The Day in 1979 that I made True Father Laugh so hard that he cried

It had been an ambition of mine to make True Father laugh so hard that he cried. In 1979. I fulfilled that goal during a leaders’ meeting right after my IOWC merged with CARP. I wasn’t happy about that at all, because our teams [Neil Salonen, Bill Bergman, and I] really wanted to keep going and make True Father proud. Summer was coming too — best time for witnessing.

Anyway, I had some trouble adjusting to Tiger Park’s leadership style. I liked him right away but I was really disappointed that he wouldn’t let me keep a promise I had made to Rev. Kwak to fly to New York and film the Jesus lecture as part of a series they were doing. We got into a big fight about it, which he won [of course]. But it was hard to stay angry at the Tiger because he was all heart and totally “walked his talk.”

Anyway, a few weeks later Father called a leaders meeting and asked me and Dr. Bergman to report on our experience with Tiger Park.

Bill was all effusive and saying how wonderful the Tiger is, how loving he is, how inspiring, how authentic, how wonderful [did I mention how wonderful?]. All true, but also so “Oaklandish” if you know what I mean 😉. Everyone applauded politely.

Then I got up and gave a brutally honest report about my struggle uniting with the Tiger, including a blow by blow description of our big fight — including an imitation of the Tiger yelling “Mo! Mo!! MO!!!” and the phone line going dead at the climactic moment.

Everyone was laughing hilariously, including True Father… and yes… there were indeed tears flowing down his happy face. I finished my report and Tiger Park jumped up and said “Dan, that was a G-R-R- REAT report!” He had tears too. I sat down. My ambition fulfilled.