Building Partnerships Through True Family Values

The Minneapolis Family Church held their first Hmong Divine Principle workshop on September 10, 2016 for 10-15 participants, six of whom were of Hmong descent.

Minnesota happens to be home to over 60,000 Hmong people, the largest population of Hmong in the country. Many of the Hmong came to the United States as refugees from Southeast Asia in 1975, fleeing persecution from the communist government in Laos due to their support of American and French forces during the Vietnam War.

One of the workshop participants, Mr. Pao Yang, is a leader in the Minneapolis Hmong community, who organizes the Hmong New Year program in Minnesota each year, a time when tens of thousands of Hmong people gather to celebrate their culture. Mr. Yang reconnected with the Unification movement at the workshop after having originally met and worked briefly with Unificationists over 10 years ago.

After the workshop, Mr. Yang commented that he was very inspired by the theme of True Family Values raised during the presentations because there is a lot of similarity between True Family Values and the values of Hmong culture. Mr. Yang took many notes throughout the presentations, and wants to work together with the Minnesota Family Church to share more about the True Family Values with the Hmong people.

Similarly, District 8 and Minneapolis Family Church Pastor Rev. Hyungtae Ha stated that he sees great potential to work together with the Hmong community to share about True Family Values and foster Tribal Messiahship in Minnesota. District 7 Pastor Rev. Jeff Schmidt and his wife Toyoko also attended the workshop and look forward to working together with Rev. Ha and Mr. Yang to connect and collaborate with Hmong communities in Wisconsin.

Hmong Unificationist Joe Vue was the primary lecturer at the workshop and is currently working together with Minnesota and Wisconsin Unificationists to translate more of the Divine Principle and supplementary educational material into the Hmong language to facilitate teaching and sharing among the Hmong community.

If you have a story to share about local outreach and Tribal Messiahship efforts in your community, please share it along with photos at familyfed.org/share-a-story.