Peace Road 2023: Picking Peaches for Peace on National Peach Day!
Peace Road 2023 was collaborative success! Here are some testimonies from those involved!
“Today in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Korea War, Universal Peace Federation hosted a prayer gathering at the Veterans Memorial with guest speakers, Rev. Reed and Rev. Craig Williams both individuals whose fathers fought in the Korean War. I, the event organizer for UPF, collaborated with Shine City, to perform a peace road service project at the Ahern Orchard. Both events took place today, and about 30 guests were able to attend. For the prayer memorial we had 4 volunteers from the Latter-Day Saints community come and help show their support, it was a mother and her three daughters. At the service project another guest from the Latter Day Saints community come and showed his support as well. The event was amazing! We pick peaches from the tree and help depose of all the other fruits that were later fed to the chickens. We ended up getting a tour of the Ahern Orchard by Katherine Duncan and see showed us the rest of the beautiful garden.” - Tarlee Teah
“It was also great because so many brothers & sisters pitched in to help make it a success: Sera Hirano & Sarah of WFWP provided all the coffee & donuts & water & love; Rev. Craig Williams whose father spent 3 years in a Chinese POW camp during the Korean War gave a moving opening prayer at the Korean War Memoial; Rev. Reed of the ACLC Non-violence commission gave an educational talk to the multiple young people there on war, armistice, peace & Peace Road (his father & brother also served in Korea) (and his wife Katherine was there); Jeffery offered a wonderful talk on the original Korean owner of the fruit orchard where the service project was to be & introduced Shine City; PWPA president Thomas Selover & his wife Grace were at the memorial and then hands down were the best Peach Pickers at the service project.
All the Shine City volunteers AND the 4 Christian volunteers AND the 3 Mexican Orchard workers, ALL got Peace ROAD T-Shirts and learned of the significance of Mother's Peace Road at the Service with 2 more talks by Tarlee & Jeffery!” - Steven Child