(Minghui.org)
Greetings Master!
Greetings fellow practitioners!
I am from Turkey, but I have lived in Melbourne since 1994. I teach English at a language center for international students. I began to practice Falun Gong [also known as Falun Dafa] on September 28, 2001. I remember that a couple of months later I saw Master on a video lecture. I started crying, and at the time I didn't know why. I could only stop crying seven or eight hours later. I know now of course, the tears were from my knowing side, because I had finally found the way to return home. I knew Dafa was real and I had found my Master.
I had an inoperable heart problem, chronic migraines, stomach ulcers, depression and many more illnesses related to the medication that I was on. All my illnesses disappeared three months after I began the practice. I started my new life with Dafa and my fellow Dafa practitioners.
In order to help Master to spread Dafa, I translated Zhuan Falun into Turkish with Master’s strengthening. Immediately after that, in 2004, I moved back to Turkey with my son and husband. Many people started practicing Dafa in a very short time. With the new practitioners, we founded the Falun Dafa Association, improved the translation of Zhuan Falun and got it officially published in Turkey in 2006.
I came back to Australia in 2007 and saw Shen Yun for the first time in Melbourne. I did not miss one performance at that time, and I was always crying during the show. I said to myself that I had to go back to Turkey to host Shen Yun.
I applied to host Shen Yun in 2010, and initially the Shen Yun office did not approve the application. A few months later, the office sent me an email saying that Master had looked at the list of the countries and asked why Turkey wasn’t listed. Master told the office that he thought the Turkish practitioners should host Shen Yun. I am so grateful to Master for the most beautiful time of my life.
I asked my school for six months leave, and it was approved within two days. To my surprise, the director at my school said she would approve my leave only if I took her to Turkey with me. So my boss traveled to Turkey with me and met all the practitioners there. As a result she got to know more about the beauty of Dafa.
I went to Istanbul to host Shen Yun. We had only a very small number of fellow Turkish and Chinese practitioners to help with ticket sales and promotion. Through clarifying facts to government officials at all levels, as well as the police and media, we successfully eliminated interference from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Fellow practitioners in surrounding countries also helped us. Again, we believed Master is always with us, and we validated the Fa as Dafa practitioners with righteous thoughts and actions.
I would first like to tell you about a very recent experience for which I am forever grateful to Master. When we put Dafa first, everything in our lives becomes perfect-everything. SBS Turkish radio wanted to interview me about Falun Dafa in March last year.
I was leaving my house to go the radio station when my sister phoned. She had just found out that she had a brain tumor. My father had died when I was only eight years old and my sister just six months old, so I loved her so much. I always cared for and protected her, because my mother was 28 years old with four young children. I am the oldest child. My sister and I had a very strong bond. When she was telling me about her brain tumor diagnosis, childhood memories flooded into my mind. I felt a strong fear of losing my little sister.
I immediately told myself that I am a Dafa disciple. Everything in my life is arranged by Master. I will accept everything that comes from my Master. That is her karma, and I can’t control that. I came to this earth to assist Master to save everybody, so I can not have this narrow affection for my sister. I said to myself that whether she can be healed or not is Master’s decision, and I will not question it. Anything that comes from Master is good.
Master has said,
"The truth is, I treasure you more than you treasure yourselves!" (Eliminate Your Last Attachment(s) from Essentials for Further Advancement II)
I believe Master's words with all my heart. So what was there to worry about?
After we finished talking on the phone, I went to SBS radio with a pure heart, feeling happy that I had passed this test. Maybe Master wanted to test me. Or maybe the old forces wanted to stop me from going on the radio. Maybe they wanted to get me to put Dafa in second place and put my sister first. Whatever it was, I was just happy that I was a Dafa practitioner. A Dafa practitioner has our benevolent Master. Do other people have this oppurtunity? No. We are the luckiest. We have everything because we have our Master.
I had a very successful interview on the radio program. My sister went to Sydney to have gamma-knife radiosurgery. She was later involved in a couple of severe car accidents, but nothing happened to her. Because I believe in Master and I am not attached to her, Master is able to protect her.
