1975 Unification Church Missionary to Ecuador and Chile

1975, after my blessing in the 1800 Blessing to Nancy Callahan, Father appointed me as the original missionary to Ecuador. After 7 months, I returned to the USA for health reasons. In 1980, I joined my wife in Chile.

At that time, the only members in the center were the Japanese missionaries, Wolf Osterheld and our couple. It was a wonderful time of strong witnessing conditions, much fasting and fundraising. Bit by bit, we were able to make a foundation of Chilean members.

In July, 1980, it was the middle of winter when I arrived after a 40 Day Training in New York’s World Mission Center. One of the common diseases in Chile at that time was typhus, which we got by drinking dirty water. Although we washed our vegetables and boiled the water, we still got it.

A few days before Christmas I was sick and assumed it was typhus. Despite having diarrhea, there were students to lecture and nobody could do it but me, so I was interrupting my lectures with trips to the bathroom. That night, I had the most severe stomach pains I’ve ever had. The next morning, a young doctor who had heard Divine Principle came by the center to examine me. He quickly diagnosed appendicitis. Since we had no health insurance, I went to the Catholic Hospital as a social welfare case.

Although admitted around noon, surgery did not take place until around 6 PM and by that time, my appendix had burst and I had a massive infection all through my abdomen. After surgery, with 2 drainage tubes coming out of my abdomen, I was parked in a bed in a ward with one elderly man who was dying and 4 other men, right near a window. It was a long night as I prayed to see the first lights of morning.

The vocabulary that I knew in Spanish was to teach Divine Principle, so, although I had a dictionary, the vocabulary I needed to use in a hospital was quite different. This resulted in more than one hilarious miscommunications. After a few frustrating days of what I thought was called for a bedpan, I learned that “sillon” the word I thought was for bedpan actually meant “overstuffed chair” which explained why nobody ever brought me a bedpan! They thought I was delirious!

Christmas eve, the nurse discovered that my wound was infected …quite common with a ruptured appendix but very dangerous. Because it was holiday time, however, they just bandaged me up and when they came back 24 hours later, it was very much more serious. I was given no food for weeks, and at one point I remember lying in my bed and shaking violently with chills while 3 doctors consulted at the foot of my bed with very serious expressions on their faces. Only later did I realize on my own that I was going into septic shock, a potentially fatal condition.

However, it seems that Heavenly Parents had another plan for me. Slowly my condition improved. After 21 days in the hospital, only the last 3 of which I was finally given food to eat (the rest of the time I was “fed” through IVs, I looked like a skeleton.

I couldn’t walk more than 1 block without resting. A few weeks after my release from the hospital, True Father appointed me Regional Leader of Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. I guess this was “a providence for the start.”

Since we had just invited our first member to live in the center, it was very interesting, and humbling to visit Brazil, which was quite developed and I learned a great deal visiting Sao Paolo, Rio Di Janeiro and Brasilia. It was also very inspiring to visit Paraguay and Argentina which were accomplishing their missions despite great challenges. Towards the end of those 2 years, Nancy and I decided to have a “honeymoon” because we had not really seen the country. When we returned, the handful of members living in the center had all left with the exception of 1 member.

He explained that a man had visited them and told them that he was the Lord of the Second Advent and they had become confused and gone back to their families. We phoned them all, one by one and talked with them to calm them down. Soon, everything returned to normal.

A few weeks later, 3 men came to our front gate and one insisted that we give him a Divine Principle book. This was highly unusual in 1982. Since he seemed intelligent and very charismatic, I invited him to come into the center to talk. As we spoke, a voice in my head told me, “This is the person who thinks he is the Lord of the Second Advent.” I could not ask the members to verify this, so I just asked him directly, and he confirmed it.

