Jianhui Z.

I first heard of Falun Gong in 1994, my husband and I were studying at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. At the time, I had poor enlightenment, I thought only people with poor health would practice Qigong. And because I was healthy at the time, I missed the opportunity to cultivate then, however, I remembered that Falun Gong is able to heal illnesses. About ten years later, in 2004, my body had some problems and I remembered Falun Gong. I already left Atlanta then and had lost contact with old friends. After I learned the five exercises through the web and I read Zhuan Falun, I began to understand Falun Gong.

I am an example of Falun Gong’s ability to teach people compassion, moral judgment and physical health. My body and my mind benefitted greatly. My body slowly returned to normal and I had not seen a doctor since; by letting go of my attachments, my tense relationship with my husband became calmer. I always think of my customers when running a business and I won’t be attached when our business runs into a loss. I learned to be honest with friends, respect my parents and help family members.

Because I obtained the Fa after the persecution, my cultivation and validation of the Fa is simultaneous. Once I began cultivating, many difficulties began to emerge. The first difficulty was to go out and validate the Fa. I have to participate in the Hong-Fa activities and to attend Fa sharing conferences. My family is small and unique. I am a very virtuous type of person and I handle all the chores in the house; my husband is used to having everything handled for him so if I go out there would be no one to make dinner. This issue which is usually not a big deal, soon became a big problem for me.

Secondly, because of my husband’s family background, my husband has a deep understanding of the Chinese Communist party. His family had been through a severe persecution by the Communist party. In addition, we experienced the Tiananmen Square massacre when we were working in Beijing, so my husband is very afraid of the CCP. He told me that we are finally overseas, we should keep to ourselves and we should not mess with the CCP because the Communist party is capable of doing horrible things and my husband strongly resisted me from going out, he even threatened me with divorce.

Also, there were test of money. Because I do not have an official job, I do some business on the side. I have my own booth at a market that opens during weekends. Since most of the Dafa activities are on weekends, I could not go and have my own booth, and I spend quite an amount on tickets, accommodation and other things when going for the activities. To test my xinxing, every time I go and participate in Dafa activities, the weather is really nice in our region. However, when I work at the weekend markets the next weekend, it starts to rain. This way, I don’t make any income during the two weeks, and my husband would say things to try and anger me, that is to see if I can keep my xinxing. Through studying the Fa, I understand that what is yours is yours, but to maintain a peaceful mind during the hardships is a really hard process.

When I first obtained the Fa, I was at my English class one day. The teacher asked everyone to talk about what kind of exercise we do to keep healthy. I said I practice Falun Gong. The teacher asked me to show them the exercises. The two Chinese students beside me tried to tell me not to practice Falun Gong because I could not return to China. I was not moved and showcased the five exercises. The next day after I finished my exercises, I closed my eyes and laid down on the sofa. Master showed me the other dimensions and it was so wonderful. Thank you Master for encouraging your disciple. It made me more determined about my cultivation.

A fellow practitioner of the online media asked me to take over his role temporarily and to help filter the reviews left by the readers. There was an event at the time and so the number of reviews increased greatly. Suddenly, I was spending longer hours filtering the reviews than usual. Some reviews were good, but others could be pretty nasty. I was able to remain unmoved at first but reading these reviews everyday would still bother me sometimes. Finally, the fellow practitioner came back and as I was hoping that he would return to his project, he said to me that because the media needed people and that I should continue with the project he asked me to help. Validating Dafa is Dafa Disciples duty required by Master and that the media is also a project that is saving sentient beings, so I decided to stay. I made sure that no bad comments about Dafa or Master was left unchecked. One time after the Fa conference, Master has not yet published the latest Fa article but the CCP agents published fake ones on the comment section, and I saw it and asked the web manager to immediately to take it down.

The media project had some rearrangements and I was assigned to be the editor. Being an Editor and the person filtering comments section are two different fields. As an editor, I spend a lot of time finding articles and publishing them. Sometimes when the article that I spent so much time on was not published, it was hard not to be unmoved. As the Fa rectification reaches a new phase, the standard is stricter, and I can’t just repost articles, but I have to rewrite the articles. For someone like me, writing something is a new challenge, and after some training I overcame the difficulty. I did this for many years. When Shen Yun is coming, I would promote Shen Yun in the morning and write the articles at night. It is pretty tiresome but compared to Dafa disciples in China who have to save sentient beings under harsh circumstances, I am not faced with life threatening situations.

Shen Yun is a Dafa project led by Master. Our state has hosted Shen Yun show for many years. Since I do not have an official job, I am doing the promotion basically full time. From putting up posters to visiting companies, hospitals, clinics, schools, apartments, and door-to-door, in addition I also cook for the Shen Yun performers when they are in town. I do this every year for about six months.

This year was a difficult year for me. Since the promotion started in our city, my sciatica returned once more. I could not stand too long or walk. I even have to sit in order to cook. My husband forces me to go to the hospital, but I know it is the old forces that are trying to interfere. We practitioners do not get sick. Our master has purified our bodies and taken away the life form that is causing the sickness. Even though I began practicing in order to have better health, I know that cultivation is not about curing illnesses after cultivating for so many years. I know that cultivation is to return to our true self and return to the cosmic world that we come from. So I refused to accept it and I sent forth righteous thoughts to eliminate the interference and those interfering with our city. It was really painful to walk at first, but I did not waiver. When it got really painful I would squat a little until it is better and I would go on, and I was able to go door-to-door for the whole day.

