Christian Lepelletier

Christian and his wife Hiroko are serving as missionaries with the Unification Movement in Sao Paulo, Brazil, they are working with the small groups ministry - cell - home church - inter-faith harmony, Culture of Peace and Family Values, they were blessed in Holy Marriage by the Rev. and Mrs Moon in 1982, Seoul, Korea. Their son and daughter in law are serving the youth ministry in Brazil and their daughter and son in law are serving the youth ministry in Las Vegas.

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Location: Taboão da Serra, São Paulo, Brazil

Monday, January 14, 2008

PUBLIC RELATIONS ACTIVITY IN BRAZILIA




EXPERIENCES OF THE UNIFIED WORLD IN BRASILIA


From November 11 to 21st Rev. Moon´s Family did a twelve cities speaking tour in the USA. At the same time all over the world we were asked to do 12 events in each country. Here in Brazil we started from São Paulo on the 11th. Especially this time we were planning a national level event in Brasilia on the 20th.

Ten days before the event, following our International Missionary Rev. Heung Tae Kim´s direction, 7 members from Sao Paulo traveled to Brasilia for a special mobilization, we were among them. There in Brasilia we had an amazing experience, which we would like to share in this report.

First we would like to explain a little about the background of the capital Brasilia. In 1955, the President Kubitschek took the decision to build from scratch the new capital of Brazil, in the middle of the empty highland, the city was designed to accomodate all the government buildings. In 1960, the capital was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia, the capital without past history was born.

Generally we think the capital Brasilia as the center of political activities, however this area has been prepared spiritually since a long time. In 1883, Dom Bosco, an Italian priest had a prophetic dream about the location of the new promised land where Brasilia is located. There, one can feel the “spiritual call”, a rich mixture of cultures, beliefs, rituals, sanctuaries, there are more than 600 religious groups and spiritual movements in the Brasilia region.

In Brazil, there is a NGO called the Legion of Good Will (LBV), the largest NGO of Latin America, the founder received a revelation from St Francis of Assisi to create a Charity Instituition, which was founded in 1949 to take care of children in nursery schools. The actual President Paiva Neto received the instruction from the Spirit World to build an Ecumenical Temple in Brasilia, which was inaugurated in 1989, then in 1994, next to the Temple, the World Ecumenical Parlament was opened.

The Temple has seven sides pyramided shape and on top is a natural shining crystal, the largest in the world, that was given to this temple with the help of the Spirit World. The door of the Temple is opened 24 hours everyday of the year and visitors from all over the world and all races and all religions come to pray.

Amazingly several future strategies that Hyun Jin Moon has been preaching for the Unification Movement (see TW – Vol. 28 – Nº8, pag.11) have already been practiced and implemented in the LBV, such as the “Unrestricted and Total Ecumenism.” In 1994, they became the first Brazilian NGO working at the UN and they received the general consultative ECOSOC status in 1999. They took the lead in Brazil to achieve the eight UN Millennium Development Goals. They even organized in 2006 the “Worldwide Peace Festival” in the south of Brazil.

This time, our event in Brasilia took place in this World Ecumenical Parlament´s auditorium.
Our original plan was to hold our event in the Senate´s auditorium, but just few days before the event our request was rejected. However, God opened the way for us to use the World Ecumenical Parlament. The group which had a reservation on the same day of our event suddenly cancelled their plan, and made possible for us to hold our event there.

Brasilia is located on a plateau, the air is pure, one feel the clear spiritual atmosphere, maybe it is because the city has no past history. We had the feeling that the Spirit World can work easily in a good or evil, both ways.

Since Brasilia is the national capital of Brazil, normally our Unification Movement should have the main base in this city; however our activity in Brasilia had many difficulties in the past. During the last ten years we had no Church Center and neither Church Leader, only a few blessed families were living in the city. Then two years ago Pastor Iremar was assigned to work in Brasila, reinitiated activities based in a simple house provided by a local blessed family.

Pastor Iremar is a very faithful and spiritually sensitive person having several catholic priests and nuns among his ancestors and relatives. Someone may think that this character does not fit to work in the polical field, but we found actually he is a very suitable person for Brasilia. He started to do public relations through the interfaith activity based on his past experience and contacts from Rio de Janeiro.

In Brazil, interestingly politicians and religious leaders are closely related. There are many religious leaders who are politicians at the same time. For example, among the 513 congressmen, there are 40 evangelical Pastors at the moment. Five years ago, they started to pray to be able to hold a prayer meeting Service in the Congress, as a result of that prayer condition, now every Wednesday morning they have an Ecumenical Service where one Pastor Congressman give the Sermon by turn. Through the interfaith activities, Pr Iremar made good contacts with those Congressmen or their assistants.

One day, Pr Iremar told us we were going to meet Pastor Roberto. We thought we were going to his church, but the place he took us was the Environment Ministry Building, Pr Roberto is the Environment Minister´s assistant. He received us very warmly in spite of his busy work and listened to us very sincerely. We noticed that the VIPs working in the government whom we met through the interfaith activities, are very conscientious and righteous people, compared to many corrupt politicians in Brazil.

Three days before the event about forty CARP (Youth Student Movement) and (Special Task Force Education Program for Youth) STF´s members arrived and the small church center became so crowed that we had no more space to lay down. On Sunday we visited churches and religious groups to invite guests for our event. Brazil is a very fertile land for religion and faith, beside to be the first catholic country in the world, numerous religious traditions and spiritual movements were brought with the immigrants and slaves and are flourishing all over the country.

The Evangelicals churches are growing very rapidly recently and many large church buildings and cathedrals are being built in many cities. More than ninety per cent of the Brazilians believe in God and the Spirit World and they have a great faith and respect toward God and the spiritual phenomenas. In the daily life people talk very naturally that they receive revelations or are cured through miracles.