I teach English in a language center affiliated to a university in Melbourne. I have many Chinese students in my classes. Since I started practicing Dafa in 2001, my job has provided many opportunities for me to clarify the facts to my students. I would like to share some of the stories related to clarifying the facts.
I had nine or more Chinese students, and ten other international students in my class, all of whom knew very little English.
One day I asked them what they did over the weekend, and then I asked them to ask me the same question. I told them I went to the park to practice qigong from China. I wrote Falun Dafa on the board. All the Chinese students became very quiet anduncomfortable. One of them left the class and the others started speaking in Chinese. My other international students were surprised by the Chinese students' behavior and wanted to know what was happening. So I wrote the word “banned” on the board. My meditation is banned in China.
I wrote the name of our website on the board and asked them to read in their own languages why it was banned. They immediately started searching the Internet. I noticed all of the Chinese students also wrote the website's name in their notebooks. I also wrote on the board in big letters that it was not me who was lying to them. I told them that because I cared a lot about them, I told them the truth. Now that they were in Australia, they had a chance to learn the truth.
The director of my school has a Chinese secretary who looks after the young Chinese students to make sure they are okay. I thought they would definitely tell her what had happened. But I also knew that I had no fear about validating Dafa. Dafa comes first, and the truth must be told. Whatever happened to me while clarifying the truth is okay. I was not afraid. So I carried on with my lessons.
The following week when I walked into class, to my surprise, the same students were sitting on their chairs in half lotus and some even in the full lotus position. Their eyes were closed, and they were smiling with cheeky expressions. They were telling me that everything was okay! They had not told anyone that I wrote in large characters that the CCP was lying.
That group of students told many other Chinese students about me, that I was a Falun Dafa practitioner and that Falun Dafa is good. Some Chinese students later came up to me and said that thanks to practitioners, many people in China can access censored websites [via software invented by practitioners to circumvent the regime's censorship].
When clarifying the facts I only think of saving those sentient beings. My heart is always calm. I know nothing is a coincidence. Those students are in my class to be saved. All these years I clarified the truth in an upright manner and with dignity. I am confident that I am a Dafa disciple and that I have done nothing wrong. I have nothing to hide; no thoughts come into my mind, such as fear of them complaining to the principal or asking to change classes. This has never happened. Among hundreds of students, none of them have turned their back on me.
Another experience is as follows:
When my son was studying at a high school near our house, I applied to have a long-term home-stay student. When I heard from the student services manager that they had a 16-year-old student coming from China, I was concerned about how his family would react to the discovery that their son’s home-stay family were Falun Gong practitioners.
I decided to talk to the student services manager and told her that I was a Falun Dafa practitioner. She didn't know about Falun Dafa or the persecution, so I told her all about it. After listening to me she said, “This is Australia. We have the freedom to believe in anything we like. I will not encourage the students to question anyone's beliefs. This student and his family have already been told that he was staying with your family, so this is not going to change.”
I understood that it was Master’s arrangement. When I first saw the student, he looked about 14. He was so timid, scared, obviously very worried, and not sure what to do in this foreign country. A few weeks later, he and my son already had a great relationship.
The student services manager phoned me and asked if I had told him about Falun Dafa. I had not, so I decided to tell him that night. My son and I told him that we practiced Falun Dafa, and we wanted him to tell his parents in China and find out if it was still okay to stay with us. He smiled and said that his father’s sister used to practice Falun Gong, but after the persecution started she had to stop because his father is a Party official. He also said that nobody in his family, including his father, was happy about the persecution.
However, he decided not to tell his family for the time being, and we respected his decision. Six months later, he decided to do exercises with Michael and me, and he loved it. He said he felt so happy doing the exercises and that he could hardly keep his eyes closed and couldn't stop smiling. He also was trying to read Zhuan Falun.
Because he was worried about his father, one day he said, “I am now a Falun Dafapractitioner, so I need to tell my father because I must practice truthfulness.” I agreed. He immediately contacted his father and told him everything. I think that probably throughout the entire course of my cultivation this was one of the most critical moments for me. My heart started beating so fast, as I really cared for this child.