I remembered that Father had taught us how to deal with this kind of person during one of our leader’s meetings at Belvedere. As a way to teach the members about this kind of spiritual phenomena, I questioned him about the origin of evil and mission of the Lord of the Second Advent. He really had no idea of how to answer, so I challenged him, “How can you say that you are the Lord of the Second Advent when you don’t even know these basic things? How do you plan to save the world if you don’t even know what the fundamental problem is? You clearly are NOT the Lord of the Second Advent.” He kept insisting that he was and we finally got him to leave, giving him a 2 hour lecture. A valuable lesson was learned by all.

In 1982, after Nancy became pregnant, I was asked to attend 120 days training at the World Mission Center. Following my training and a few additional months in NY helping the Science Conference, Nancy and I were asked to move to Mexico and become Regional Leaders for Central America.

On my return trip from New York to Chile, I visited the Mexico City Center to familiarize myself with their situation. Although I sent the members there the details about my arrival, when I arrived in Mexico around 11 PM nobody from the church was there at the airport to meet me.

I had the center’s address, but when I asked the taxi drivers to take me to “Colonia Piloto,” none of the taxi drivers at the taxi stand in the airport had ever heard of that neighborhood! I knew Mexico City was big, but it was very unsettling that not even one taxi driver knew how to get to it! Finally, one taxi driver said he knew, but it was after midnight when we left the airport, and close to 1 AM when we arrived in a dark and very humble neighborhood of Mexico City, out on the edge of the city.

With 2 suitcases and a guitar, I paid the taxi and went to the door of what I thought was the apartment building where the Center was. There was no doorbell! I knocked on the door, but it was the door to an apartment building, so nobody answered. I had no money to telephone, and there was no payphone in that area. Finally, all I could do was yell from the street like a crazy man and hope that somebody heard me! But I didn’t have any idea where to yell from! Which side of that apartment building with 4 stories was the one with the church Center? Maybe somebody would call the police about a strange Gringo yelling in the street in that neighborhood!

Several taxis passed, I was sure I was going to be robbed or killed by some muggers out in the street at that hour, looking for money! Just when I was about to give up and return to the airport, I heard a wee, high pitched voice from high up calling, “Is that you, Mr. Hanna? (In English).” I was saved!

After 40 days in Mexico City, I returned to Chile in time for the birth of our twins after which we moved with them to a new, Mexico City Center that was rented in a much more central location in Mexico City. When we left Chile, there were 12 members. With 2 newborn baby girls, who moved when they were just 21 days old. The stewardesses on Pan Am airlines were very kind and seemed to really enjoy caring for our twins during the 9 hour flight.

For 6 months, we lived with all the members and Dr. Sato, the Japanese missionary, in a house in Tlalpan,

Colonia Taj Majal. There was another center in the state of Guadalajara where the German Missionary and her American husband were living. The Japanese missionary’s New Zealand wife was soon to arrive and after 6 months, our plan was to divide the members, with half remaining with the Mr. Sato and the other half moving with my wife and I to another area of this vast city.

However, circumstances changed and most of the members came to live with Nancy and I in a large house we were fortunate to find in Colonia Cuahtemoc, a very centrally located area right in front of the Zona Rosa. We were one block from Paseo La Reforma, the principle and most famous street in Mexico City, near Chapultepec Park where the Holy Ground is located. It was a perfect area to witness.

I made an agreement with the members: since I was receiving $600 a month as a Regional Director from WMD in New York, I would be responsible to pay all rental expenses, but they had to pay all food expenses. They agreed. This arrangement continued for years and all the older members were aware of it.

Mexico City has a wonderful subway system and thousands of students passed through this area on their way to and from classes at the more than 25 colleges and universities in Mexico City. At that time, Mexico required a foreigner to have a missionary visa to be able to witness and do missionary work. It is almost impossible for an American to get a Missionary Visa. So I just witnessed and did my work in faith that we would not be interfered with by the authorities. For a while, we were protected.

