United States: Introducing Falun Gong on Earth Day 2003 in Columbia, Missouri

Columbia Falun Gong practitioners have been introducing Falun Dafa to local people on every Earth Day Festival. On April 27, 2003, the weather in Columbia was especially pleasant with the warm sunshine and the happiness that people exuded.

As before, practitioners once again displayed the goodness of Falun Dafa to people. Different from previous times, we found that more people have seen clearly the evil nature of the persecution that continues in China and more people have understood Falun Dafa in positive way.

Practitioners in bright golden exercise suits repeatedly demonstrated the five sets of exercises. Smooth, elegant exercise movements and the peaceful, compassionate energy field attracted many passersby. Some of them sat in front of our booth looking at the Dafa truth-clarifying materials and the practitioners' exercises demonstration. One person sat on the ground and watched for quite a while. Many people took pictures and videotaped us. When the practitioners performed the fifth exercise, local news reporters who came to cover activities on Earth Day Festival shot video footage of the demonstration.

One person passed our booth and took some materials. An hour later, he came back to enquire about the Falun Gong exercises and wanted to learn to practice the exercises. Many people left their contact information with us. Many also signed their names on the petition to rescue Dr. Charles Li.

A mother and son from China passed through our booth without saying anything. But just after passing by us for about 10 meters, they stopped and watched us to perform the exercises. Her son even following along with us as we were demonstrating the exercises.

A young lady was very interested in our exercise demonstration. She invited us to teach the exercises to her whole family, because they lived quite far and couldn't participate in our instruction session. They learned very attentively and told us afterwards that they felt very good.

An elderly man walked to our booth to request two Falun Gong newspapers. He said that his granddaughter was doing research on China and they discovered Falun Gong while searching for materials in the library. They had an idea to do research on the persecution of Falun Gong. He said that he would send his granddaughter a copy of the Falun Gong newspaper.

When he saw the petition calling for the release of Charles Li and learned about what happened to him, he signed his name without hesitation and wished us good luck. When he learned that one practitioner is a student at the biochemical department of the University of Missouri, he was very pleased and told her that he is a professor in that department and asked her to keep in touch with him.

During our activity to introduce Falun Dafa to the public, we feel that more and more people have seen clearly the evil nature of the persecution that continues in China, and they have become more clearheaded and more rational. More and more people have understood Dafa positively.