(Clearwisdom.net) Johnson, Washington is a tiny rural farming community off the highway and out in the hills. The town of Johnson does not even have a little store or gas station. Yet this parade is extremely popular in this area, especially for parents bringing children, and the crowds are astonishingly large for such a small village. Because of its popularity and home-town flavor, this parade was featured in an article in National Geographic Magazine a few years ago. Anyone who shows up on time can be in the parade, so many local residents decorate their vehicles and are in the procession. The practitioners from Lewiston, Idaho and Clarkston, Washington took Falun Dafa to the parade in Johnson this year.
Falun Gong practitioners carried two large banners and had a tiny mini-float on a wagon which played, "Falun Dafa is Good" and another song written by a practitioner. The people organizing the parade greeted us warmly and with laughter, and all along the long parade route there were people asking "What is Falun Dafa?" and smiling and waving.
Since the tradition at the parade is to toss candy to the children, we prepared some special candy by attaching little slips of paper to the candy wrappers. This little paper told briefly about Falun Dafa and the persecution, and had local contact information and the website addresses on the back. This special candy was tossed to those who expressed
interest, or just seemed to be "the right people," while regular candy was given to the children. We received warm "thumbs up" from other marching groups and even got a "high five" from the clown-in-residence!
Our reception at Johnson was great, and we felt so good that this many new people had a good impression of Dafa and that they received us so warmly. We agreed that this parade should be a regular for the valley practitioners, and are already making plans for next year.
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