Promoting Dafa at a Chinese New Year Celebration

On Saturday afternoon, January 26, a major museum in Philadelphia held a Chinese New Year celebration, and local Falun Dafa practitioners had a booth there and did an exercise demonstration. The effect was wonderful, and the power of our righteous thoughts surprised even us. It was our third year participating, and we could see quite a change in people from previous years. And curiously enough, there were many more Chinese people there than usual. We knew that was no accident.

We found that when we had someone doing the exercises near the booth, it usually drew many more people to the table than when we didn't. Sending forth righteous thoughts had an even greater effect. One time, all of us sat down to send forth righteous thoughts, since it was one of the set times for doing so, no one was manning the booth. When we opened our eyes, we saw that many people had come by to sign our petition during that time, and that some of them were lined up to sign, even though no one was at the table. We were surprised that more people came to sign the petition when we weren't standing there!

Over 100 people came to watch the demonstration, even though we only had four practitioners demonstrating. The audience was very attentive, and a number of people learned the 2^nd exercise at the end. One young boy happened to be walking by the demo room with his mom, and he stopped in his tracks when he saw us starting to teach the exercise, and asked his mom to stop, too. At only seven years old, he watched carefully and went through all the steps of the exercise. He had finally connected with Dafa after waiting thousands of years. Many people wanted to learn Dafa after seeing the demonstration. One woman who practices Taichi said she was just amazed at how peaceful we all were, and said she was so drawn to the practice because of that.

We handed out hundreds of flyers to people of all ages and races. Many many Chinese people took the flyers, VCDs, and "The Returning Path" booklets we handed out. They seemed to feel safe in the environment of this museum. So many people smiled and gladly took materials from us. Many remarked at how peaceful we were, at how wonderful it was that the exercise teaching is free, and how terrible the persecution in China is, etc. One woman said, "Nothing could be more peaceful, more non-threatening. Why on earth would a government want to persecute a practice like this?" Another woman, who was a westerner, to our surprise said, "Before, I was sort of afraid of Falun Gong because of some of the things I had heard, but now I understand the situation after talking to you. Are there any classes I can go to? I'd like to learn." This helped us realize the extent of Jiang's propaganda, that it had even made this western woman afraid of Falun Gong. It made us realize again that it's important to reach all kinds of people. We were amazed and touched at all the sympathetic people that were there. In fact, I didn't hear a single negative word towards Dafa all day, despite there being so many Chinese people there. Dozens of people asked where they could learn, and many picked up the book Falun Gong and the exercise video. The children that came by the table loved getting a Dafa bookmark.

Even the people in charge of security for the event learned about Dafa from this. One of them had gotten a flyer from us earlier, and later on, when he passed by another security guard near a practitioner handing out flyers, he stopped the other security guard, turned her toward the flyers, and said, "You'll want one of these." That helped us realize how far-reaching an effect clarifying the truth to one person can have.

It was interesting to see, too, that the crooked qigong that had a table and exercise demonstration there in the past, wasn't there this year. We saw from this event how fast the evil is being cleared out, how people are "becoming more and more clearheaded," and that the old and crooked things are being purged and "everything new and righteous" is coming.