An Unforgettable Journey: A Ten-Day Falun Gong Workshop in 1998

(Minghui.org) I’m 83 years old this year, and I started practicing Falun Dafa (also known as Falun Gong) in 1995. Whenever I read articles on the Minghui website about fellow practitioners sharing their memories of attending Master Li’s lectures, I read them over and over again. My heart feels just as excited as theirs.

I truly admire those who had the chance to attend Master Li’s classes in person. Back then, I didn’t even know such classes were happening. So today, I’d like to share my experiences from a Falun Gong workshop held in our county in 1998. It was a 10-day event with more than 500 people, and for me, it was the most unforgettable memory and the perfect beginning of my cultivation journey.

It was the summer of 1998 when practitioners in our county organized a workshop at a middle school. A fellow practitioner called and invited me. At that time, I had just started practicing and was in poor health. My lower back was in such pain that I couldn’t move. If I was sitting, I couldn’t stand up, and if I was standing, I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t take care of myself. The practitioner told me not to worry and others would help me. My husband was concerned and asked, “How are you going to manage? Who’s going to help you wash up or do laundry?” I told him, “People who practice Falun Gong are kind. They will help me.”

When I arrived at the meeting point for the bus, most people were already on the bus. It was packed. Practitioners helped me load my luggage, and two people helped me onto the bus. They had saved the first seat by the door just for me. I truly felt like they were my sisters. I didn’t feel worried at all.

After less than an hour of driving, we arrived at the school at the foot of a small hill. The whole bus had to wait until I got off first. No one was impatient or pushy. Two practitioners helped me walk up a long hill to the dorm. They made my bed, hung up my mosquito netting, and even gave me the nicest lower bunk by the window. I was so grateful to them.

Every morning, we got up at 4 a.m. to do the exercises. I couldn’t do the fourth standing exercise, because I couldn’t bend or squat. For the sitting meditation, I needed help just to sit down. During the day, we sat on the floor in classrooms and watched videos of Master Li’s lectures together, then shared our understandings and experiences.

The hardest part for me was bathing. The school was in a rural area, with poor conditions. There was only cold water, and I needed help getting hot water. I couldn’t bend over to take off my pants, so I had to loosen the waistband and let them fall on their own. At first, I needed help from fellow practitioners to bathe and do my laundry. But by the fourth day, I was able to fetch hot water and bathe by myself. By the end of the 10-day workshop, everything was back to normal. I could move freely again!

I truly experienced the healing power of Falun Gong. At first, I’d come just to get better physically, and I didn’t understand much about the teachings. But those 10 days were the happiest, most fulfilling, and most unforgettable time of my life. That memory will stay with me forever.

The Miracles We Witnessed at the Workshop

Many amazing things happened during the 10 days.

First, many of us actually saw Falun (Law Wheels) with our own eyes. One afternoon, at around 4 o’clock during a break, we saw countless large Falun appear in the sky around the setting sun, in the northwest direction of the school. The sun was already quite big, but the Falun we saw were even larger. In the center, the four small 卍 symbols were clearly visible. The Falun were turning continuously, one after another, changing colors as they spun. Excited voices rang out as people called to others from inside the classrooms: “Come out! Come see this!” Everyone was filled with joy and wonder. We all felt this was Master encouraging us!

The school where the session was held sat on a small hill, surrounded on three sides by rice fields. Outside the school walls were wild weeds, and in the summer evenings, mosquitoes were everywhere. Before our event, another group had tried to hold a training session there. Two people went to check it out beforehand, and at night, their mosquito nets were covered with so many mosquitoes that they gave up and moved to a hotel. But for our study session, even though more than 500 of us were sitting outside on the school grounds at 4 a.m. every day to meditate, no one complained about mosquitoes. One female practitioner even chose to sit and meditate near a small gate leading out of the school in the evening. She said she never saw a single mosquito. Isn’t that incredible?

Of course, we understood why. The energy field of more than 500 true cultivators was incredibly strong. No wonder local farmers said, “What’s going on in that school? Every night, there’s a glow of red light over the whole place.”

Just like Master said in Zhuan Falun:

“This site is not an ordinary site, and neither is it a site for an ordinary qigong practice: It is a site for cultivation practice. Many of our practitioners with supernormal abilities have seen that this Falun Dafa site is shielded with red light, and it is red all over.” (Lecture Three, Zhuan Falun)”

I met a woman in her forties who was from my hometown, though she now lived in the neighboring county. I asked her, “How did you know to come?” She said, “With such a great practice, and with the class being so close, how could I not come?” Her husband had passed away early, and she lived in the countryside. If she didn’t work, she couldn’t afford to send her son to school. Besides farming, she worked unloading coal trucks. Each truck had to be shoveled out by hand, and it left her with a sore back every time. But after she started practicing Falun Gong, unloading coal no longer felt tiring.

Another woman, a farmer who lived five miles away from the school, had already been practicing for a few years. She came every morning, full of energy and with a healthy glow on her face. There were so many touching and unusual stories like this, I can’t even list them all.

Later, the practitioner who organized the event told us that the situation was quite tense at the beginning. They had only planned for about 200 people, but in the end, practitioners from nearby cities, counties, and even the provincial capital all came. Suddenly, there were more than 500 participants! There was huge pressure for food, water, and sleeping arrangements.

To make sure there was enough water, the taps were left running all day and night to fill the school’s water tanks. The school cafeteria only had the capacity to cook for about 200 people, so they had to buy more equipment. Even school staff who were on vacation came back to help, bringing extra bowls and utensils with them.

And yet, each participant only paid 10 yuan per day, which covered both food and lodging. When the workshop ended, there was still more than 16,000 yuan left over. The coordinator donated 9,000 yuan to the middle school and gave the rest to the local elementary school.

Later, some government officials came to investigate, suspecting the organizers had made a profit from the event. But when they reviewed the records, every cent was clearly accounted for. In fact, the main organizer had quietly donated 10,000 yuan of their own money to help make the workshop possible.

In the end, the officials had nothing to say. They simply couldn’t understand that Falun Dafa is truly a place of honesty and purity.