Unification News for May 1998

FFWPU Blessing Activities in Brazil

by Christian Lepelletier-Brazil

The "Movement for True Family Values" is making progress under the direction of Rev. Oyamada. Recently the members started to concentrate on distributing the Holy Wine first, and then informing the people by giving them a leaflet introducing the Family Association for Unification and World Peace (the name under which the FFWPU is officially registered in Brazil), as well as explaining the four pledges of the Blessed Couples. People also receive an invitation to participate in the June 13 Blessing Ceremony at the Palmeira Hall in Sao Paulo, including a coupon response.

Members work in small teams. They prepare large supplies of small plastic cups (in Brazil we have mini plastic cups of 50 cc, used everywhere here to drink coffee), containers of Holy Wine or juice, and then they visit a soccer event. The members then hand out the Holy Wine at the gates where people are queuing before entering the stadium. In a short time many people receive the Holy Wine, and the members report the number of cups distributed. In a few hours one team can distribute a few thousand cups.

The June 13 event will be broadcast simultaneously with 11 others events around the world for the World Culture and Sport Festival, Blessing 98. The Palmeira Hall in Sao Paulo has 5000 seat capacity. We are planning to bring the people there in 50 buses. The ticket to the event includes lunch and a raffle price.

Besides the teams distributing Holy Wine directly, two evangelical pastors are working for a "National Campaign for a Blessed Brazil" with a network of Evangelical churches. They are offering a more traditional ceremony for couples gathered among their congregations, where they fill out registration forms and share the Holy Wine cup. These pastors reported already 183 000 couples pre-blessed in the churches of the Nordeste region of Brazil.

Now the total number of couples who received the Holy Wine in Brazil since last December is about 350 000.

We are pleased to announce the opening of the homepage of the Family Federation of Brazil in Portuguese language. Most of the work has been done by our brother Eduardo who is living in Rio. The site is still under construction. We are looking for more translators to contribute speeches in Portuguese language.

National Campaign

The "National Campaign for a Blessed Brazil" is spreading quickly through the Evangelical Churches of Brazil.

This campaign was started two months ago by two pastors, who were originally working in one of the main Evangelical denominations of Brazil. They attended several seminars of the "Inter Religious Federation for World Peace," one year ago.

The IRFWP sponsored 10 three-day seminars for the Christian Ministers, 1500 of them from all other Brazil were invited and listened to the "True Family Movement" lectures in 1996 and 1997 at the Guaruja resort in Sao Paulo State. These two pastors were part of the Blessing Ceremony last November and received the Holy Blessing with their spouses in the Sao Paulo Temple. They felt inspired to launch a "National Campaign for a Blessed Brazil" to contribute for the worldwide campaign to give the Blessing to 360 millions couples.

The two pastors contacted Evangelical Church leaders and asked them to cooperate to spread to the local ministers the teaching of the "Family Values" and the "Blessing" to their assembly, including the importance of the fidelity to God and to the couple. Starting in the states of Pernanbuc (Recife region) and Rio de Janeiro they will spread the movement in the 27 states of Brazil.

The Evangelical Churches have the tradition to commemorate the "Last Supper" ritual once a month during the Sunday Service, where they pass around small cups of wine to the congregation. The local pastor receives a sample of the special Holy Wine called the "Israel Wine", he will then multiply it and invite all the participants to renew their commitment to the "Family Values".

Today a report came in that 1281 local church congregations received the Holy Wine. Including the numbers of some other events, the total is over 4 551 000 persons, resulting from the work of this two pastors. Now the total number of Blessed people, including the mobilization of the members of the FFWPU in Brazil, is over 4,890,400 people.

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