(Clearwisdom.net) I want to share my experiences and understandings regarding promoting tickets for the Shen Yun performance. I hope that this can be of help to other practitioners.
Actually, I am a new Falun Gong practitioner; I obtained the great Fa only three years ago. I was a Christian before. Master told me in a dream about the three withdrawals (withdrawal from the Chinese Communist Party, the Youth League, and the Young Pioneers). After I woke up, I read the report about the Chinese Communist Party's harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners. I also found all the Dafa books. This is how I became a Dafa practitioner. Over the three years of my cultivation, Master has given me a brand new life. Before my cultivation, I never knew that a human life could be so full of peace and hope. I am really unable to find the proper words to describe my gratitude to Master. Every morning when I open my eyes, the person I first think of and want to thank is Master. Sometimes, I just cannot believe that I am so fortunate that I have become a disciple of Master. The King of all kings in the cosmos is in this human world, and the highest God that the Bible has described is in this human world... Sometimes, I have felt so blessed that I almost cannot believe that it is all true. I tell myself every day that I must cultivate myself diligently and not let Master down. I do not want Master to worry about me.
Promoting the Shen Yun performance was the first Dafa project that I participated in after I became a practitioner. Because I felt that this was such a sacred effort, I got involved wholeheartedly.
What I want to share is that selling Shen Yun tickets is not a very difficult thing to do. If we always have the heart of offering people salvation, even though we have only a limited foreign language ability, we can still sell tickets; at the very least, we can give out fliers. In Montreal, more than sixty percent of the residents speak French. However, most of our practitioners there cannot speak French. I spoke French very poorly and could only manage to engage in a very simple conversation. What was miraculous was that my French gave me no problems when I promoted Shen Yun tickets. I knew that all this was from Master. In the meantime, I also put effort into improving myself. To sell the tickets in French, I made a lot of preparations. Last year, I read almost all the Chinese and English reports about Shen Yun. I wrote down everything I felt that I could use to tell people about the show. I then practiced the introduction in French again and again, until I could introduce the show as fluently as I do in Chinese. I worked hard on in preparation, but the result was very rewarding. I found that people liked listening to my explanation. They told me that they didn't know that this show was so great. At the very beginning when I promoted the tickets, I could not sell the tickets well. However, several days later, people came to me, telling me that they had already bought tickets. I felt happy for them from the bottom of my heart.
I also found that promoting tickets for the Shen Yun performance is a very sacred mission for me, and I love selling the tickets very much. I greeted, with a smile, every person who walked by me. I remembered that Master's words also came from heaven and that they were gods before. I know that Master has prepared a huge salvation boat and only those who get on board can be saved. My mission is to tell people this message and wholeheartedly help bring those people to come to see the show. Every time I went to sell the tickets, I told myself that I am really fortunate to have become a Dafa disciple; it is a great honor for me to sell the tickets. I never felt uncomfortable when I promoted the tickets or gave out fliers in the malls, even though I was a senior computer consultant when I was in China, where I often gave trainings to the heads and leaders of those large companies.
The first year of my practicing the great Fa was 2007. It was also the first year I participated in promoting Shen Yun tickets. Because I am not that tall, I always wore high-heeled shoes in the mall, so my blood went all the way down to my toes. Because we started the project too late that year, we only sold seventy percent of the tickets. I watched the last show with my family and noticed that almost half of the theater were empty. Most of the best seats in the front rows were empty. I felt so sad; I had tears during the whole show. The two performances that depicted the persecution that the practitioners in China have suffered made me feel even greater pain. I felt my heart was broken.
In 2008, I was involved in promoting the performance for the second time. I really did not want what had happened the previous year to repeat itself, so as early as September, we started to hand out fliers on the streets in Chinatown. There are not have many practitioners here, so most of time, I gave out fliers on the streets alone. This lasted until November, when it was too cold to hand out fliers outside. The next month I went to a very big and busy mall to promote the tickets almost every day. I stood there for six hours each day, and kept introducing the show. I took no breaks except for twenty minutes to eat my sandwich. We sold many tickets in that mall; sometimes, we sold 120 tickets in one day. As the time for selling tickets was drawing to an end, I lost my voice and could not speak. Because I was a new practitioner, I did not realize that I needed to eliminate the interference. I coughed the whole night; my husband could not fall asleep, so he asked me to sleep on the sofa. One week later, I went to sell tickets again. Although I still coughed on the first day, two days later the cough was gone.
This is the third year for me to promote tickets. I found that I was even more energetic than before. I stood in the mall giving out fliers for seven hours in a row without taking any breaks. During the first year, when I tried to keep a smile on my face for too long, the muscles in my face became numb, and people did not listen anymore. In the second year, I felt that I had to use all my strength to squeeze out a smile. This year, all by itself, my smile came from my heart. In the mall, I not only smiled at the sentient beings, I also smiled at fellow practitioners. I was very happy in the mall. Sometimes, I felt like a five-year-old. When people saw me smiling, they also naturally smiled back. Without my saying anything, they sometimes walked over to me to get the fliers. They sometimes stopped and listened to my explanation. This year many kids came up to me and asked for fliers. Since we sold all the tickets last year, we doubled the number of tickets this year. There are no more than one hundred practitioners here, but we sold 10,000 tickets, which is ninety-two percent of the total.
All I wanted to share with you is that selling Shen Yun tickets is not that difficult. Have a smile on your face and let compassion arise from the bottom of your heart. As long as we have strong hearts to save people, Master will help us to create miracles.
January 30, 2009
