This is not the best quality recording, but listen to it anyway. It is hilarious. Below is a written transcript in case you miss some of it.

by Don Makowsky

August 6, 2017

I had been searching since I was fifteen for spiritual truth and what I could learn about the spiritual world. I started reading the Bible many years earlier when I was about seven years old, but when I got to all the cubits I put it down. I got lost with all the cubits. But spirit world was much more interesting. I felt like I was being guided and I ended up coming out to California to meet my Dad. It had been many years since my parents were divorced. I lived with him for a couple of years.

During that time I was hitch-hiking a lot back and forth, my preferred mode of transportation. So I could check back home and see my Mother and stay for a couple months and come back again. I never waited longer than two or three minutes for a ride. I would be picked up just like that. I would smile at people and the car would come screeching to a halt. Even one time when I was in Chicago, back in those days everyone hitch-hiked, a lot of freaks on the road. Generally you would let the person who has been there the longest be up front and get the first ride and then you lined up. So there were like four groups of people lined up and the first guy looked at me and said, “I’ve been here for ten hours, man, and it’s hopeless.” Then the next person, a couple they’ve been there for five hours. So I went to the back and stuck out my thumb and a car comes screeching to a stop and picks me up within two minutes and I turned around looked back and their jaw dropped open. “Why did you get picked up, we’ve been here for ten hours, and he gets picked up.” So I always felt that somehow God was helping me.

So when I met the church, I was witnessed to. I was living with a group of artists in Menlo Park, California, bay area. There were photographers, visual artists, readers, writers, not unlike this group. They had been a very able-type group and an interesting thing happened. I had been invited to go up to a camp, Booneville, and I came back after the first week, didn’t fully understand about True Parents, they hadn’t shared that yet. They don’t share that after the first couple weeks. You get a special lecture.

So I came back to the group, and everyone had changed from being a very able situation. It was like Satan had invaded this group. One guy had split up and was traveling up the coast, everyone was fighting with each other.

After a day or two I decided I didn’t want to be here, I wanted to be with all those great people up at the camp. So I called them and asked if they could pick me. They said they OK, we’ll pick you up tomorrow night. And just that afternoon when they were about to come to pick me up, this guy who headed the group, his name, Michael, an ex-marine,  in really good shape with a big beard and mustache, very strong, a good guy. He says to me, “Oh, you’re going back to that camp? Wait a minute, this isn’t the Moonies is it?” I didn’t know, it was the Creative Community Project as far as I knew. And I said, “No, I don’t think so.” he says, “Yeah it’s that Korean guy, Moon, he brainwashes people. I’m not going to let you go.” I hear the horn honks downstairs, they’re there to pick me up. And Michael blocks the door. He says, “You’re not going with them, you’re going to have to get through me first.” It’s a crazy thing but we started wrestling, it was like Jacob wrestling the angel. Literally, he’s much stronger than me. “You’re not going with those damn Moonies!” Oh my God, I’m on the bottom, fighting him, “I’m going and you’re not stopping me!” Somehow my spirit got cunning. He stopped and he said, “Don’t ever come back here. Take your stuff and get out.”

So I went downstairs and they said you have to get under the tarp in the back of the pick-up truck because it just started to rain. There were several brothers under the tarp in a pick-up truck and it’s pouring rain, and I’m thinking what have I gotten myself into. But of course, I made the right decision.  We heard the rest of the Principle, about Father’s course at the Hearst center. That was March of 1976.