(Minghui.org) My younger brother Yong is 57 years old. A big, healthy baby, he was always strong. But he wasn’t very smart and sometimes he had difficulty explaining himself. He did poorly academically and only finished middle school. Mother said he would end up doing physical labor. 

That turned out to be true. After skipping high school, Yong carried grain sacks for the village, pushed carts for a construction company, and worked as a mason. He had no problem doing these things because he was strong. When my father retired from an iron mine, Yong took his place there as an excavator. After he married, he moved to another factory where his wife worked and continued doing manual labor. After he was laid off, he became a street vendor and sold boiled corn or boiled peanuts. As hard as he worked, his income was never much above the poverty line.

After I began to practice Falun Dafa in late 1998, I gave Yong a copy of Zhuan Falun. Both he and his wife read it, and they even practiced for a while. Although they stopped after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started the persecution in July 1999, they have always known Dafa is good. Both of them, especially Yong, have always been very supportive of my belief. 

Interestingly, his situation changed after that. The iron mine where Yong used to work hired a contracting company whose supervisor knew Yong and knew that Yong was honest and worked hard. The supervisor hired him to manage excavators hired from southern China. On the job, Yong somehow became more intelligent, as if his smarts had been tapped into. One time when he went down into the mine, he said it “felt like home.” He somehow knew where the iron ore was and how it was distributed—which scientific instruments confirmed. Some of the workers joked that Yong seemed to have a map of the ore in his brain. Not only that, when he was underground, he even had a good sense of direction. These were all amazing developments. 

Yong’s communication skills also improved. During the daily morning briefings, he spoke clearly and to the point, reassuring the workers. Because of his outstanding performance, he became well known among his peers. Several iron mines later hired him to handle safety and manage production underground. He also worked with others to manage contracting companies. 

Yong’s income increased as time went on. In 2008, he bought a large apartment. In 2017, his family moved to a larger apartment in an upscale community and became my neighbor.

After the pandemic broke out in 2020, Yong followed my advice and often recited “Falun Dafa is good, Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good.” More blessings followed. First, he was hired by an iron mine at a salary of over 200,000 yuan per year. That same year, he applied for retirement under a special category and was approved to retire at 55. After Yong began to get his pension, his daughter passed the civil service exam and became a government employee. Later on, she married a nice young man who is very kind to Yong. 

A large mining group has now hired Yong as an executive and pays him well. “Wow! I never expected that, after doing physical labor my entire life, I would end up a white collar worker,” he said. “Life is so interesting.”

At the family reunion this year, Yong looked young and happy and smiled all the time. His son-in-law prepared all the food while Yong and his wife played with the grandchild. “Life couldn’t be any better,” Yong said.