The biggest challenge of the Shen Yun project to me is providing food for the performers. The first year, we got Chinese restaurants to prepare all the food for the performers, however the problem with their food is that it is not so good. So the second year, we made half of the food while the restaurants prepared the other half. And because we are such a small city, it got harder to get Chinese restaurants to sponsor the food, so we decided to make everything ourselves. One of the challenges of doing it ourselves is to find 6-7 people to prepare the food and to find the right place to cook the food. Especially since we are a small city, the day of the performance usually lays around weekday, so it was harder to find practitioners that are available. This year, there were 4 of us cooking. After some searching, we finally settled with a rent space and cook meals for the two-day performance.

After Shen Yun finished performing at our city, I began to clarifying the truth using WeChat to my relatives in China. Over Chinese New Year, I tried clarifying the truth to 45 of my relatives through it, but I met a big challenge. My relatives were really happy to see me, especially my 90 years old father. I haven’t been back to China for 17 years and my father wanted to see me in person. Few Years ago, I tried to get him to quit the CCP. However, he became upset and scolded me, and he said he doesn’t recognize this daughter. I never talked about it again, nevertheless I kept looking for the right opportunity to convince him. During this New Year, I started to clarify truth by sending them a software to break through the Chinese Firewall, in hopes that they would see the real information in the free society. I sent truth-telling articles and pictures of theaters packed people coming to watch Shen Yun. My father warned me on the chat, but I did not mind his warning, until when I saw that he had blacklisted me in the family group chat. I felt very sad since I was just beginning to help my relatives quit the CCP. So I tried to add most of them into my chat, and I had established connection with most of them. I was the admin, so they could not restrict me anymore.

Through chatting with my relatives, I found out that they are all kind people, but they were also atheists. So I began sending articles to breakthrough that atheism shell. One night, my dad sent a message that said he only wants to talk about family stuff, nothing else. I saw this as an opportunity and began to convince him to quit the CCP. However, I was not truly compassionate toward my father. I wrote that he only cares about the party and not about his family, and that as the elder of the family who does not know the truth, he does not have the right to prevent others from knowing the truth. After I finished my message around 2 AM, I quickly went to bed. The next day, Sunday, I went to the market to my booth, and on Monday I went to another city to help cook for the Shen Yun performers. Right before I went to bed, I heard about 7 message alerts from WeChat, one after another. I did not look at them until the next morning around 4 by my alarm, to remind me to send forth righteous though. After SFRT, I looked the messages. I was shocked. My father said that he was hurt by my messages, like a knife to his heart, and that he felt painful. He also said that he blacklisted me in order to protect me. He did not want my relatives to know that I was a practitioner, to prevent discrimination.

Even kind people can have difficulty telling good or bad under the CCP’s propaganda. My dad wrote that he was shaking when he typed the messages and that his body could not take the pressure and he might not see me anymore. I felt really sad and tears were rolling down my cheek at this point because I felt I could not save him. What would I do if his body can’t take it anymore. The next day I had to go to other cities to help cook for Shen Yun because they really needed people to cook. However, my husband had scolded me for days because I have been going to help other cities. He complained that I always go out to help with Shen Yun and I spent so much time; I drive our car, use our gas and I haven’t been able to go to the booth for so long. He said that he can’t take it anymore, he hasn’t had a good meal for a while, and that other practitioners have to work and don’t go to help. I did not want to fight with him, so I send forth righteous thought to eliminate any evil elements against Dafa. During this period, I felt my husband’s attitude changing. Usually, he would not talk to me until I start to cook for him again. This time, he was more active to talk to me. He told me he doesn’t feel too good and sometimes feel like fainting. He said if something happens to him and no one is at home, no one would be able to help him. I knew that he wasn’t too well lately, and one time, he even went to the emergency room because he almost fainted.

Facing the series of events made me very tired, suddenly my sister sent a message saying that CCP is my dad’s everything and for him to quit the CCP is impossible. I was upset, and I sat down on the sofa with my eyes closed. In my right eye, I saw ten or so beautiful lotuses floating toward me. I sat up and I knew what I needed to do; I cannot fall into the emotion. I then spent one hour sending forth righteous thought and simultaneously asking Master to help my father pass through these hard times, my husband be alright while I am away and me to successfully go cook for Shen Yun at another city.

That same day, around night, my little brother sent messages and pictures to me, asking me not to anger dad and let him peacefully spend the rest of his life. I clarified to my brother a lot of truth until 2 AM because I still had to tidy things up and I had to drive long distance a few more hours later. 7 AM in the morning, I went to pick up an elder practitioner. We drove non-stop for 6 hours to the city Shen Yun would be performing at. We began cooking in the afternoon and assisted their only two practitioners in the kitchen to prepare Shen Yun performers’ first meal before their first performance. There were only the four of us and we successfully completed all the meals for the Shen Yun performers for the next two days. Even though I was sore, but I felt happy.

Ten something years of cultivation, I have done many things to validate the Fa, but I did not study the Fa or practice the exercises enough whenever I became busy. Even though I did many Dafa projects, but I did not clarify the truth enough to relatives, friends and classmates and I did not give enough effort to convince them to quit the CCP. Even though my relationship with my family has relaxed a little and I won’t get angry anymore, but my husband not knowing the truth had brought many challenges to me when doing Dafa projects. I can tolerate ordinary people and I can use standards of a practitioner to demand myself, but I could not do the same when facing fellow practitioners. I tend to see less virtues in fellow practitioners and see more flaws in fellow practitioners. I will be more diligent in doing the three things, reach consummation, and follow Master.