Under Mexico’s Constitution, all buildings used as churches automatically became the property of the government. Another worry was that if somebody complained to the government about our rental house being used as a church, then we would have to abandon the building within a few days or the owner would find that he had lost his house to the government! (This was exactly what had happened to the previous church leader and was why with a handful of members they had to move in the night to a new apartment in Colonia Piloto, to throw the government off their trail!)

A wonderful Mexican teacher had become a member when her brother joined in the USA. Gregorio Villafana taught all his family, including Rebecca and they had all accepted True Parents. Rebecca lived in the Atlantic Coast city of Tampico and gradually she became more active, eventually setting up a center and bringing many student members from that city.

After my wife returned from 120 training in 1985, our family lived outside of Mexico City, in Cuernavaca, in the state of Morelos. Soon my wife had the inspiration that with some money I had inherited we could purchase a house there that the church could use as a training center and where we could live with our family. The plan was that we would all fundraise and pay back the money that I was loaning to them to buy the house. My wife has incredible good fortune with real estate, as I had learned from her stories about when she was a pioneer in Louisiana, so I did not doubt her. Our timing was extraordinary. Within 2 years, the value of the house tripled!

Together with our members buying handcrafted jewelry in Taxco, Guerrero, I travel with them in car from Mexico City to Los Angeles, where we sold the jewelry in Hispanic neighborhoods there. It took 3 days and nights to drive up to the border in our car, and we would spend 3 weeks in the Los Angeles Center, fundraising. We did this twice a year for about 3 years, and paid back all the money. This is how our early members paid in full for the “Comonfort House” where many 7 day workshops were held as well as several 21 day workshops also.

As a result of the World Media Conferences during the ‘80s, we met very interesting Mexican journalist, who came from a very poor background. He didn’t look at all special, but he knew and could open the doors to everybody who was an important writer in Mexico. His name was Juan Picasso. He was an Evangelical Christian and turned out to be an outstanding John the Baptist.

At that time, Octavio Paz, later winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, was already quite famous. Juan Picasso looked at me after we had met several times and told me to put my glasses on. Then he said, “You look like you should be a doctor. From now on, I am going to introduce you as Dr. Hanna.” At this time, I was not even studying to be a doctor and felt uncomfortable doing it, but he was the expert and so I went along with it. He knew Mexico and Mexican journalists and I knew nothing! In this way, he opened all kinds of doors. It was all very spiritual.

One day not long after he said, let’s visit Octavio Paz. I asked if we could just walk in on him and he replied, “Well, let’s see what happens.” We went to the door and rang the doorbell and next thing I knew we were in the living room of the most famous author in Mexico! Being introduced as a doctor, Octavio Paz thought that I actually knew something about his work, the intellectual world of Mexico, etc. Quickly he discerned that this was not the case. We invited him to our World Media Conference and he said he would consider it and then he signed one of his books for me and gave it to me. I was amazed at it all.

Another journalists introduced to us by Juan Picasso, one who became quite a close family friend, was Dr. Gutierre Tibon, an author of 50 books on Mexico, and winner of the highest award that the Mexican

government awards to foreigners, the Order of the Aztec. Dr. Tibon personally welcomed True Father to Mexico, soon after our departure in 1992 during his World Tour. His home turned out to be a mere 10 minute walk from the Commonfort House, where we lived in Cuernavaca for 2 years with our family.

My father passed away in 1988, during the Seoul Olympics. I went to see him in June and we knew it was the final time to see each other on earth. In September, in Seoul, I received the news that he had died and my family wanted me home for the funeral. All I could think of was “leave the dead to bury the dead.” I was determined to not go home and to continue to attend True Parents in Korea at this most important historical moment. Somehow, I explained to them that I would visit them later, but that plane reservations were just not available to return due to such heavy traffic. It was very hard for them to understand and they resented me a lot for it.

