Kidnapped for Christmas: A Deprogramming Testimony

In December of 1975, my parents had called me asking me to come to visit them and I thought it would be nice to spend Christmas with them. I was working at East Garden and was given permission to go home and visit my family. What I hadn’t realized was that Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they were living, was a hotbed of anti-cult and deprogramming activity.

Kidnapped for Christmas: A Deprogramming Testimony

| DECEMBER 22 2011

The following is a testimony by Louise Schmidt Perlowitz, a Pennysylvania resident who joined the Unification Church in 1971 and who was kidnapped for deprogramming during the holiday season of 1975. She was Blessed in marriage to Jeff Perlowitz in 1982 and has two children, Lana, 23, and Randall, 19. Louise works in the legal department at HSA-UWC (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity) USA Headquarters and is looking to celebrating this year's Christmas with her husband and children.

In December of 1975, my parents had called me asking me to come to visit them and I thought it would be nice to spend Christmas with them. I was working at East Garden and was given permission to go home and visit my family. What I hadn’t realized was that Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they were living, was a hotbed of anti-cult and deprogramming activity.

My mother picked me up at the airport and drove me to my parents’ home. She told me we were going in the front door, which I thought was strange, since we always used the back door. When we entered the living room there were four strange people sitting in the living room with my dad. This was really weird, since this was my first day home, and my parents would not usually have invited people over to visit right away.

Two or three of the male visitors were large and intimidating. One of the men said in an ominous voice, “Do you know why we are here?” Then I realized who they were. My immediate reaction was mentally to withdraw from what was going on and to try to figure out what to do. Since I was not a great speaker or a theologian, I did not think I could talk my way out of the situation. My decision was to see what they said, play along a little bit, and try to escape when the opportunity came. Also, I did not have a lot of time to waste, since I really wanted to be back in the Unification Church environment by God’s Day, January 1st, and start the new year in God’s camp.

The visitors presented their arguments, and I responded as well as I could, stating my views, but they were very persistent. I gradually stopped arguing and started smiling. It was getting along toward dinnertime, and my mother had prepared both a large ham and a turkey for dinner. I thought the stress must be getting to my mother, because she would never have made such a huge, expensive dinner under normal circumstances. I thought I should get out of this deprogramming situation quickly for her sake as well.

After dinner the deprogramming continued. When it came time to break for the night, the deprogrammers camped out in the house, and I spent the night in a bedroom with my mother.

The next morning, since I had pretty much stopped arguing and just smiled, they thought I was deprogrammed. It was decided that I would be taken to a halfway house in Ohio. A deprogrammer drove me to the home of a family who would look after me as I transitioned back into “society.” This was Christmas Eve. The family treated me well, and even found a Christmas gift to give me on Christmas Day. However, I felt that I faced a very bleak existence unless I could get back to the church.

The day after Christmas, the family decided that I needed a chance to go shopping, since I was coming out of what they thought was a very restricted environment of the church. The whole family, the father, mother, and teenage son and daughter, drove me to the airport where I cashed in my return airline ticket. They allowed me to keep the money. They then drove me to a mall where we would go shopping.

It seems that everyone had to use the restroom, so we went first to the passageway where the restrooms were located. I came out of the restroom first and no one from that family was there standing guard, so I looked for an escape route. There was a mall exit down the passageway, so I raced out the exit and looked to see where I could hide. There was a movie theater across a four-lane highway, so I quickly but carefully crossed the highway, went into the movie theater, bought a ticket (I had money from my airline ticket) and went into the auditorium to hide. The movie hadn’t started yet, so I went down to the front row of seats, near an exit door, and crouched down to hide in case someone came in the movie theater looking for me.

The movie started, but after about a half hour, I got restless and went to a pay phone to call Belvedere to see if someone could rescue me. An Ohio Church brother called me and suggested that I take a taxi and rent a motel room, then call him to give him the address of the motel. I did that and then called him. I asked how I would recognize that he was a church member, and he said he would whistle “The Lord into His Garden Comes.”

The church brother rescued me, and I was able to take a bus back to East Garden. I made it back before God’s Day, which was a real blessing. I felt I had been out in the cold and darkness and very much alone. Now I was back in the light and warmth.

I was welcomed back at East Garden by the True Children and the staff.

My parents came to visit me a couple of years later and then came to New York City when I was blessed in 1982 to my husband, Jeff Perlowitz. I did not feel free to visit them until years later when my mother became ill.

Joseph Kinney in 1975

Louise’s Welcome Back Party

Welcome-back party for Louise Schmidt (far left), Joy Schmidt Pople, and Ye Jin Moon at East Garden.

