(Minghui.org) Our group held two nine-day Falun Dafa workshops in May and July this year. Through discussions, the practitioners in our group realized that holding nine-day classes is now a requirement of the Fa-rectification. Frankfurt is the city with the most Shen Yun performances in Germany, and many people must be waiting to get in touch with Dafa. We had the desire and confidence to run the nine-day classes.
Master said,
“You saw that in just a few years of my imparting the Fa in Mainland China, 100 million people came to learn it. Since leaving China I haven’t directly taught the exercises or the Fa, and it has been the students who have been passing it on, holding nine-day seminars, and spreading the word about this Fa. Although the old forces have been controlling certain things, they haven’t been able to block it, and a lot of people have still come to learn it. Why is that? Because this Fa can truly guide people’s cultivation, it can truly help people improve, and can truly change the state of a being.” (Teachings at the 2004 International Conference in New York)
Next, I will talk about the experience of our group as a whole with the two classes, complementing each other, supporting each other, thus allowing more people who are destined to join the nine-day classes.
During the promotion of the workshop and while holding the first nine-day class, we encountered two very difficult tasks, both of which were solved with the cooperation and efforts of practitioners.
The first task was putting up posters and handing out leaflets. In less than 10 days, we put up 250 posters and distributed 2,500 leaflets. Shen Yun was still touring in Germany at that time, and fellow practitioners who were very experienced in putting up Shen Yun posters had gone to other cities to support Shen Yun. We had never put up posters for nine-day classes before, and it was a challenge for our group to put up so many in such a short period of time.
One Saturday before the workshop, seven practitioners volunteered to go to the city center to put up posters, and most of them were inexperienced. At the end of the day, everyone had put up a lot of posters and felt that there were changes in the environment. Many stores were willing to put up posters about Falun Gong. This was great encouragement to everyone.
The following week, some practitioners went out to put up posters quite often. A Vietnamese practitioner, who was not very good at speaking German, put up a lot of posters, and the posters were in very eye-catching positions, such as at the entrance of a major supermarket, on the large glass windows of the store. This shows that as long as practitioners have a pure heart to save others, Master will bless us and give us wisdom.
Everyone put up the posters in time and we also left flyers in stores. A middle-aged woman from Vietnam who attended the nine-day class after receiving a leaflet did not miss a class. When the workshop was over, she said her insomnia was gone, her hand pain and shoulder pain were gone, and she had begun to cultivate.
The second item to overcome was that under the circumstances, it had been difficult to find a fellow practitioner with enough time to be an instructor, let alone find two regular instructors for the nine-day workshop.
I called on practitioners in my group to sign up as instructors. Seven signed up; most of them are veteran practitioners, have a sense of responsibility, and have strong righteous thoughts. Everyone took turns on duty, and two practitioners were present every day, so with everyone’s cooperation and effort, the problem of having enough instructors was solved.
On the last day, during an exchange, a German woman who had come every day told practitioners she had not been interested in Chinese culture before and hadn’t had a good impression of Chinese people, but this time she had a good impression after meeting so many Chinese people (six of the instructors were Chinese practitioners). She felt that the practitioners were kind, sincere, and patient. She said that she wanted to really start practicing Falun Dafa.
The second nine-day class went much more smoothly. From the very beginning, two practitioners were willing to take on the nine-day workshop instructor work. The number of people who signed up for the workshop was more than double the people for the first class, and ten people were there on the last day. The two practitioners got along well with all the participants, and the participants were very satisfied with the practitioners’ efforts and the harmonious atmosphere in the class.
Here I would like to introduce the experience of a fellow practitioner who was looking for predestined people to participate in the nine-day classes. A certain female practitioner is not from the Frankfurt group, but from the bottom of her heart, she wanted to help us run the nine-day class. She kept sending messages to promote the nine-day workshop, and found more than ten people to sign up as attendees. Before the start of the course, the practitioner spent a lot of time answering their questions and resolving any of their concerns.
One of the ladies told her that if the number of applicants kept increasing, she wouldn’t come. At first, the practitioner felt a little concerned about this, but then she thought that the nine-day classes were open to everyone, so she wrote to the woman and explained the nine-day workshop, saying that everyone benefited from each other in a collective environment, and the field would be good for her. The woman agreed with the practitioner and did not withdraw from the class.
In order to improve people’s understanding about the nine-day class, this fellow practitioner shared her experience and feelings about attending the nine-day workshop in the past, the importance of watching the video lectures on the Fa, and explained the special features of Falun Dafa. They explained that cultivating the mind comes first, and practicing the exercises is supplementary. After reading this practitioner’s explanations, people were very interested in Falun Dafa, and most of them attended the lectures.
A German man told practitioners that when he saw the message about the nine-day class, he burst into tears and knew that this was what he had been looking for. He didn’t have a car, so he took the train to attend every day. He only missed one session because his train was canceled, but he watched the video of Master’s lecture at home that day with the people he lived with.
Another man, who lives in Bielefeld, saw information about the nine-day workshop and told practitioners that Falun Dafa was exactly what he had been looking for. After two days of classes, he had to go to France. He told practitioners that the two days of class had planted a seed in him, and that he would learn Falun Dafa when he returned home.
After the nine-day workshop, the participants wanted to keep in touch, so practitioners set up a platform for them to communicate. Two people recently said that they wanted to study the Fa and that if practitioners were going to study the Fa online to let them know and they would study with them when they are free.
Last Sunday, two new students joined the group exercises at Frankfurt’s group practice site. One of them introduced Falun Dafa to passerby at the practice site.
Looking back at the promotion of the second nine-day workshop, many practitioners in the group participated, and in a short period of time, we had put up 250 posters and distributed 2,500 leaflets. The whole process, from finding a place for the class, putting up posters, distributing flyers, finding people who are predestined to participate, and teaching the nine-day classes, was permeated with the overall cultivation process of cooperation, mutual support, and joint efforts. Everyone has a common wish: to give more people the opportunity to enter Dafa cultivation.
Not long ago, I received a phone call from a woman who saw our nine-day workshop flyer at a supermarket. Because the flyer was outdated, she said she wanted to participate in the next workshop. There were also people who were unable to participate in the last nine-day class due to going away for vacation and other travel, so they asked us to inform them when the workshop will be held in the future. This tells us that many people are still waiting to attend the introductory workshop. We have this mission to bring more predestined people into the nine-day class and into Dafa cultivation.