Your Story

by Hugh and Nora Spurgin

Everyone has a story. Unificationists have amazing stories that are laced with more travels and experiences than most people have had. Before we leave this planet Earth it is good to write them down and leave a legacy for descendants and for history.

Several years ago, Dr. Chung Sik Yong said to Hugh, “True Mother would like you to write your memoirs as a testimony to True Parents.” We felt inspired to do so! Both of us have published our stories: Nora’s is Spiritual Connections: Living in the Flow of God’s Love; Hugh’s is Passion and Grit: A Spiritual Odyssey. It requires a great deal of work. It took us three years to write and publish both of our stories. We were also inspired by Farley and Betsy Jones who each wrote very moving memoirs. These autobiographies and memoirs are available on Amazon and on the FFWPU website through the new member’s bookshelf. These memoirs are examples of autobiographies written by Unificationists.

Currently we live in a gated, senior community in Florida consisting of 2,100 homes. There are many clubs – one of which is a Writers Club that is led by a Methodist minister who has written 17 novels. In our club, we share our stories as we are in the process of writing them down. The club members encouraged us along the way.

We want to encourage each of you to write – whether it is an essay on lessons from your life, a small pamphlet for your children, or a full-fledged book. Whether published or not, it is your story to tell, and it is important to record it for posterity!

The hardest part of the process is to get started. Our mentor in the Writers Club instructed us to, “Just start writing. Don’t think. Don’t worry about it being perfect. Afterward you can go back and tweak it.” We found that to be true. Once you start writing, your thoughts will begin to flow, leading you on and on. Skip the details that you later will need to add. You can go back and fill them in later.

You might want to make a list of ideas and stories that you would like to cover. Then begin writing about them one by one. That is what Nora did, which became her memoir. Another way to start is to do a chronology of your life events, then start writing about each of them. That is what Hugh did, which resulted in his autobiography.

We have also found that our books have been a wonderful way to share our lives of faith with friends and acquaintances. Many of our friends in our local community have read our books. We also have put them in our community library. At this point in our lives, telling our stories has been a “mission” that works well for us and is comfortable for our neighbors and friends to open up discussions. For example, recently we had a barbeque with three couples in our community. All of them had read Nora’s book. Someone said, “You were married in a Moonie wedding. That is fascinating.” Many of Hugh’s golfing friends have read our memoirs, and all of them have reacted positively to them. Our books have served as a John-the-Baptist to our True Parents and to their memoirs.

We hope this essay will encourage you to write your own unique story. Someday people will want to know more about the early followers who gave up every worldly thing to follow God’s representatives, our True Parents, and seek to build the Kingdom of Heaven of Earth, like the disciples of Jesus did.

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