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The Journey to Dakar

This is what Kathy Rigney said at the Special Banquet to Celebrate True Parents' Victorious Return from Africa Summit 2018 on January 24 at Cheon Jeong Gung.

 

By Kathy Rigney

Our beloved True Mother, it’s so hard to find the words to say thank you for what you have done in Africa over he last few days, but with all of my hart and all of my soul, Thank you Mother. When I first joined the unification movement in 1969, I secretly studied our True Mother every day. When I would look at pictures of TRUE PARENTS, I always wanted to look at M. I thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. I watched the way she walked and the way she talked and the way she handled each and every situation and for me, she was my idol. Of course, I loved our True Father completely, but as a woman, I really needed to have someone I could follow and someone whose heart I could understand and that was our True Mother. The Africa Summit began, as Dr. Yun Young-ho said, back in April of 2017 and at that time it was announced that the Africa Summit would take place. True Mother had made that decision and we were very excited about the possibly of holding a regional Africa Summit. So, in our little minds, in our little hearts, without really having the heart of Heaven, we thought of the easy way of having what we thought would be a victory. To have it in a nation that was somehow developed like South Africa and to hold it with a few people coming—high level people and a couple heads of state. But when True Mother sent to us her mandate, she asked us to bring all heads of state in Africa. She asked us to bring people from the fifty-four countries of Africa, all of the highest-level leaders that we could find and to bring them not to South Africa, but to Dakar, Senegal.

When I first heard this, my heart was nervous and afraid, because I knew that his was not something that was simple, but ever since our True Father ascended in the year 2012, as all of you and especially our True Mother, I felt so heartbroken. Mother stood up and she said, We’re going to stop; we’re going to go. We’re not going to walk. In fact, we’re going to run. We’re going to continue to the end, until this world is restored.

For me, that moment was pivotal; it was a life-changing moment and I was determined not matter what to follow our Mother. No matter what she said, no matter what she said to do, I wanted to follow her 100 percent, even to die wouldn’t matter. As Rev. Lee said in his prayer, what would matter would be not to be successful or to disappoint Heaven, to disappoint our True Mother.

On that road, we started to walk. Every day, our True Mother pushed us. Every day since April 2017, our international headquarters Cheon Jeong Gung staff called us on the phone—and pushed. Not in a pushy way, but they pushed in a heavenly way, in a loving way and in a clear way—[they told us] what our objective was, what our goal was and what we needed to do. So, it was only their guidance, actually, that pushed us to do what was done over the last few days. If it had been left up to me or to Rev. Bakary, I’m sure our result would have been very small. But through our staff here at Cheon Jeong Gung, our True Mother taught us what we were supposed to do. Mother taught me many things over the past few days. I have been studying our True Mother, as I said, for many years, since I joined but I learned so much from her over the last few days.

 

True Mother’s priorities

As you’ve heard—I’m sure you’ve heard many testimonies, we met forty-three heads of state and we witnessed to them directly about our True Mother, about our True Parents. But, it stops right there. What do I mean? I mean I want to be nice to the head of state because I want to go back and because I want him to do what I want him to do. So, I’m very nice to him. I try to think of things he wants to hear and I try to say those things so that he can feel happy to see me.

But when True Mother arrived in Senegal, on the sixteenth of January, the next day, the seventeenth of January, we had a meeting with President Macky Sall at his Presidential Palace. True Mother went there and Macky Sall received us. He greeted Mother and we all sat down. He then said, Welcome to Senegal. I hope everything is OK. I hope you are enjoying yourself. And True Mother said, Can I speak? And President Macky Sall said, Yes, of course. Go ahead. And Mother spoke for forty minutes.

She didn’t say, Hi. I’m so happy to meet you, but she started to talk from Adam and Eve until today in God’s providence. She educated him on every single level. I was thinking, Oh, Gee… I hope he’s not going to cancel tomorrow’s meeting. Oh, I hope he can digest this as she clearly talked about God’s providence, about True Parents and about God’s only begotten daughter being born on earth and sitting in front of him today.

But Mother wasn’t afraid of anything. Mother didn’t come to make a friend. Mother came to educate her son. Mother came as the True Mother of all mankind and she treated him with that heart. Macky Sall, by the way, was very receptive and after Mother explained everything, from A to Z, for forty minutes, Macky Sall said, In order to build peace, we need people who believe in God, and everybody believes in God in a particular way. So, to build peace, we need to understand each other, listen to each other and respect each other. So thank you very much for the education that you gave me today. He was not at all offended. In fact, he was charmed by our True Mother. He couldn’t stop looking at her. He had four members of his staff sitting with us and they were supposed to take notes, but they stopped taking notes. They were looking at Mother with their eyes wide open. I watched them the entire time. They couldn’t take their eyes off of her. They couldn’t stop listening to what she was saying. So I learned. I learned from True Mother. We have to speak the truth. We can’t just be friends with the head of state. We can’t just be their good pals, but we have to teach them about God’s providence.

 

Mother’s keynote address

The next day, the historic January 18, in front of 1,200 of the highest level VIPs that we have ever gathered in one meeting in Africa, our True Mother again proclaimed God’s providence and proclaimed her position as the True Mother of all mankind. I wondered, How will this Islamic country receive this news?