After listening to his son, the father said, “Do not let anyone stop you. Do not let anything stop you. You are soon going to be 18, so you need to make your own decisions.” The father asked if he could say hello to me, so I met him on Skype. He said there was no problem, that his son is my son as well, and Falun Dafa is good. He could not find better people than Dafa practitioners to look after his son.
I still cry when I think about this father who had no choice himself but to follow the Party line, but he chose to do the right thing for his son. I know that they are all saved. Thank you Master for your great compassion!
Here is another experience where I witnessed how China's people are poisoned by the CCP.
I had a few Chinese students in one of my intermediate classes, and they had to do a presentation about their country, including important aspects of their culture. It was one of the Chinese students’ turn. He started his presentation by nervously asking the class not tell anyone about what he was going to tell them; otherwise, his family would be persecuted in China.
There were many other students in that class from other countries. They were surprised and curious about what he was going to share. To my surprise, this student’s topics were how Chinese culture had been systematically destroyed by the Party and the Tiananmen Square Massacre. He had an uncle who was killed at that time. He explained the Party’s true nature. Everyone was shocked and admired him. They felt sorry about what had happened to China and its people.
The next day, I told him that I understood him really well because I was a Falun Dafapractitioner. His initial reaction was not very different from those of other Chinese people; even he was brainwashed by the Party to an extent.
He started repeating the lies about Dafa spread by the Party. I did not think anything negative and confidently said, “How come you are still thinking like that after all the lies they told about the Tiananmen Square Massacre, as you yourself were telling us yesterday?” This incident showed me one more time the power this evil Party has exerted on the Chinese people. How could he still believe what the Party was saying about Falun Dafa? I felt so sorry for him, but it did not take him too long to wake up.
He looked at me and said, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Yes, how could I be so stupid? How could I believe them?” He apologized to me many times for believing the Party. To my surprise, he even gave me a hug. This was my first hug from a young Chinese man. He later read more about the persecution on the Internet.
While assisting Master in saving people in Turkey, I unfortunately did not always do a good job. For example, four Turkish practitioners, plus myself and my husband, went to a popular holiday resort in August 2012. We planned to give out flyers to the locals and tourists but discovered that none of us had any. We felt so ashamed that we had failed to be diligent and had not put Dafa first. Now we couldn’t help save anyone during the trip. I was so upset that I did not even want to go to the beach.
After everyone left for the beach, I stayed in the house that we had rented. I asked Master, “Please show me a way to reach everybody in this resort without flyers.” A few minutes later, I heard someone talking to the whole village over a loudspeaker. I could clearly hear what the person said. I said to myself, “That's it! There is a way to tell the whole village about the Falun Dafa exercises and offer free instruction.”
I excitedly got dressed and ran to the beach. As I searched for my fellowpractitioners to discuss the loudspeaker idea, I saw my husband, who is Australian, talking to some Turkish men. He waved his hand and called me over. He introduced me to them and said, “Look, these guys are really interested in learning about what you do.” He said that he had told them all about Dafa.
One of them said he could help me to make an announcement to the whole village through the loudspeakers. “You just tell us the time and when you can teach us the exercises,” he said. The other person was the owner of the resort's disco. He said he could play the exercise music through the speakers at the disco that day. We decided to ask people to come after 7pm.
Being summer, it was still daylight, and many people came. When the music started, it was so loud and powerful. I taught the exercises to everyone with a few tears in my eyes, thanking Master for his forgiveness, his encouragement, and being there for us whenever we need him. Even though sometimes we fail to do the right thing, he never gives up on us.
But the story isn’t over yet! You won’t believe it, but one of the people who came to learn the exercises was a professor from Ankara University who was writing a research paper on various cases of persecution of the world’s people throughout history. She had been researching and writing about the persecution of Falun Dafa.
When she heard the office was calling people to the beach to learn the Falun Dafa exercises, she could not believe it. She learned the exercises and asked me many questions. She said she feels that this meeting was not an ordinary event and how lucky she was to meet me. She said Dafa is amazing! Yes, it is! Dafa is amazing!
Please point out if there is anything written here that is not on the Fa.
Thank you Master! Thank you everyone for listening.
(Presented at the 2014 Australia Falun Dafa Experience Sharing Conference)