CIG Missionaries: Family as the Textbook of Love and Value

During the fourth week of their mission work in Costa Rica, the Generation Peace Academy Cheon Il Guk (CIG) Missionary Trainees celebrated Costa Rican culture with local Unificationists and held a second ohana workshop, where they invited attendees to understand their value and identity as the children of God’s family more deeply.

Contributed by Anick Mulecki

Tuesday, March 14

On Monday, the Ticos, or native Costa Ricans, held a Costa Rican cultural event for all the Cheon Il Guk missionary groups to express their love and appreciation for us. They gave a presentation about the history of Costa Rica, performed a traditional dance, and then we danced and ate delicious Costa Rican food together.

Saturday, March 18

On Saturday, we held another ohana event for new guests. Five new people joined us for the event, which we organized around the theme of “original value,” or the God-endowed value of every individual and all created things.

Our main activity was a group discussion. We separated into four different groups and read quotes about value from Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and True Father. After reading, we each shared with the group what we thought about these quotes, which prompted a lot of discussion as everyone started to open up about their struggles with value: what value means and how we can understand our own value.

After the discussion, we did an activity where we wrote down our strengths and weaknesses on a paper and cut it out in the shape of a person symbolizing ourselves. We each shared with our group about our strengths and weaknesses and then we all taped our cutouts to a poster of the earth to signify that we are all one family. The intention of the activity was to demonstrate how we are all valued and that CARP, the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, is a community where, despite our struggles, we can come together and embrace one another as a family.

Our guests felt a lot of love and shared testimonies of their experience with the group at the end of the event, which concluded with everyone dancing to “Bounce,” one of True Mother’s favorite exercise songs.