On December 28, 1998, Mrs.  Se Hyung Oak, known to members around the world as Grand mother Oak,  passed into the spirit world. True Father bestowed on her the title Sung Mo, "Early Mother" as she was one of Father's very first disciples and took a motherly role to her young teacher and the other followers. She was born in October 1898, in Sungcheon, South Pyungan Province. She first met Father, in Pyungyang, not many months after he arrived there in 1946. She was the first person to be led to Father by direct spiritual guidance.

In a personal testimony Grandmother Oak said, "After the liberation [from Tapan, in 1945], the Holy Spirit was working very actively. One early morning I received a revelation to go and find the as yet hown but enlightened teacher who had come from the South and was living on the other side of Mansu hill." Due to her busy life she did not manage to go immediately. Her testimony continues: "On November 6, 1946, a woman came and asked me to go with her to meet the teacher from the South. She had heard him speak and had received much blessing. So the next day I went and met the young teacher. His name

was Sun Myung Moon ... Although he was 26 and I was 48, it was nevertheless very confronting to be with him."

Just over 52 years later, on January 4, 1999, in Punta del Este, Father himself guided a memorial ceremony in which all the participating leaders offered one kyungbae to Grandmother Oak. Father expressed his desire to thus bring her comfort and consolation. 

Some fifty years earlier, it had been Grandmother Oak who had sought to comfort and console Father during his time in Hung Nam prison, regularly making the arduous journey from Pyungyang to the East coast of what had by then become North Korea. One day, when financial hardship and opposition from her family had made it very difficult to continue, she met an elderly man in white in a vision. He implored her to keep visiting Father, saying that her teacher would one day be recognized as the Messiah. Father has since testified how much those visits meant to him. It was with Grandmother Oak that Father stayed after making his way back to Pyungyang following his release from the prison camp.

Remembering Grandmother Oak, Rev. Chung Hwan Kwak said that although she had been the wife of a respected church elder, and her family had enjoyed a good social position and favorable circumstances, she had given all that up for a life of suffering, loneliness and persecution. Mrs. Hyun Shil Kang, who had joined Father in Pusan in the movement's infancy in the early 1950s, and worked together with Grandmother Oak for many years, spoke with deep respect for her faith and loyalty, calling her a "root of faith, and mother of faith."

Se Hyun Oak continued throughout her active life to work alongside Father. In the early days of the church, she endured and countered persecution with her feisty spirit. In later years she spent her time in prayer.

We offer thanks to Grandmother Oak for supporting Father in his loneliest hours, helping him keep the candle of the Messianic mission burning in the greatest darkness. We pray for her to find comfort in the knowledge of her priceless offering in support of the foundation for True Parents to walk on the earth, and of the example and inspiration she has left for us to benefit from and inherit .*