Testimony from the
2nd Hoon Dok Hae Conference
in Washington DC

Svemir Brkic <svemirb@yahoo.com>
FFWPU National leader in Macedonia
October 12, 1999

Let me start by expressing my gratitude to Heavenly Father, True Parents, Rev. Kwak and Pres. Sa for letting me participate in this conference. Also, I want to praise our brothers and sisters for excellent organization. It was an excellent opportunity to witness to our VIP contacts, and for me personally to meet the True Parents for the first time and even to meet my physical parents for the first time after seven years.

Actually, both of these meetings happened at the same time. My parents, who were blessed in Germany 1995 and are living in Leesburg, near Washington DC, came for the closing banquet with the True Parents. It was the first time for all three of us to see them in person. While we were driving to my parents home after that, my father suddenly said:

"Do you remember when we were last time all together? (It was in June of 1992, in our hometown in Bosnia. The war in Bosnia was getting more and more serious and my mother, brother and myself left to Macedonia. Father stayed to guard the house and we were not sure if we would ever meet each other again) If somebody at that time told us that our next meeting will be in Sheraton Hotel in Washington DC, at a banquet with the Messiah..."

Two Macedonian professors that came for the conference are both very famous here. One is a university professor of philosophy, who is also starting a new program for primary and high schools. It is about ethics and very similar to "My World and I". He knew about Rev. Moon and he was very happy to meet us! He was even worried that maybe he is not suitable for our conference because he is divorced. He promised his support for abstinence education lectures together with his students.

Dr. Temkov was very satisfied with the conference and is now preparing an article for the newspaper about it. He took many notes and participated a lot in the discussion groups. He even inspired his son, an excellent journalist and one of the editors of an excellent Macedonian magazine, to accept our invitation for the next conference. He gave the "My World and I" materials to one of his students as part of her master course.

Another professor was Dr. Percinkova who already went to some of our conferences. She is an excellent person, with high respect for the True Parents and much understanding of the Principle. She even brought her 22 year old son to the conference (on her expense). I thought he is just coming to see Washington DC, but he came for almost all of the sessions.

Prof. Biljana has friends in the Macedonian embassy in Washington, so we are trying to invite the Macedonian ambassador to the conference (This is Mrs. Ancevska, she was already interviewed by "World and I" and The Washington Times). Actually, it turned out that our ambassador came for True Mother's speech and met Rev. Yang there. She planned to stay just for a short time, but she couldn't leave :-)

I will finish here. Thank you and God bless you!