With money inherited from my father, we purchased another house where we moved and began to renovate the house with the idea to eventually sell it at a profit, as a family business. The members continued to send money which we could use for our food expenses, but whenever money became short, I would go fundraising with the members in Los Angeles. In 1988, during the tour of the Zimbabwe member who channeled Heung Jin Nim, he connected me to the National Leader of Israel and our fundraising team leaders in Europe. We began a wholesale export business of Mexico Jewelry to them which also provided income for our family and for our mission.

Soon afterwards, Rebecca Villafana took a team of members around all the states of Mexico, to witness and lecture for at least one time in every capital city of every state. We felt strongly the need to make some connection to all the people living in the far flung corners of this large nation. She was an amazing soldier and faithfully accomplished everything. I would have gone personally, but after an illness my wife suffered during her 120 day training, it took her years to recover and I needed to be close to home in case she or one of our 6 children needed me.

By the time that we left Mexico in 1992, there were centers in Ciudad Juarez, Tampico, Guadalajara, Taxco, Monterrey, and Queretero, with more than 30 members. The last of our 7 children (5 born during our 10 years in Mexico) was born in 1990 shortly before Christmas. In 1989, our Regional Leader made the decision to change my mission and we began to research how to return to the USA as our growing children had educational needs that could not be met in Mexico were we were.

However, it was not our decision or our choice to leave Mexico, and we would have much preferred to have stayed. It took about 2 years to finish the renovation of our house in Mexico and to be able to sell it at a modest profit. The money was used to purchase a much, much smaller home in my home town of Bronxville, New York.

After 4 years living in my home town of Bronxville, N.Y., when True Parents announced that people could volunteer to be National Messiahs, we leaped at the chance to return to our first love, missionary work. Of course, this time would be much more challenging since we had 7 children and there would be no financial support offered by the church.

Nancy went to the first workshop in Chung Pyung for National Messiahs in July 1996, and I joined her there for 2 weeks only, since I had a full time job. During the lottery to decide our countries, Nancy insisted that although I had only been there 2 weeks, I should be the person picking our “starting point” for the lottery. All were amazed that the country chosen was Panama, my wife’s original Foreign Missionary country in 1975. Reverend Kwak called it “a miracle.” Although there were other missionaries there from the original 1975 missionary group, we were the only couple to return to Nancy’s original country.

While my wife began visiting Panama for long periods of time, I continued with my job. In the beginning, we hired various housekeepers, often church members. However, it was not easy for any of them to deal with 7 children! When the 120 Japanese were assigned to Panama, one of them would come for 40 days or a few months to help with my children.

After True Parents’ visit to Panama in 1996, Rev. Kwak strongly guided my wife to move our family to Panama. One night, we sat on our bed and brainstormed about what we could do to make money in Panama. Ideas such as “sales” and “promoting things” were among the talents that we could exploit, but we had no specific ideas. Due to Rev. Kwak’s push, we put our house on the market and my wife moved with 7 children to Panama in August, 1997. The house eventually sold at a modest profit and for a time, Nancy and the children lived off that. I continued with my job and lived with the Pobanz family in New Jersey.

My mother and my brother were totally convinced that I was crazy, resigning from a good job as a Municipal Bond trader and moving my family of 7 children to a 3rd world country where I had no job, and no kind of financial support whatsoever! They pressured me in all kinds of ways to try to get me not to go. It had been a wonderful time for my elderly mother and my brother and sister to get to know our

children, since all of us lived within a few hours travel in the New York area. It was a very painful separation.

In 1998, I attended the required 40 day training at CP before joining her and the children in Panama. I totally fell in love with CP. It was a wonderful experience. Although things were much less developed, DMN sometimes came to our CY sessions and I was able to personally experience her ansoo on several occasions. I was also encouraged to become a drummer and during several 2 day workshops, I was able to drum for 2000 workshop participants. An unforgettable experience. When I moved to Panama, I encouraged Nancy to go to CP to pray for what to do about our financial situation. She went for 2 weeks and began to receive revelations. Her ideas about tourism promotion resulted in the birth of panamainfo.com, her first business! (See her testimony for the details about that).

