Amy
J-CARP was never something I had planned on going on this summer, but since my workshop in CheongPyeong was cancelled, I decided quite last minute to hop on a plane to Japan instead. So due to this I didn’t feel very prepared when I first showed up. I had no idea what to expect, everything seemed very spontaneous, and honestly I showed up completely clueless as to what was going on and how to act. Very soon however, I found my feet. My brothers and sisters from England who came before me gave me many pointers; ‘don’t use the black chopsticks’, ‘that bathroom’s for the brothers’, ‘don’t cross the road before the green man!’, ‘wash True Parent’s bowl with the True Parents sponge!’ and so many more. I was grateful that they could teach me from their past mistakes, but of course I did end up making a few of my own gaijin slips.
But amongst all the strict rules and regulations of the CARP house and those silent, unspoken social laws of Japanese etiquette, I soon saw such sincere hearts amongst the Japanese members. Every day the members will do conditions for their guests, take care of the CARP centre, go out witnessing to university students, cook, clean, give lectures, take care of other second generation, and on top of that they are all full time university students themselves. Every day I felt exhausted from lack of sleep, the heat, lack of coffee and English tea, but honestly I did a fraction of what the members do each day. I woke up for HDH, did some cleaning, went witnessing for a couple of hours, but the Japanese members do all that and give lectures, study for exams, cook, and look after us foreigners. I think they are all superhuman. They are able to give so much of themselves consistently. I really think that they find this energy from the love they have for God and True Parents. They are constantly giving and serving with such vigour, faith and dedication. When they pray they shout, ‘Kami-sama’, with tears. I was so moved by how much they love God and True Parents, and how hard they fight for the sake of God’s providence. Everything they do is with a heart of sincerity and offering. They offer True Parents food before they start every meal, they pray before pretty much anything, and they stayed up all night creating a beautiful goodbye card for each of us European members before we left.
I felt so much love from the Japanese members. They are always smiling and looking after us and giving to us. Even when we tried to give them gifts, they would return double the favour. On the last day they sang beautiful songs for us, gave us cards, gifts and did performances. I felt that amongst the members there is a beautiful family culture. Every night they will thank each other for their hard work and encourage each other to do their best tomorrow. The sisters have an albeit strange, but super adorable tradition of giving each other a ‘power-up’ by touching each others’ feet with their own. Small traditions and customs like that in the centre really helped create a beautiful atmosphere and I felt so welcomed into it.
Witnessing was also actually really fun for me. In general the Japanese are very warm, polite and friendly people. The witnessing CARP does in Japan is hugely successful firstly because of their sincere attitude, and secondly because they have a very clear, structured and reliable system of outreach. It gave me some hope to improve witnessing culture back in England. I hope we will be able to learn a lot from their organised system of witnessing as well as from their attitude, and bring this back to Europe.
For me I was really most inspired by getting to know the Japanese members and see their customs and schedule and how they treat each other and how much they want to give to others. I believe that the East and West have so much to learn from each other, and the Unification Church can really blossom once we can unite to humble ourselves before one another and try to learn from each other. I see so much potential and greatness in J-CARP and I hope we will be able to build communities like this all over the world.
But amongst all the strict rules and regulations of the CARP house and those silent, unspoken social laws of Japanese etiquette, I soon saw such sincere hearts amongst the Japanese members. Every day the members will do conditions for their guests, take care of the CARP centre, go out witnessing to university students, cook, clean, give lectures, take care of other second generation, and on top of that they are all full time university students themselves. Every day I felt exhausted from lack of sleep, the heat, lack of coffee and English tea, but honestly I did a fraction of what the members do each day. I woke up for HDH, did some cleaning, went witnessing for a couple of hours, but the Japanese members do all that and give lectures, study for exams, cook, and look after us foreigners. I think they are all superhuman. They are able to give so much of themselves consistently. I really think that they find this energy from the love they have for God and True Parents. They are constantly giving and serving with such vigour, faith and dedication. When they pray they shout, ‘Kami-sama’, with tears. I was so moved by how much they love God and True Parents, and how hard they fight for the sake of God’s providence. Everything they do is with a heart of sincerity and offering. They offer True Parents food before they start every meal, they pray before pretty much anything, and they stayed up all night creating a beautiful goodbye card for each of us European members before we left.
I felt so much love from the Japanese members. They are always smiling and looking after us and giving to us. Even when we tried to give them gifts, they would return double the favour. On the last day they sang beautiful songs for us, gave us cards, gifts and did performances. I felt that amongst the members there is a beautiful family culture. Every night they will thank each other for their hard work and encourage each other to do their best tomorrow. The sisters have an albeit strange, but super adorable tradition of giving each other a ‘power-up’ by touching each others’ feet with their own. Small traditions and customs like that in the centre really helped create a beautiful atmosphere and I felt so welcomed into it.
Witnessing was also actually really fun for me. In general the Japanese are very warm, polite and friendly people. The witnessing CARP does in Japan is hugely successful firstly because of their sincere attitude, and secondly because they have a very clear, structured and reliable system of outreach. It gave me some hope to improve witnessing culture back in England. I hope we will be able to learn a lot from their organised system of witnessing as well as from their attitude, and bring this back to Europe.
For me I was really most inspired by getting to know the Japanese members and see their customs and schedule and how they treat each other and how much they want to give to others. I believe that the East and West have so much to learn from each other, and the Unification Church can really blossom once we can unite to humble ourselves before one another and try to learn from each other. I see so much potential and greatness in J-CARP and I hope we will be able to build communities like this all over the world.