and weren’t taking anything. Having grown up under communism in East Germany, I was very aware of their tactics. They had bugs, or listening devices, in the phones and in all the rooms. We always had to be worried about what we were saying, even in our own room. Also, everywhere we went they made it look like North Korea was so prosperous; they showed only what they wanted us to see. They put us in a nice hotel, but it was actually an empty hotel, just there to show foreigners, “Look how great our North Korea is.”
The church has changed and grown a lot since the time I joined. Right now this is the time of a new age. It’s the next generation of Unificationists that is really blooming, and they all should take care of our church. But the next generation has to come forward and want to do that. We can’t do it anymore. We had our time. This is a big challenge for them, but I am very hopeful that the next generation will develop strongly and take over soon. This is a completely different age.
I have seen many different styles of witnessing—such as big campaigns—and what I have found most valuable from among all the varieties of witnessing was at the very beginning, when I focused for ten months on my first member in France. I really liked building the personal relationship and studying one on one with a person. That’s what I feel works best. I think now what will help us is this kind of Tribal Messiahship and Home Church.
Robert Josifoski
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I joined in 1991 being witnessed by Paul Carlson from SF Bay Area. I was one of the first members in Macedonia and the only one of them who remained in our Unification Church. Guenter and Maria Wurzer from Austria were missionaries for Albania, but they were staying in Skopje because they could not enter Albania at that time. I joined straight after a 21 day workshop in Krakow, Poland, where I met many brothers and sisters from all over Europe. It was ideal to be in an international community where each one is your brother or sister. But then, difficult times came, our Western European and American missionaries went back to their countries and there was no one left, and that’s why about 5-6 young members in Macedonia left the Church, because there was no one to take care of them. After a deep conversation with Guenter Wurzer, when he shed tears for the peace in Yugoslavia which unfortunately had a civil war after (all the other 5 republics except Macedonia got involved in that war!), Guenter proposed to me to translate the Divine Principle Level 4 in Macedonian, and so I did. I then needed a computer to put it together in a book with all the illustrations. Guenter thought I need to go to the European Mobile Education Team (MET) led by Rev. Kwang-Kee Sa, and so I went and stayed in that team for 3 months, doing fundraising and 21 day DP workshops, learning Korean as well. Then, Rev. Sa sent me back to Macedonia, because I wasn’t doing so well in fundraising, but on the way back I stopped in Vienna, and stayed there for almost 2 years, trying to learn how to use computer and draw the illustrations in the DP book. I had to create a Macedonian font, as there was none in those days in 1992, the font name was Macedonian Times. At that time in Vienna, I met two brothers whom I will always remember, and they helped me stay in our Church, by caring for me (of course, there were many others who cared for me as well!). One of them was Kim Jeong-Keon (not the North Korean President!), who was a master of Wonghwa-Do and the other one was Goon Amen Koch, the son of Peter Koch who was already in spirit world. Goon was staying at the White House in Vienna, near a cemetery. I remember whenever his father’s name was mentioned, he would light up a candle. I was spiritually opened at that time, and once I heard the voice of Peter Koch speaking to me. He said that he feels sorry that the spirit of witnessing had disappeared from our European movement, the one that he had experienced in the early days of our Church.
To make the long story short, Goon went back to America, to study chemistry at Cooper Union in New York, Kim Jeong-Keon got blessed with a Japanese sister and went back to Korea after his brother Kim Jeong-Ki, and I went back to Macedonia, where God gave me a job in a printing company as a Graphic designer (with no qualification) and gave me a mission to publish the book, Divine Principle Level 4, and I could print 1000 copies of this book at no cost, just by working overtime without pay for 3 years. My salary was about $230 a month.
Then I got blessed with my wife Yuko, a Japanese lady from a village in Hokkaido, but very different from our Macedonian villages, a lot more advanced :)
I like to see our members and the second generation succeed in their lives and also succeed in witnessing. I hope my sharing will inspire someone.
Thank you, Rainer for all your hard work!
I’m sure, you and Peter Koch are now watching me.
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F. George Russell
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Rev. Vincent, Many blessings and thank you for your great dedication and burning love of True Parents. It was a joy working under your leadership; in Europe and America. I always remember your personal and joyful greetings, and advice to me: “Have notepad, camera and tape recorder ready when traveling.” I know you’ll continue to do great work in the spirit world for God and True Parents. Today, we are just happy to see the fruits of much of your work. “Love you.”
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Juan Morales
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Thank You Rev Reiner Vincenz ,for dedicating your life to Attend Our True Parents in one of the most needed times of Our True Parents work on Earth,just for the fact that you meet The Returning Lord and Serve Him…Thank You,Thank You,Thank YOU.