When I arrived in Panama, David Kanagy, a wonderful American brother was working as a translator. He sacrificed himself and his family by introducing me to all of his contacts so that very soon I had plenty of work translating from Spanish to English. My business background proved invaluable as the complexities of Spanish legal and financial documents were not easily rendered into the precise vocabulary demanded by English speakers. It was a niche and I frequently had to work late into the night to finish urgent work. As Nancy’s business took off, our joint efforts enabled us to be able to keep our large family going, but we had some exciting moments when we kept going on faith alone!

The $5000 initial investment we had made in panamainfo.com started was completely paid back in 3 months, something unheard of in the “dot.com” world! For the next 3 years, Nancy ran her business using a laptop computer that my mother had given me, from a small desk in our bedroom. Her customers would have been shocked to know where her “office” was located!

In 2001, I was offered the position of General Manager for the weekly newspaper True Father had started here in Panama. This was a wonderful way to meet all kinds of important people. Editors understood this and soon I was hosting a parade of the movers and shakers in Panama, coming through the office to “pay their respects” to this gringo! Sending free subscriptions to key people also won us many friends among key intellectuals, who appreciated the tolerance and responsibility with which TDM approached the news.

This dovetailed with my wife’s work, which was to invite VIPs to go to various conferences. Her dynamism and excitement were instrumental in several dozen Senators and other VIPs attending international conferences. This was of tremendous help in rebuilding our reputation as a movement, which had been damaged due to a severe persecution directed by the Catholic Archbishop shortly after True Father sent the 120 Japanese missionaries to Latin-American and Caribbean countries. Our 7 Forums on Marriage, which my wife writes about in her testimony also helped a great deal.

However, the biggest breakthrough came with the Hisao Lee providence. It has been a high honor and great privilege for me to know and work closely with Master Fabio Perez since 2006. Meeting with him weekly for many years, sharing deeply with him, studying Divine Principle, praying for him and his members has been without a doubt the highlight of my spiritual outreach. I never imagined that I could work with such a person.

His moment of destiny came when Shin Mi Nim visited Panama during the 3 generations world tour of True Family in 2006. Originally, she was scheduled to go from Brazil to Peru, but she missed her flight due to a bridge that collapsed in Brazil, so she decided to “catch up” with the tour by coming directly to Panama. Little did she know, but the flight from Peru to Panama, with True Mother and True children was canceled and so they never arrived in Panama! In the end, she was the only True Family member who arrived!

Our members were amazing! Not one word of complaint was uttered. They acted totally thrilled with Shin Mi Nim and she gave a wonderful speech.

M. Fabio had heard of our movement before and even was accused of being a “Moonie” before he even knew what a Moonie was! One of our members enrolled her children to learn karate from one of his students and he noticed that she always served people a lot. Later, he learned that our movement taught abstinence. Up until then, he had believed he was the only person in Panama teaching abstinence! After sending “spies” to find out more about us, he decided to attend the Shin Mi Nim event. At that time, he was the Vice-Mayor of the largest suburb outside of Panama City, San Miguelito. It has over 300,000 residents.

After the event, he was invited to a small dinner for VIPs and he gave a testimony that for him, this event “rose to heaven as an offering like a beautiful perfume.” It was clear that he had had a spiritual experience. As a result, we decided to pay for him to participate in the Tong Il Moo Do tournament in the Philippines a few months later.

While in the Philippines, Gustavo Giuliano taught Fabio. Being an Evangelical Christian, he found Divine

Principle to be hard to accept, but every night when he was struggling, somehow he came to the conclusion that he was wrong and Divine Principle was right. One morning, he noticed very early that members were quietly going by his room at 4:30 am, and he sent his member to investigate where they were going, dressed up so nicely at that early hour. Then he heard God’s voice and God said, “Don’t touch these people! These are MY people!!” He had thought he had the best members in the world, but then he realized that True Father’s members were better. He accepted True Parents.

