The Cheon Il Guk Missionary Program initially began in Korea and Japan. Later on, it spread to America in the 1970s.
Today, the Cheon Il Guk Missionary group is trained and sent out through the gap year program, Generation Peace Academy (GPA). This year is the fourth year of the GPA Cheon Il Guk Missionary program!
In the year of 2015-16, a group consisting of seven Cheon Il Guk Missionaries went to the Philippines, staying on a small island called Bohol. They witnessed about their faith through service, and taught about their faith for three months, steadily building new, and lasting connections with the people and the culture there.
The second group of Cheon Il Guk Missionaries consisted of eight people.
After training in Las Vegas and Los Angeles for a month, they raised the necessary funds not only for their mission trip, but also for their mission activities and projects overseas. When they went to their mission country of Costa Rica, they witnessed there and held workshops for their guests over a period of three months. Over the course of their stay, they created many wonderful experiences not only for themselves, but for the people they met, and grew close to, as well.
“It’s almost unfair to think I can live knowing I am loved, knowing I am rooted for, knowing I am needed while so many people wonder why they exist. It’s crazier to think God needs me to alleviate people of this invisible burden. ”
“Only when my path and God’s path become one and the same can I be truly happy. I know that is a really strong statement, but it has proved to me time and time again that once I went back to this point, the path that once was foggy became clear and purposeful.”
In 2017-2018, 13 people joined the Cheon Il Guk Missionary program.
After starting off their year with a week of service work and disaster relief in Florida, the new group of missionaries spent a month in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, learning how to lecture and witness about their faith on various college campuses with the college club, CARP.
After a month of training, the missionaries spent the next month raising funds for their mission trips, and then went overseas to Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Czech Republic.
Since then, the program has expanded to thirty-four missionaries and eight staff. The missionaries are being sent across the world in two waves — one group leaving in November and returning in March, the other leaving in January and returning in June. Having started in July, the missionaries have received a variety of forms of training involving fundraising, Divine Principle education and witnessing. In October, they involved themselves in witnessing efforts with CARP all over the United States.
Our first wave missionaries are being sent to Albania and Kosovo in Eastern Europe. The two groups have now parted ways and will reconvene at Conclusion workshop in June of 2022.