Maybe because of this, often miracles occur in many churches or religious groups. In the large Evangelical Churches we visited like the Cathedral of the Blessings and Cure Our Earth, Pastors were preaching powerfully testifying about many miracles and were emphasizing that we are living in a supernatural world.

On Monday, one day before the event, we formed one international public relations team consisted of Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Swiss, France, Philippine and Brazilians members, we went out to meet governmental VIPs. Then we had truly supernatural experiences.
That morning, Pr Iremar had no clear appointment to meet VIPs and did not know where to take us. First we went to the Federal Deputy Marquezelli´s office, since he was not there, we met his assistant, Mr. Osmar. Usually when Pr Iremar meets him, he talks superficially, however that day because we were an international team; he really opened up his heart since he has a Philippine wife. He became very interested about each one´s international marriage story, so we all gave testimony of our matching by Rev. Moon and he was very impressed. Then he offered to call the Philippines Ambassador since she is a closed friend of him, and arranged a meeting with us later on that day.

When we were taking lunch at the restaurant of the Congress, there we met Mr Severino, a specially prepared person for us. He sat at Pr. Iremar´s table, and he invited him for our event, then Mr Severino offered to go together and invite his VIPs contacts in the Congress.
He led us to meet many VIPs such as the Secretary of the President of the Congress, the Assistant of the Presidential Office and the Vice-President of the Diplomats Association, etc...

They welcomed us warmly because Mr Severino had already built a very good relation with them testifying about Jesus. Wherever Mr Severino was taking us, motivated with love and strong faith in Jesus, we could open many doors to meet any kind of people. On the way he frequently stopped and talked to us about the Bible and Jesus. By seeing this we could really feel that Jesus was guiding us through him. That afternoon until night we could invite so many VIPs for the event.

Mr. Severino always presented us as an international delegation, mentioning our different nationalities to his contacts and this made a strong impresssion to them and opened their heart. We realized that transcending the nationalities and races brings great heavenly fortune and result.

After the activity, Mr Severino invited us to pray in his home, we found that he lived in a small, humble appartment with his wife and son. We thought that he was working at the government since he knows so many people there, but actually he is a full time volunteer missionary. There he shared about life testimony. Before he was an owner of several businesses and very wealthy, but after he went through many difficulties, became alcoolic, drug addicted and he did several suicide attempts. Twelve years ago when he reached the bottom of hell, he had an amazing spiritual experience with Jesus and transformed his life, since that time he determined to dedicate all his life to testify Jesus.

On Tuesday, the day of the event, he continued to lead us to meet congressmen and senators and he determined to bring us to meet with the President Lula. We ourselves doubted if it was possible, but he had conviction. Though it was too difficult to meet on that day, but at least he took us to meet the President’s assistant who welcomed us warmly, he said: “Sorry I cannot let you meet with the President today due to the busy schedule but next time if you can inform at least one day before, I could arrange a meeting.”

The event on that night was held in partnership with the following organizations: the (Universal Peace Federation) UPF, (Women Federation for World Peace) WFWP, (International Relief Friendship Foundation) IRFF, the United Religion Initiative (URI), the Christian-Israel Association (Haverimbril) and the Faculty of Theology (FATAI). Two banners were displayed on each side of the stage with the logos of the participating organizations.

The Speakers at the table on the stage were representatives of various religions: Catholic Church (Archbishop Milingo), the Evangelical Church (Pastor Roberto dos Santos), Islam (Sheik Luis Abdullah), Oomoto International Shintoismo (Prof. Maeda), URI (Mr. Elianildo), Unification Movement (Rev. Heung Tae Kim), together with the Government representatives: Federal Deputy (Nelson Marquezelli), President of the Diplomat Association (Ambassador Luis Brun), First Secretary of the Zambian Embassy (Mr. Chalungumana) and the University of Peace (Mrs Suzel Saraceni). At the same time all the races, black, white and yellow were represented. In the audience we had many other representatives of various religious traditions and governmental VIPs including 72 members of the Youth Parliament from all the States of Brazil that we could meet in that morning at the Congress and invite through their national coordinator. The atmosphere of this event was very good, everyone felt uplifted. The wide diversity of the participants symbolized the entire Brazilian Nation, melting all the religions, races and cultures of the planet.
Through this special mobilization for the Brasilia Event, we felt that we could experience a taste of the life in Cheon Il Guk (God´s Kingdom), Father Moon said in the Peace Message 13: “Today, I am declaring that it is time for all nations and religion to break down their barriers. Through this, the era of "One World under God" will arrive and last forever... we will now make rapid progress toward a world transcending religions and nations, the Cheon Il Guk God's kingdom on earth.”
For this event we could really practice these words transcending religions, races, nationalities and cultures, the cooperation between the religious leaders and politicians, other organizations and the Unification Movement. And this time we could break various barriers that exist within our own movement as well. Members from various departments such as UPF, FFWPU, CARP, STF and WFWP, local Brazilian and foreigners and also leaders and simple members, we all worked together in harmony, sleeping on the floor, eating the same food in a small center. With this condition the good Spirit World was actively mobilized and each of us could experience amazing spiritual revival within ourselves.
In reality in Brazil, we still don’t have a Peace Embassy and in Brasilia we don’t have even an office to receive our VIP guests, however through this mobilization we could feel that the good Spirit World already prepared many national level VIPs. So we are determined that as soon as possible to open a public relation center for the UPF activities in Brasilia, and to connect these VIPs to the Providence.

Christian & Hiroko Lepelletier, 6000 Couple Group, Missionary, living in Brazil since 1998.
chrislepel@gmail.com
www.geocities.com/chrislepel