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migliore gennaro
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Another giant has left this physical world …. . Thanks for the love and JeongSong you have given unconditionally in the last 50 years of your life .
May HP be with you .
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Anne-Marie Mylar
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One of the greatest example of unconditional love and unconditional service to God, humankind, and the creation has just gone on to the spirit world. I have no doubt that he will find his way there very quickly and with True Father, Jesus, and all the great saints and sages of the past will continue his life mission of showing us all how to love and serve unconditionally.
Though I cry, writing this note, I am OK that he is now in the spirit world and that he was allowed to have such of fulfilled life on earth.
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Bengt de Paulis
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Thank you.
Listen to Rainers Audio Testimony 80s:
French_beginnings_RainerVincenz (4 audio files)
http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/audio/
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Bengt de Paulis
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Many other great Testimonies from the Early Days of UC.
http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/audio/
Happy listening
/Bengt
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Bengt de Paulis
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Thank you.
Please listen to his audio Testimony from 80s here:
French_beginnings_RainerVincent 1-4
http://www.euro-tongil.org/swedish/english/audio/
/Bengt
Finland
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Marion Warin Miller
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From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Although French, I joined in the US, while living and studying at the U of PA. It was always so precious to meet Rev Vincenz, Henri and Rémy Blanchard, Thérèse, etc… both in the US and when visiting France. Their depth of heart came from Rev Vincenz, the father and first pioneer of our french movement. What an amazing person! And so are his wife, and his daughter and family. Godspeed and much joy in your mission in spiritual world with our true father, Rev Vincenz!
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Joanna Suzuki
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Dear Rainer and Barbara
In1978 polish brother Janusz Mazur brought to France 12 members
of polish underground Unification Church members.
I was one of them. For the first time we went to western country and for the first time we met brothers and sisters from behind iron courtain. Henri Blanshard – I think he is with you now – smiling to
us -your spiritual son ,s love and care for us I will never forget.
Your testimony gave me strength while I am now working in Japan
thank you for your example . Say very warm hello to Henri Blanshard and please help Janusz and polish family to unite well and make True Parents proud and happy .
Joanna- Ksycinska- Suzuki
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Nicholas Kernan
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Thank you Rev. Vincenz, may you continue marching on up in heaven. I met the IOWC in Portland OR in 1974 just after they returned from the Madison Square Garden rally and they brought me to True Parents. Soon after we went to Seattle for the Day of Hope campaign. Every day we would leave the YMCA and travel to a rallying point where we would sing songs and prepare for the day. When we sang “Generation of Righteousness” and “Song of the Heavenly Soldiers” we really meant it! Thank you, Rev. Vincenz, for all your pioneering work to build the foundation for the heavenly kingdom in Europe, USA and around the world. Sincere best wishes to Mrs. Vincenz and all of the family.
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Marielle Pearlman
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Dear Reiner and Barbara, As a french member, I was blessed to know you as the “grand Parents of France”, and was raised by Henri Blanchard. My niece Evelyne, was handpicked by Father Moon and put in Reiner team.
Thanks to the tradition implanted by Reiner, and Henri, my time in the french movement, was a heaven. I am forever grateful.
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Pamela Stein
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Dear Rev Vincenz, my brother Reiner, what a treasure your personal testimony is for the legacy of our American movement. I will read this in the coming months and years to my grandchildren. You are a man of true love and I am really excited for your continuing attendance to True Parents through your life in spirit world.
Thank you so much for being a precious man of faith and model of unconditional loving through all we have been through over the years, Pamela Stein
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Edward Taub
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I first met Rev. Vincenz when he was an IOWC commander and I was a state leader. His team came to my state, and he began to teach our members about the harsh reality of communism. He helped us to understand its threat by speaking seriously, but calmly. I’ll never forget him saying, “The tanks are coming, the tanks are coming…” God bless you, Reiner. I’ll always remember you!
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Mike
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Rev Vincenz was an amazing leader whose love and support set the bar for everyone as to attending True Parents. Marching on Marching on
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Sandy Bokor
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beautiful testimony!
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Leslie Rigney
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Wonderful testimony! In spite of having to lead large groups and big campaigns, when I think of Rev. Vincenz, I remember his kindness and personal approach to each person. He was an expression of True Father. Because he developed France I could hear of Unification Church and become a member in 1972 in NYC. What one person does is so precious. Thank You, Rev. Vincenz for your magnificent life of faith and attendance and for your guidance at this time in the CIG!
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Edwin
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So beautiful . . . so personal.
Thank you, Reiner Vincenz for living such a life of love.
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