As my wife has written, although we knew Master Fabio and were trying to figure out how to work with him, once Dr. Byeong Moon Lee came in 2007, everything changed. Step by step, Master Fabio began to understand our sincere interest in serving and helping his organization. Prior to meeting us, he was very centered on individuals, but afterward, he quickly grasped that he had to emphasize families in everything Hisao Lee was doing.

He brought all of his top leaders, including the pastor of their Evangelical Church, to hear Divine Principle lectures. In 2007, he received the Blessing along with a small group of his top leaders. As a result of that experience, he could strongly recommend to his members to study Divine Principle and to receive the Blessing. This caused divisions in his organization. At first, he didn’t understand that this was purification and that these were people who were never sincerely following his vision, but were people who had a private agenda. Now he understands clearly that Satan attacks and afterwards, we harvest even more than ever before.

One of his 15 schools of Martial Arts was led by a genius who understood that students at the national public universities struggle a lot with college level math, physics, and chemistry. He designed courses to help them through these university courses which often are not well taught. Students found they simply could not graduate without taking his courses and then he would encourage them to practice Martial Arts. Through this, many professional level people were coming into contact with HSL and Master Fabio strongly encouraged them all to study Divine Principle. Quite a few, including the genius, received the Blessing.

The main geographical area where Master Fabio has his base of operations is San Miguelito, a poor suburb of Panama City. There is great deal of crime and corruption there. He has to get along with many unsavory characters and yet be absolutely clear about his own values and never compromise them. In the process, he has been through many persecutions, including being blamed for being a “Moonie” before he even knew what a “Moonie” was because teaching Martial Arts and being an Evangelical Christian were incompatible in the minds of some narrow minded ministers who were attacking him.

HSL saves money by teaching in borrowed facilities. They teach in school hallways, school playgrounds, abandoned lots, soccer fields, basketball courts, wherever they can gather young people. When he was 15, the military government of panama at that time, told the minister of Education to allow Master Fabio and his teachers access to the gymnasiums of all the public schools in the country because they understood that teaching martial arts would reduce violence in schools, by getting the violent people to learn how to control themselves through the discipline of Martial Arts.

Master Fabio understood that if you are making a difference in the world, you will be attacked and so he always through that Rev. Moon must be a great man because he was being attacked by so many people, just like he knew that he was being unjustly personally attacked. For 40 years, he had kept his organization separate and isolated from any other influence in Martial Arts or in theory. He never allowed any other instructor outside his organization to teach his students, but he allowed Master Don Harbor and Master Gustavo Giuliano to do so. He would not even allow his students to watch Martial Arts videos from any other group. But they study Tongil Moon Do.

The way he introduced Divine Principle was by having his top leaders, each study one chapter of Divine Principle and then have them present it to all the others. They would discuss it and analyze it. Even the pastor of the church, being a HSL instructor, had to be present and was invited to make comments. The right hand man for Master Fabio is a licensed evangelist in 3 different denominations and regularly travels to Central and South America to preach in different churches.

Master Fabio has been unshakeable in his commitment and very clear in his constant testimony that he is a “member of UPF” and that his organization respects all different religions and does not discriminate. He seldom sleeps at night, since he is worried that one of his young people will be making a mistake and be out on the streets and getting arrested by the police. If that happens, he immediately goes to the police and gets that person released into his custody. It is this kind of loyalty that has enabled him to change the lives of many young people.

He is also very sensitive to where other ministers get their information from and he understands Panamanian psychology and culture so he guides us how to present ourselves to ministers by showing by example how to work with them. He has many friends who are ministers and one close friend/associate who is a professor in the Bible Institute which trains all the pastors for the Assemblies of God, the largest

denomination in Panama. In this way, he is a key center of influence among Evangelicals.

Dr. Lee continued to visit us until 2012; he would come for 3 months and then go back to England for 3 months. Although there was not a lot for him to do in Panama, he would study Spanish and gave us tremendous guidance about how to develop Hisao Lee and the church in Panama.

