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A Story from SOS! Global RescueWalk -- Across Canada

Oct. 15, 2001

(Clearwisdom.net)

We are Toronto SOS walk team walkers. We have met many kind-hearted people on our way from Toronto to Vancouver.

When we walked to a town named Bradford that had 14,000 residents, we came across a Westerner. He came over to us when he saw our "SOS Global Walk" sign. The practitioners told him that we were Toronto walk team walkers and we were walking across Canada to help Falun Gong practitioners in Mainland China. He was deeply touched by our story. He told us that he is a retired high school teacher and he had worked in the high school of Bradford for 30 years. He also told us that Terry Fox, who is considered a hero in many Canadian's minds, stopped by here on his campaign of running across Canada to raise money for cancer patients. Terry was invited to the school to give a speech. Today he invited us to give a speech to the students, too, and we gladly accepted his invitation.

We came to the school at noon and found that the principal of the school was not there. We planned to leave the Falun Gong materials and come back in the afternoon. As we were walking out of the school we suddenly heard someone shouting "Falun Gong, Falun Gong!" We turned around and saw that it was that retired teacher. He came over to tell us that he just talked about it with the principal and they all welcomed us to their school. We followed him to the library. There were about 70 students there. The teacher started talking: "Please be quiet. These are three Falun gong practitioners from Toronto. They are going to bring us information about an international issue. The message they bring here is a big issue in this small town. Now I hope all of you sign the petition letter to support them..."

One practitioner briefly introduced what Falun Gong is and why we have this "SOS RescueWalk." We then collected signatures. After listening to our story, the students asked some questions and signed their names. One student signed her name and asked for another copy of the petition form to collect signatures among her classmates.

We met the deputy principal of the school at the cafeteria. He welcomed the Falun Gong practitioners to the school. He said: " We are very glad that you bring to our school a very important international issue. In our small town, students know very little about things happening in the world. They really need to know all this..." In the afternoon, one practitioner was asked to give a 40-minute speech about Falun Gong in a class. The students and teachers listened very carefully and asked some questions. Upon their request, we also demonstrated the five sets of exercises.