Louise Schmidt cuts a cake at a party at East Garden around the year 1975. That year there were kidnappings every week.

The following is an account of Louise’s welcome back party in 1975 by Joseph Kinney, who today is the senior project engineer at the New Yorker Hotel, and who witnessed her return to East Garden after her kidnapping.

In 1975, Louise Schmidt, one of the American sisters on the East Garden Staff, received a call that her father was gravely ill. True Parents said she could go tend to her family. At the time, Ted Patrick and others were kidnapping and attempting to deprogram about one member per day, which amounted to 700 members in two years.

The True Children were very concerned about the hundreds of stories about members being kidnapped, so they wanted to celebrate Louise’s return. The three oldest girls, Ye Jin Nim, In Jin NIm and Un Jin Nim, used their own money and bought cake mix and ice cream. I watched as these young girls baked their first cake in the East Garden kitchen. It was as funny as watching any little girls try to bake a cake, but their mood was so serious and sincere. With a little help from the staff sisters, the cake turned out OK.

When the welcome-back party was held, and Louise was seated at the table with the True Children, I believe Louise began to cry first, but very soon all of us -- True Children and staff -- were sobbing. I think the True Children appreciate members’ efforts more than we realize.

Contributed by Louise Schmidt Perlowitz and Joseph Kinney.

Ichiko's radio show--First Interview with John Seijin the Freedom Rider

First Interview with John Seijin the Freedom Rider

Posted on December 15, 2011

John Seijin 12-14-2011 © Ichiko Sudo, 2011

Beginning tomorrow, John Seijin Tranburg, 22, will traverse the United States on bike in the wintertime to promote human rights around the world and especially in Japan.

What will John Seijin, student body president of Georgia Gwinnett College (GCC) in Lawrenceville Georgia, do when he gets cross country from Georgia to California?
“I just want to ride my bike into the ocean, [and] fall into it. ”
“I’m advocating freedom, faith and family… for all people all across the world… In Japan especially… in the last 20, 30 years, you have about 4000 plus people who’ve been kidnapped and forced out of their belief in their religion… it infringes on their expression of religious heritage,” says John Seijin.

Check him out by clicking on the link above.

<from  Ichiko Sudo radio show >

http://mymomentofcourage.wordpress.com/

Oh! Santa, please give her the special gift.

Unificationist to Deprogrammers: All I Want for Christmas Is My Spouse Back!

| DECEMBER 12 2011

The following testimony is from Agnes Jambor, a 31-year-old first-generation Unificationist in Hungary. She was blessed in marriage to Japan-resident Keiichi (last name withheld at request of Japanese Unification Church) in 2005 and has been maintaining long-distance communication with him since their Blessing. Keiichi was kidnapped by faith-breakers, so-called deprogrammers, in Japan more than four months ago and the search for him continues.

Agnes Jambor: "All I want is to see [Keiichi] free, to embrace him again, to be together and build up our own safe home. It would be my biggest present for this Christmas!"

I come from a small city called Sarkad, from a poor family. I have one older brother who is 19 years my senior from a different mother and one older sister who is 14 years my senior with a different father. As you can see, my family is quite mixed. Both of my parents had a previous marriage before they married each other.

My parents were not religious, partly because until 1990, Hungary was under communism. My grandmother on my mother’s side and her family were strong Calvinists. When I was a child, I went to church with my grandmother many times because she took care of me when my parents were working. I didn’t understand much from the services. I could only see that there were many old people sitting there, and I did not like them. I also felt that they didn’t understand what they were talking about. They spoke about love, but outside of church they behaved another way. When my mother lost her job and started drinking, our so-called religious relatives did not help us and just said bad things about us. As a child, I felt that wasn’t right. They spoke about love but did not love. I sensed that something was missing from the holy texts they read at church and how they explained these texts.

My mother would say, “God is inside of us.” She was disappointed in the church, but I think not in God. She raised me up to keep a good standard – to keep my purity, to respect others, etc. I know nothing about the religious background of my father.

Why I Joined the Unification Church

My father passed away in 1991 and my mother in 1997. After their passing, I moved to live with my older brother’s family. While I was in high school, I lived in a dormitory and only went home on the weekends. My relationship with my brother and his wife was very bad, so instead of spending a national holiday with them, I accepted an invitation from a friend to visit the Unification Church center in Békéscsaba, the city in which I was going to school. That friend was working as a CARP member in Békéscsaba and through her, I was able to listen to the Divine Principle. When I heard about the human Fall, I strongly felt that this is what was missing from the Bible and other explanations. I was very sure that this was the truth I had to follow. After I finished high school, I moved to the center to live there. The church community in Békéscsaba was good and the teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon resonated with my way of thinking about love and peace. I joined the church that year and became a full-time CARP member.

