The Birth - Rebirth Process is Taking Place in El Salvador

The long hot summer is drawing to an end and on the horizon the clouds are forming, getting ready, as it were, to break forth with their everlasting showers. But not yet, if nature’s clock will dictate. Still a few more weeks, but I’m sure that the populace would rather those bouncing balls of cotton break forth with their refreshment. Everything is dull brown with toasted golden tips, all but a few evergreen palms and shrubs; dust and powder are everywhere. The entire land is crying for water and occasionally a wild fire or two breaks out.

When this rainy season begins, we will have completed one year on mission, and it doesn’t seem a month, if a day. Looking back, I have only the knowledge of an experience in a foreign land, which is no longer foreign, and the awareness that some bit of American history has gone by me. I feel like I’ve got something new attached to me, but can’t quite say what-new vistas, new visions and awareness which weren’t there last year. Someone different is writing this letter.

I don’t know if you call it rebirth or just plain “birth,” but whatever, it’s new, it’s good and it’s refreshing to have my eyes open wider than before. I can see so much today that wasn’t there before-or maybe I didn’t see it. You won’t believe how confident this work can make someone and you’d be surprised how much you learn about Divine Principle trying to explain it in another language.

Reaching for people’s hearts is a challenge in itself but do it in another culture and another language. You’ll have the heart, wrench of your life. In trying to give birth to new souls and wings to old birds who never knew how to fly, I’ve done everything but eat pickles and ice cream. We don’t get away with anything and almost all efforts have their direct, immediate result. Not that we want to get away with anything. That’s the joy of it Johnny-on-the-spot correction. Mrs. Moon once said she felt purified by the gaze of her child. I think it’s more like a refiner’s fire. Often they don’t know how God is using them. I understand how God felt anticipating the birth, growth and maturity of His children. I even lose 14 pounds worrying. I have more grey hair, too.

But is it worth it? You betcha! I walked 12 miles just to talk to one boy and what an experience! Being out of shape, it was a pain for me, and I was sore for two weeks, but he got the message. He’s still studying and only goodness will follow him. Father has been good to us here. We have two sons who will move in soon, and one girl who is more solid every day, though it is slow at times. I only pray we can be sufficiently responsible to raise them and lead them correctly.

Recently, we began an evening prayer condition — one hour each evening. We’ll also do a two-hour prayer vigil every ten days. We seem to have a deeper prayer life now and our heart-to-heart communication is getting more depth. I think what we’re learning most of all is just getting back into a consistency of prayer. That consistency is relative to all aspects of our being.