(Minghui.org) Falun Dafa was featured once again at the annual Pacific Pines Winterfest, held on June 14, 2015 in the heart of Australia’s Gold Coast, and was very positively received by festival visitors.

Dafa practitioners have manned a booth at the Pacific Pines Winterfest (formerly known as the Pacific Pines United Expo) each year since 2013. The annual event attracts thousands to Central Park each year, and has been a great way for people to familiarize themselves with the beautiful practice of Falun Dafa and its universal principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.

Many people who passed by the Falun Dafa booth were impressed by the striking hand-made satin banners, lovely hand-crafted lotus flowers, and the demonstrations of Dafa meditation and exercises.

One woman, who was walking her dogs through the festival, stopped to watch the exercises for a short while. She told practitioners that she was very interested in learning the Dafa exercises at the local practice site.

Other visitors had not heard about the practice. One lady was fascinated to learn about the exercises and how quickly Falun Dafa's popularity soared in China before the persecution began in 1999.

Another woman was very interested in the benefits of practicing Falun Dafa. A practitioner shared that she normally practiced the exercises daily, but that when she skips the exercises, she feels uncomfortable when she gets up the next day. The woman said she felt like that all the time, and said that she would visit the local practice site to try out the exercises.

Another woman visited the Falun Dafa booth three times before telling practitioners about her difficulties in taking care of her daughter, who suffers from an obsessive compulsive disorder. Support networks had helped recommend useful tools to help during her daughter's teenage years, but the young woman had reached extremes again in her early twenties. The practitioners discussed how the psychological and physical benefits of practicing Dafa could help them both, and pointed out that these benefits have helped fuel the practice's rapid growth to more than 100 million practitioners in 130 countries around the world.

Many young people enjoyed visiting the Falun Dafa booth. They learned about the lotus flower as a symbol of peace and purity, and how it is a sign of encouragement in Falun Dafa cultivation practice. A group of young dancers even learned some of the exercises, and developed a deep respect for practitioners after finding some of the movements harder to do than expected – even for the agile performers.

CCP Interference

There was initially some interference from one of the Chinese Communist Party-controlled (CCP) community groups, which had also applied to attend the festival. The group contacted the event organizers, complaining about Falun Dafa’s participation in the previous year, and said they would rather not attend if Falun Dafa was participating.

However, through clarifying the truth about the Falun Dafa and the persecution to organizers, and pointing out that the practice is open to all people regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or culture, the organizers soon realized that only the CCP group had a problem. They approved the Falun Dafa practitioners' application to take part in the event.

The event organizers sincerely thanked practitioners for taking part in Winterfest, and apologized for taking so long to approve the application because of what had transpired with the CCP group. The practitioners in turn appreciated the efforts by the organizers to take the time to understand the real situation and for their gracious accommodation throughout the festival.