Falun Gong Weekend in Jyvaskyla, Finland

During the weekend of December 29-30, Falun Gong practitioners met in Jyvaskyla, a city in central Finland. There were 7 practitioners altogether, including one Chinese practitioner who lives in Finland. We had a plan for the whole weekend. On Saturday morning at 8:15, the day was to start with the reading of Master's articles. Before that, after waking up at the hotel, practicing the exercises and having breakfast, we headed to the practitioner's home who was hosting the meeting. It was -25 ^o C (-13 ^o F) outside and the ground was covered with snow. After reading, we sent forth righteous thoughts and by 10 a.m. were heading to the city to hand out flyers. Everybody fanned out from the center of the city. We had inserted into the flyers information about the location and time of Falun Gong exercise classes. Some people hurriedly took a flyer and went inside the shopping center to be safe from the cold weather. Two young men listened with interest about the persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese government. They nodded their heads and had surprised looks in their eyes. One man said that Falun Gong is a good thing. It didn't take long before the frost was pinching our toes, but a cup of tea warmed us up again.

Led by our host practitioner, after 12 o'clock we held a class at the unemployed people's activity center to teach the five exercises. Four people showed up to take part. After the demonstration of the exercises, we watched the exercise videotape. Zhuan Falun in Finnish was available for the first time in print, as a Finnish practitioner from Sweden brought them after arranging for them to be printed in Sweden.

After 4 o'clock we headed back to our meeting place, where others had already gone earlier since it was their "hotel" for the weekend. We had a discussion with the Finnish practitioner from Sweden about her experiences in Beijing and at Tiananmen Square in November. Then we continued studying more articles and ended by sending forth righteous thoughts.

The program for Sunday was partly the same as on Saturday--morning study, then exercises at the same place as the day before. One person came to learn the exercises and more people talked to the practitioner from Sweden about her experiences. Later, in the chilly and windy weather, we again handed out flyers downtown. There was a street musician playing guitar by the shopping center, and he didn't have gloves on even though the temperature was below -20 ^o C. One of the practitioners gave him a flyer in English, since he didn't speak Finnish, and at the same time asked if it was the playing that kept his hands warm. The man replied, "It's the mind that keeps them warm."

In the afternoon we had the first meeting of the Finnish Falun Dafa Association, which had been registered before Christmas. However, we quickly realized that the registering of the association led to a complicated set of bureaucratic rules that would need to be followed, something that none of the people present seemed to have understood beforehand. We decided to withdraw the registration, and to maintain our Finnish Falun Dafa Association in a non-registered form, which would allow us to lead it according to Dafa's standards. At 9:55 p.m. we sent forth righteous thoughts together with the rest of Europe.

Both days, we discussed important aspects that we can improve on in our own lives as practitioners, such as Fa study and daily practice. My own understanding of the Chinese people's suffering was elevated to a new level. Determination to do something about it has made me do my share in clarifying the truth as a responsible practitioner. It was good to see how everybody is doing important things for Dafa.