Every year around New Year, the scenic town of Odenwald in central Germany welcomes groups of practitioners from around Germany. They make use of the long holidays around New Year to hold group study and discussions. It has become part of the culture of German practitioners. This New Year holiday season was no exception. Several weeks before the New Year, many practitioners had already registered for the large-scale group study activities, which had made the town's youth hostels quickly fill up. To strengthen the efforts of clarifying the truth to family members and relatives during the holiday season, the Falun Dafa Association in Germany decided to shorten the 8-day activities to 4 days.
From December 28 to January 1, 2002, over 200 practitioners from Germany, Poland, Austria and Switzerland came to the city of Erbach to share experiences, study Fa and practice. Despite the brutal persecution of Falun Gong by Jiang Zemin's regime and their slanderous propaganda overseas, the numbers of Falun Gong practitioners in Germany are ever increasing. This year the number of people coming to the activities were more than ever, and among the attendees were people who had come to this type of event for the first time. During the four days, practitioners studied Master Li's new articles and held discussions on several topics, such as how to "Clarify the Truth to the Chinese People Comprehensively, in a Deeper and More Refined Way" [http://www.clearwisdom.net/emh/articles/2001/11/1/15359.html] and disclose the evil and catch up with the Fa rectification process; how to cultivate "the compassion, the kindness, the purity, the righteousness, and the great forbearance displayed by Dafa disciples during the Fa-rectification period" (from Lecture on the Fa at the Washington DC International Conference); how to improve the German Dafa website, etc. Practitioners gathered their thoughts and contributed many excellent ideas. In addition, practitioners specializing in different fields also held seminars, such as on computers, music, etc.
On December 20, the experience sharing conference pushed the activities to the climax, as several practitioners shared their experiences. Then a show was performed by practitioners, which included singing and dancing.
Many German practitioners learned the song Falun Dafa Hao with pinyin notation in a very short time. To the rhythm of Dedu, practitioners welcomed the arrival of the New Year.
(Chinese version:
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2002/1/7/22681.html
http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2002/1/5/22590.html)