In 2001, I moved to Szeged, which is where I now live. I was a full-time member until 2007, mostly fundraising and participating in workshops as staff.

My first Marriage Blessing was in 2000, but after five years, my Blessing broke. It was difficult to reapply for the Blessing, but I was matched again to my current fiancé, Keiichi, on December 29, 2005, in Cheong Pyeong, South Korea. At that time, True Father was asking everyone who had applied to the matching to go to Korea so that he could personally match them. It was such a special experience for me. I remember thinking the night before the matching that I did not want a Japanese spouse because communication would be difficult. My first spouse had been from Europe, and even then we had struggled to communicate. But I prayed and trusted myself to God.

Then, True Father Blessed me to a Japanese brother. I was initially afraid, but after Keiichi held my hand, as True Father instructed us to do, I felt so much peace. From that time, Keiichi always held my hand, and wherever we went, he took care of me. He also took care of one of my friends, who had trouble seeing. This considerate manner of Keiichi touched me so much. When we said goodbye after the Blessing, both of us were almost crying. After this first meeting we met again two years later. He was a full-time member in Nagoya, and I was fundraising in another country.

Every week I called him and spoke for at least one hour. We mostly talked about fundraising activities, but many times he gave me the strength to fundraise. I did everything to share my experiences with him. I sent him letters and gifts. When he came to visit me in 2008, we planned out our future. We planned that we would spend a maximum of two more years separately and use the time to build a good spiritual and financial foundation. We talked about living in Korea. We planned to prepare our legal marriage papers. However, when Keiichi went back to Japan, we both lost our jobs and struggled financially. I did not have money to call him. He did not have Internet access and was not good at writing letters. It was almost impossible to communicate. I was only able to reach him through my Japanese friends.

My Husband’s Mother Was Deprogrammed

Keiichi is 32 years old and has two younger brothers. His mother became a member of the Unification Church when Keiichi was a teenager, but she later was kidnapped and suffered at the hands of deprogrammers herself and left the church. Keiichi used to live near Tokyo, where his family still resides, but he left because he suspected that they would kidnap him for deprogramming. Until 2008, he did not have much of a relationship with his family. I think he suspected that he was in danger of being kidnapped.

I love Keiichi, my husband, very much. Although we are not legally married, in my heart and in the eyes of God he has been my husband since 2005. I have been missing the chance to talk to him now for more than four months. Before he was abducted, we made great plans for a happy family. We prepared ourselves for marriage. Now religious bigots in Japan are trying to keep us away from each other. Every day I pray that his kidnappers will release him as soon as possible. It causes me so much pain to know he is suffering under this pressure without meaning. I pray every day that this day would be the last one he spends in this way. All I want is to see him free, to embrace him again, to be together and build up our own safe home. It would be my biggest present for this Christmas to see him free again!

Contributed by Agnes Jambor.

Cyclist To Pedal Across America To Raise Awareness of Japan’s Deprogramming Scandal

| NOVEMBER 30 2011

Atlanta resident Seijin Tranberg: "dream big."

Seijin Tranberg, a second-generation Unificationist, will pedal for social justice this winter in what he calls a “Tour De Cause” bicycle challenge aimed at bringing attention to the issue of faith-breaking in Japan. The tour will begin from his hometown in Atlanta, Georgia on December 15, 2011 and will end in Los Angeles in January, 2012.

A 22-year-old college junior in political science and international relations, Tranberg is the student body president at Georgia Gwinnett College. “The student body is about 8,000 students, and I help out with funding for all the student organizations on campus,” he said. “I like to consistently challenge myself to become a better person as a way to inspire others to do the same. I love dreaming big, and doing everything in my power to make them a reality. When I grow up, I'd like to think that I'm going to help save the world.”

Tranberg also keeps in touch with representatives of CARP (the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles) around the United States. “Georgia Gwinnett doesn’t have a CARP chapter on campus, but I try to live up to CARP’s ideals. My sister and I are the only Unificationists on campus, so we’re the only ones aware of the mission and vision of what CARP is. But we advocate for CARP’s ideals of internal and external excellence, creating a generation of peace, and using yourself and your time in college for the greater good. I feel that my bike trip is something that exemplifies the CARP vision.”

Tranberg shows off the bike and riding equipment that he will use for his cross-country "Tour De Cause."

Tranberg (right) was elected student body president at Georgia Gwinnett College in April, 2011.