Afterward when I went around the room one by one to visit the VIPs that were present, I asked them, So what did you think about Mother Moon’s speech? And without exception, everybody used the same word. Her speech was so moving. Not just interesting; not just a good speech, but her speech was moving. It moved my heart.

So wherever she goes, Mother is not afraid of any circumstance. She proclaims God’s will completely, absolutely. She never hesitates. The reaction of people to Mother when they see her, when they listen to her, they fall in love with her. And that’s the truth; therefore, I realized that I have to learn about courage from our Mother—not just being friends to high level people but rather to teach those high level people about God and about God’s providence.

 

What is love?

The second thing I learned from Mother during this—it was actually a ten-month period—but during the time that Mother was actually in Senegal, was about love, true love. Since I became a missionary in 1975—actually, before I joined the church, I used to work with Dr. Martin King Jr. in America for the cause of civil rights for Black Americans. When I was then selected to go to Africa by True Parents, as a missionary, I felt it was providential because the situation and the suffering of African Americans was something I had to repent for as a White person. When I went to Africa and we started to witness, we met members and they joined our church.

The same question was asked over for these last forty-three years: Why has Africa had to suffer so much? Whey has Africa gone through this course? Do True Parents love us? What are True Parents’ feelings about Africa? Mother came. This was not her first time coming to Africa. She has come many times. But this time, she didn’t just come and give love, horizontal love. Mother gave the truest kind of love that any human being could ever give to someone else. Mother liberated Africa. Mother took the pain and the suffering and the oppression of Africa and she threw it up in the air and she liberated all of Africa. This wasn’t our idea. We never suggested to Mother to go to Goree Island. This was Mother’s idea. Mother said, When I come to Africa, I have to go to Goree Island. I have to liberate all those people who lost their lives in the terrible, terrible experience of slavery. So I learned about what love really is, what true love really is from our True Mother.

 

A righteous man

Next, I learned about what Mother said when our Father went to the spiritual world. Mother said, Believe in me and if you believe in me, miracles will happen. And she also said, There are righteous people all over the world. Find those righteous people and advance quickly! I really, really believed that when I heard Mother say that. I didn’t just think those were nice words but I felt the desire to look for righteous people. But I’m not the one who found them. Again, it was True Mother. True Mother, through the World Summit in 2017, held a spectacular event and during that time, one of the ministers from the Senegalese government saw our True Mother standing onstage on the day of True Parents’ birthday and everybody was applauding, everybody was loving our Mother. Mother was standing in front of all of us and Minister Diouf came and said, Who is she? Who is this woman that everybody loves so much? Please, I need to know what is going on here. I need to understand.

Minister Diouf took us to meet Sheikh Mansour Diouf and Sheikh Mansour Diouf is a righteous man. Through Mansour Diouf, we were able to advance the providences in Senegal. We were able to meet President Macky Sall. We were able to able to break down the opposition one by one as it came upon us and we were able to move forward because of one righteous man, just as or True Mother had said. So we just have to look for righteous men all over the world who are waiting for us to come and to make much bigger victories than the victory that was won in Senegal.

The last thing that I learned from our True Mother was to follow up. In other words, we cannot sit here and think, Oh, what a great victory we had, but we have to think of everything that needs to be done from this moment forward. Mother doesn’t want to sit round and think, Gee that was such a great victory, wasn’t it?

Mother is thinking about tomorrow and after tomorrow. What to do with Sheikh Mansour? How to go forward, how to educate Macky Sall and how to bring this result in many lands across Africa? She doesn’t sit and gloat in the victory of this event; rather Mother is thinking about how we can keep on running faster than what we have done now. To go forward until we can finally restore this world is what our Mother is thinking about. That’s what she’s feeling.

 

An invitation

I learned a lot during this time. I saw the transformation of very important people also, like Chief Mandela. There was a survey taken by one newspaper, worldwide—I think it was an American paper—that tried to find out who is the most beloved person in the world in recent times. Their survey came to the conclusion that it was Nelsen Mandela. He’s loved by all the world. He’s loved deeply in Africa but the world loves Nelsen Mandela. To this summit came the grandson of Nelsen Mandela. He’s the inheritor; there are no other men above him. He’s the one who inherits directly from Nelsen Mandela.

Right after he came the first thing he did was to put out a press release to the South African Press about True Mother’s speech at the opening plenary session. Later, he said, Kathy, please come to South Africa. Please bring Mother Moon to South Africa. The home that Nelsen Mandela was born in and the place where he is buried today is in the Mandela Kingdom. That Mandela Kingdom is for you. Please tell Mother Moon she can do as she likes in the Mandela Kingdom and we support her with everything we have behind her. I believe that through the Mandela Kingdom and the support and love that people have for Nelsen Mandela, our True Mother can emerge as the True Mother in a very real sense in all of Africa, once again.

The stories are endless. I could talk all day long, but I shouldn’t do that. I am just so grateful to our beloved Mother, who puts her life on the line at every moment of every day. Wherever she is, she does everything so meticulously, so well thought out, so well planned out—perfectly in order, not to bring glory to her as a human being but to bring glory to Heaven, to bring glory to True Parents, to bring glory to God’s only begotten daughter, who is siting right here in front of us and I don’t know if we can ever thank God enough. Thank you so much our True Mother. We love you with all of our hearts.

 

Mrs. Rigney is the president of UPF-Africa.