My decision to live in the Unified Family center and join the Unification movement was made easier by a series of strange events.

Having lived for a week with the early members of the Scientology movement, I noticed that they were mostly intellectual people, into themselves and easily offended by others. This created a clear reference base to judge the Unified Family members. I perceived and valued the Unification movement’s teaching that true love meant living for the sake of others. This was shown through the members’ quality of heart and the way they related to each other.

Interestingly, the day before meeting the Unification movement, my van was vandalized and a German shepherd puppy I was emotionally attached to, most of my belongings, and especially a stereo system and collection of records, were stolen. The loss of my “worldly things” removed any blockage from my moving in and becoming active in the movement. Also, the van, whose engine I had personally rebuilt before leaving New York, only lasted in getting me across the country. After I parked it in front of the Bush Street center for the weekend workshop, it would not start again and had to be junked. The powers beyond this physical world seemed to be actively working to get me connected to the movement and made it nearly impossible for me to do anything else.

For about 10 days after moving into the center, I was caught up in the spirit. I walked the streets of San Francisco with heightened physical senses, or perhaps my spiritual senses were opened. I walked through the crowds singing at the top of my voice, oblivious of others’ opinions of me.  I could feel a layer of energy between my feet and the sidewalk as if I was not touching the ground. My body, most of the time, was a mass of tingling energy. When I touched things, I became one with their energy or vibration, and when I pulled my hand away energy would leap back to the object. The light in everything was ten times brighter than normal and displayed an intense beauty beyond the normal physical world.

About two weeks after moving in, I visited an evening prayer gathering at the “adult center” where older members were living. As we sang and prayed in a circle, the house's atmosphere changed into one identical to that of my aunt’s home. Her home was over 200 years old and had always been very strange. As a child, I felt it was haunted. In the prayer meeting, I heard her husband, who was in the spirit world, say that he was the one who led me across America to meet the Unification Movement. He had been very religious and a Catholic book salesman by profession.

I especially enjoyed the weekly Sunday events, which included morning service, followed by afternoon sports and a picnic lunch. The day ended with an evening banquet consisting of food from a different country, followed by music and dance entertainment. My spiritual mom, Alice, was one of the three sister who performed weekly in lively new age violin music. We had every couple of weeks an "International Dinner Entertainment Evening" with many guests, food and native performing entertainers from different countires. We were truly an international family of joy.

Most of the members of the San Francisco family did not attend the lectures because of being very sick with the flu, but I forced myself, in spite of a high fever, often coughing on the back of True Mother. At this time, even President Kim was extremely sick while he taught with sweat flowing down his face from fever. It seemed like he was going to topple over a few times. During these lectures I could see many spirits and angels flying about the room above us. At times, some even passed through my physical body, which caused my body to shake from the tingling of their energy.  True Father, True Mother and Pres. Kim had very bright, colorful auras about their heads. I developed a direct connection of heart and mind to our True Parents starting at this workshop that only increased with the years.

After True Parents left and began their cross country tour of America I could no longer focus on my business mission in San Francisco. I was plagued by the spirit world all day telling me that I had to stop my business mission and work directly under True Father as a missionary. I appealed to Papa-san Choi to let me join True Father, but he refused.  So, I reduced the wholesale/retail picture frame business in size and prepared Mike Runyon to take over. When True Father’s American speaking tour reached San Francisco, I passed a note secretly to Col. Pak to hand True Father and went up to the brothers room to hide.

Almost immediately, True Father called for me. When I went down to the kitchen, True Father looked at me with a very bright smile and said in English, “So, you  want to be a missionary?”  I nodded and he said, “Great!” I thus joined Rev. Moon as a direct disciple and was the first member of the San Francisco family to graduate from Papa-san’s mentoring.

Soon after, I spent a week working with Olga Silva Kennedy preparing for the Berkeley speech.  This very deep, pure, vertical sister gave me the only training I was to receive before doing my mission. She shared much about the spirit world that I had never known before, about her personal travels in the spirit world as a child to be with her departed grandmother, and about how she once decided not to return to the physical world again, only later to be convinced by her grandmother to return. When she did, she found her mother crying on the floor over her brief time of being physically dead.

knowledge of love and truth to threaten their abode. I chose to ignore this distraction and continued on my way. That evening I encountered another presence of evil which attacked me and tried to scare me away. I located an ex-priest and ex-nun who had married and who were recommended to me as potential supporters. They let me sleep in their apartment living room. At about 1 a.m., I woke up and found I was paralyzed. There was a black, swirling cloud with demonic forms above me filling the entire room. I felt the presence of real evil and danger. I prayed desperately and called out Jesus’ and True Parents’ names, silently, mentally within my mind for even my mouth would not work. As time passed, I was finally able to shout out Sun Myung Moon’s name physically, until the dark forms left and I was able to move again. I did not sleep in this couple’s apartment again.

After a few days of witnessing in Houston and explaining why I came and who I represented, many told me I should start in Austin because it was the spiritual center of Texas. After getting permission from my leader, I moved to Austin and rented a two-bedroom bungalow near the university. I got a job delivering newspapers on a bike I bought and then started a cleaning business for college-trashed apartments for a rental company.

Another strategy I used was selling books on spirituality and utopias in the center of the campus main walkway. At least 1,000 students passed through at each change of classes. The selling of these books allowed me to see most of my spiritual children and contacts daily, developing a deep contact of heart.