The cycling trip totals to approximately 2,351 miles, and Tranberg says that he hopes to maintain an average of 60 miles a day. “I suspect that there will be some days when I’ll be pushed back, or I’ll get ahead, so I’ve given myself 45-50 days to do the actual trip,” he said. “I have to be in Los Angeles by January 31, 2012, because I’ll be departing for China the next day, where I’ll be studying abroad at the Beijing Language and Culture University. There I will study Chinese language and culture, but I’m also going to be taking a class in Chinese foreign policy.”

Tranberg is the second out of the six children of Mr. David and Mrs. Sumiko Tranberg, from the United States and Japan, respectively. “My parents were initially concerned about me when they heard that I was going to bike across the country, but when I told them that I was doing this to raise awareness on the faith-breaking issue taking place in Japan, they were very grateful,” said Tranberg. “My mother especially thanked me and has been very supportive. She’s never personally encountered deprogrammers, but as a native of Japan, she knows people who have been affected. I think the issue of faith-breaking is a very difficult one for any Japanese member. It’s their families, their brothers and sisters we’re talking about, people with a common heritage who are getting kidnapped and deprogrammed. We need to stop deprogramming from happening to not just Unificationists like me, but also to anyone who chooses to pursue a life of faith.”

As for the future, Tranberg is already well-aware of his career choice. “I definitely want to go to a top-tier graduate school. I want to get a doctorate and a Masters in public policy. Foreign policy is an area I’m particularly interested in, specifically U.S. foreign policy to East Asia.”

Follow Tranberg’s blog at http://tourdecause.blogspot.com

Contributed by Ariana Moon

Genesis 14 Abram Rescues Lot

Genesis 14

Abram Rescues Lot

 ¹ At the time when Amraphel was king of Shinar,^[a] Arioch king of Ellasar, Kedorlaomer king of Elam and Tidal king of Goyim, ² these kings went to war against Bera king of Sodom, Birsha king of Gomorrah, Shinab king of Admah, Shemeber king of Zeboyim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar). ³ All these latter kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim (that is, the Dead Sea Valley). ⁴ For twelve years they had been subject to Kedorlaomer, but in the thirteenth year they rebelled.  ⁵ In the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him went out and defeated the Rephaites in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzites in Ham, the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim ⁶ and the Horites in the hill country of Seir, as far as El Paran near the desert. ⁷ Then they turned back and went to En Mishpat (that is, Kadesh), and they conquered the whole territory of the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who were living in Hazezon Tamar.
 ⁸ Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboyim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) marched out and drew up their battle lines in the Valley of Siddim ⁹ against Kedorlaomer king of Elam, Tidal king of Goyim, Amraphel king of Shinar and Arioch king of Ellasar—four kings against five. ¹⁰ Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some of the men fell into them and the rest fled to the hills. ¹¹ The four kings seized all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their food; then they went away. ¹² They also carried off Abram’s nephew Lot and his possessions, since he was living in Sodom.



Kedorlamer and the kings won the war against the king of Sodom, and Gomorrah and other kings. and they captures Lot who is Abram's nephew.

The bibical archealogist Al bright said it was happened at about BC 1625.



 ¹³ A man who had escaped came and reported this to Abram the Hebrew. Now Abram was living near the great trees of Mamre the Amorite, a brother^[b] of Eshkol and Aner, all of whom were allied with Abram. ¹⁴ When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit as far as Dan. ¹⁵ During the night Abram divided his men to attack them and he routed them, pursuing them as far as Hobah, north of Damascus. ¹⁶ He recovered all the goods and brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.

Abram brought back his relative Lot and his possessions.

 ¹⁷ After Abram returned from defeating Kedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley).
 ¹⁸ Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, ¹⁹ and he blessed Abram, saying,
   “Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
   Creator of heaven and earth.
²⁰ And praise be to God Most High,
   who delivered your enemies into your hand.”
   Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

It is a custom to offer a tenth of everything.  Because Abram gave 10% after the blessing from king of Salem.
  

 ²¹ The king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people and keep the goods for yourself.”
 ²² But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “With raised hand I have sworn an oath to the LORD, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, ²³ that I will accept nothing belonging to you, not even a thread or the strap of a sandal, so that you will never be able to say, ‘I made Abram rich.’ ²⁴ I will accept nothing but what my men have eaten and the share that belongs to the men who went with me—to Aner, Eshkol and Mamre. Let them have their share.”

The king of Sodom said "keep the goods for yourself ".      Abram said "I will accept nothing".   Abraham is not greedy at all. He has such a wonderful deep heart.
Who is Melchizedek?
When Abraham born, Shem was 390, Shem died 600. He lived for 210 after Abraham was born. Abraham died 175. It means Shen lived 35 years after Abraham died.
We can guess that Abraham offered 10% to Melchizedek who is Shem(first son of Noah)