In 2013, we received the news that True Mother was going to be sending a group of Japanese Missionary sisters to Panama. We were so grateful to be able to welcome 5 wonderful missionaries in September of 2013. They worked very hard witnessing to university students for the next 9 months. Every Friday night, they would go to the HSL church service, so I began going also. This must have been quite a challenge for them, speaking little Spanish, and the cultural difference between a Pentecostal, Praise service, with dancing, speaking in tongues and healing services and the more ritualized religious services customary in Japan. Very quickly, I realized how important it was that I continue with this tradition once they left.

The type of Martial Arts practiced by HSL is closed to the Japanese Martial Art known as Shotokan, and Shotokan even acknowledges HSL by accepting their ranks as the same as Shotokan. Because of this love of Japan, the presence of the Japanese sisters at the church service was even more appreciated.

Our strategy from the beginning has been to follow True Father’s example when Ambassador Phillip Sanchez, publisher of Tiempos del Mundo, went to meet True Father, he told him he was a strong Catholic. True Father told him that he wanted him to become an even better Catholic! This has been our goal with HSL. Not one member has joined our church. That is not our goal. Our goal is for them to become the number 1 Evangelical church in Panama and by their good example to be able to lead and change all the other churches to become like them, living for others, tolerant and open to dialogue with all other denominations and religions.

Recently, after 5 years of having a very corrupt mayor, San Miguelito elected an Evangelical Pastor as the Mayor. He has cleaned house in the mayor’s office. As a result, he asked the Ministry of Education to please pay 1 HSL instructor in each of the public schools in San Miguelito a salary for them to teach Martial Arts in that school. Then the Minister of Education got excited and said they should expand that program to the entire country.

A recent TV program reported about the work of HSL and gave the telephone number. How hundreds of parents are calling their office to find out where they can send their children to participate in HSL activities!

The HSL method is very simple. They first teach the student to respect his teacher, and then teach him to respect whoever it is who takes care of him: his parent, his uncle, aunt, grand-=parent, neighbor, whoever. “Go home, hug them, thank them for taking care of you, make them a cup of coffee or tea and serve it to them.” Thomas Likona teaches that the main axis of values education is respect for parents. Master Fabio understood this without ever learning it in school. He always says, “The parents are the problem, not the child. So we have to use the child to reach into the home and change the parents.”

Dr. Lee also inspired Master Fabio to found a Martial Arts Association to be able to teach values. Just today, that dream was fulfilled as the Martial Arts Association was recognized as a “federation” by the Panama Sports Authority, enabling it to receive funding from the government.

Thus, through our unity with HSL, the Panama government has unwittingly become more and more united with True Parents. The Ministry of Education has asked that Hisao Lee send one instructor to all the public schools in San Miguelito, to teach Martial Arts and Values. There are over 100 public schools in San Miguelito. When schools in Panama City heard about this program, they asked Hisao Lee to include their schools in this program. Some of the schools also pay a salary to the Hisao Lee teacher. At present, they are in nearly 200 public schools and additional schools in the interior of the country are asking how they can be a part of this excellent program.

We believe that it is because of the work of Dr. Byeong Moon Lee and Maestro Fabio Perez, that True Mother designated Panama to be included in the list of 43 providential nations. We are very humbled by this responsibility.

From 2006 until 2010, I was privileged to be able to attend the Cheongshim Graduate School of Theology, during a very special time in God’s Providence, and earned by Doctorate in Ministry there in 2010. My dissertation was on Maestro Fabio Perez and Hisao Lee as an example of True Parent, True Teacher, True Owner philosophy. Mine was the first dissertation ever approved to receive a doctorate in ministry as well as the first Western Member to earn a doctorate in ministry.

Sincerely, Regis Hanna, D. M. Cheongshim Graduate School of Theology, class of 2010