My experience with Jesus when I first met our movement in 1972 in Germany

I like to write down this very moving experience of encountering Jesus when I first met our movement in 1972 in Germany.

I have always been a very free spirit and embraced the Hippie days of my life fully; taking LSD trips, smoking hashish, etc. But God had something very different for my life in mind. It was through encountering the Mormons (LDS) and stopping me in my tracks through them. Even though I didn’t understand their teachings very much, but I understood that God wanted me to stop my wrong life style.

I was baptized and during the baptism I felt cleansed and had the desire not to get my ‘clean white robe’ dirty again.

It was only six month later when I was approached by one of our members on the street. But the two of us didn’t click, so another very sweet member approached me shortly after that on the same street, in a big city where I worked then.

I followed this member and she taught me my first Divine Principle lesson. I had missed the last bus home that evening and she and another member drove me home, which took almost two hours for them. It was soon afterwards that I understood that the Messiah is on earth. Thanks to the Mormons, I understood that the Messiah will come back in my lifetime. But they believe he will come back in the clouds.

I was so eager to experience that and when the sky was looking very dramatic, I always thought it would happen now.

I was also very curious what Jesus really looked like.

So when I was praying one night, after just hearing the Messiah had already come back to earth, but not Jesus himself, just like the prophet Elijah had to come back through John the Baptist’s body, Jesus came back through the body of Sun Myung Moon. I liked the logic of it and that’s why I could accept it right away, but during that prayer in a dark room, I saw a statue of light standing there. I just knew it was Jesus and he asked me to marry him. I did not know what it meant then, but later understood it meant to become the

‘Bride of Christ’ or also in the Christian sense a nun, meaning celibate. The Divine Principle understanding is also to be the ‘Bride of the returned Messiah’ till receiving my own marriage blessing, which was ten years later in 1982.