(Clearwisdom.net) Doneraile is a town located on the seacoast in the southern neighborhood of Ireland’s capital, Dublin. Although it is not as famous as its counterpart in Edinburgh, the annual cultural festival in Doneraile still attracts a lot of visitors. Therefore, it is an excellent place to introduce Falun Gong. Irish Falun Gong practitioners have participated in the festival and performed exercise demonstrations in recent years. This year the practitioners also decided to attend the festival and perform an exercise demonstration, as well as fan dancing and umbrella dancing. Since practitioners have accumulated experience about these performances in the past, it seemed that no special preparations were needed.

However, on Sunday morning, I noticed that there were some matters not taken care of. The exact number of practitioners who could go was not clear. A lot of practitioners were hanging back and pondering whether they really needed to go. I myself was also tied up with some other tasks and was considering not going if the number of practitioners was sufficient. I felt the existence of hampering substances which suppressed practitioners from engaging in the preparation work efficiently. The activities were not technically challenging and should have been easy to do without the interference of these substances. After realizing this, I sat down and sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the substances that had been suppressing practitioners’ activities to introduce Dafa.

Gradually, practitioners started devoting themselves to the preparation work. The big banner, used as the background of the platform, was found and a practitioner was ironing it. The practitioners who promised to drive cars for carrying personnel and materials also arrived one after another. From the eight information boards we frequently used, practitioners picked two introducing the principles of Falun Gong. In addition, the items needed for the dances, Falun Gong introductory booklets, tool boxes and cushions were also prepared. Practitioners dressed in yellow exercise suits and had a bite to eat, as the activities would not end until dark. Finally, everything was packed into two cars and nine practitioners were ready to set off. There were other practitioners who would go to the festival directly. With everyone’s cooperation, the total number of practitioners attending the activity was sufficient.

The practitioners who arrived earliest chose the street corner where we had been in the previous years' festival. We set up a table and information boards. While two practitioners held a banner and one distributed flyers, the other practitioners arranged the cushions, played music and prepared for sending forth righteous thoughts. As soon as the dance group arrived, our performance could start.

Other practitioners also arrived soon. The female practitioner dancers were dressed in green traditional costumes with beautiful decorations. Several teenage practitioners were very excited about the performance. The boys were dressed in yellow exercise suits and the girls wore skirts designed for the Lotus Dance. The clothes were a bit to large for them, but they looked jubilant. They also distributed flyers and lotus flowers to the children who passed by.

Finally the performances started. The Fan Dance, Umbrella Dance and Falun Gong exercises were performed in turn again and again. The performances were so attractive that there was always a group of people stopping by and watching.

When it was my turn to hold the banner, a westerner who was reading the information board asked me, "What are you protesting against?" I replied, "No, this is not a protest. Today is the cultural festival and we would like to share with people a meditation exercise." After he left, I thought that perhaps my facial expression might have been too serious so he thought we were protesting something. Adjusting my thoughts, I concentrated on smiling at passers-by.

The performances went on smoothly for a while. Suddenly, a burst of chilly wind came and blew the documents to the ground. Some practitioners picked up the materials, but the wind would not stop. The sun was blocked by a cloud, too. I put down the flyers in my hand, found a cushion, and then sat behind the banner to send forth righteous thoughts. I felt my righteous thoughts encountering obstacles. I strengthened my righteous thoughts and continued to eliminate the interference.

After a while, a staff member of the cultural festival approached us. He asked us to move to another place because the number of viewers were so numerous that they blocked the pathway. We moved to a site located near the seashore. The space was wide open with a lot of pedestrians. The sea was dotted with white sails and in the horizon, it merged with the sky. We unfurled the banner and stood facing the audience. Our background was simple and pure. The banner read, "Falun Dafa Is Good," in both Chinese and English. It was much longer than the one we frequently used in the past. The length of the banner fit perfectly with the wide space of the beach. It enabled us to expand the space between practitioners during the exercises demonstration, allowing more people to watch. When the exercise demonstration was about to start, the 50-meter-wide area in front of us was filled with passers-by.

Along the seashore were a series of evenly-distributed concrete platforms behind the banner. A female practitioner performed the sitting meditation on one of the platforms. With the sea serving as the background, the scene looked similar to a painting displayed in the " Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance Art Exhibition" In front of the banner, practitioners performed demonstrations of Exercises 1 through 4. We wished to demonstrate the exercises with compassion so that people could be moved by Falun Gong. When I opened eyes upon the completion of the demonstration, I saw a large group of people standing in front of us. There were also several families sitting on the ground—while the children played quietly, the adults were fully attracted by the peaceful energy of Falun Gong. A fellow practitioner’s husband, who did not practice Falun Gong, had wanted to leave. However, as soon as our demonstration started, he was also attracted. He stayed and helped take care of another practitioner’s children.

The activities started before noon. By four o’clock in the afternoon, I noticed that the full box of flyers we brought to the festival had been almost all given away. Only two small bundles were left. A practitioner who distributed the flyers with me said he still had some in his car and he could bring them over. His car was parked far away. Before he came back with additional ones, our flyers were completely gone. However, the passers-by did not leave. While we followed the exercise music and performed the demonstration quietly, those who had not yet received flyers were watching quietly.

In this manner, our exercises demonstrations and dance performances went on until dusk, when we joined the global sending forth righteous thoughts at six o’clock.

On our way home, we exchanged thoughts about what we experienced during the day. We all felt that the activities were a success and the effect was good.

I recalled a sentence of Master Li,