On the afternoon of February 6, 2005, I set off from Lima, the capital of Peru, for La Paz, Bolivia, and spent a week there introducing Falun Dafa with a practitioner from Venezuela called Gilberto.
A family with a predestined relationship with Falun Dafa
Vladimir is a young college student who practises martial arts. One day, he accidentally ran across the words "Falun Dafa" on his computer and he felt very interested in it. Thus, he started searching for articles about Falun Dafa. Last year, when he went to Lima to attend a martial arts contest, he found a Falun Gong practice site. Vladimir learned the five sets of Falun Gong exercises. After he returned to his country, he has kept in touch with practitioners in Peru. When we arrived in La Paz, Vladimir took us to his home and his mother warmly received us.
The City of La Paz is located at an elevation of more 3,600 meters, while Vladimir resides in a suburb that is 4,100 metres above sea-level. By chance, on the day we arrived there was a carnival in Bolivia, for the first day of its National Day Celebration. There was a festival atmosphere all the way from downtown La Paz to its suburbs.
On the second afternoon of our visit, Vladimir's mother, grandmother and young cousins all requested to learn the practice of Falun Gong. Noticing that his grandmother's legs were disabled and that it was quite hard for her to move around, I asked her to sit down to learn the exercises. To our surprise, when we did the stretching movements of the first exercise, she suddenly stood up and practised with us. She did not sit down until we finished the fourth exercise. I was quite moved by her sincere attitude towards learning the exercises. I was also amazed by Vladimir's mother's accurate movements, which looked as if she had practised for quite some time. The young cousins tried very hard to learn the exercises as accurately as they could. We learned later that as soon as they went home, they taught their parents to practise the exercises and gave them leaflets about the practice to read.
Setting up a practice site in the city of La Paz
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| Learning the Falun Gong exercises and studying the principles of Falun Dafa in the introductory book Falun Gong | ||
Previously, Vladimir went to La Plaza Avaroa every day to practise martial arts with other local martial arts practitioners. On February 7, the second day of our journey, more than ten people were already waiting at the plaza to learn Falun Gong when we arrived there at 9:00 a.m. They practised the Falun Gong exercises with us to the practice music, and the peaceful and auspicious field of righteous thoughts made a deep impression on these people with a predestined relationship with Falun Dafa. After the practise, they all asked to continue learning the Falun Gong exercises the next day.
February 9 was the traditional Chinese Lunar New Year's Day. When Vladimir learned that Falun Dafa practitioners from Mainland China and all over the world sent greetings to Master Li each Lunar New Year, he asked us to send a letter to Clearwisdom.net to respectfully wish Master Li a Happy New Year and to express Bolivian practitioners' respect toward Master.
On February 8, we went back to the plaza. The new practitioners wished us a happy Lunar New Year and thanked us for teaching them the exercises. Because February 8 was the last day of Bolivia's Carnival, the celebration reached its climax. People danced, drank beer and caroused until midnight. On the plaza, we continued to teach and practise the exercises serenely and quietly. The contrast left a deep impression on these new practitioners.
In order to guide the new practitioners to study the principles of Falun Dafa and follow the method of cultivation practice that Master taught us, we made several copies of the Spanish version of the book, Falun Gong, the introductory text of Falun Dafa. After practising the exercises, we read together from the new Spanish version of Falun Gong. The new practitioners felt very good about reading the book and only stopped when they had to go to work.
Exposing the persecution of Falun Dafa to the local government and media
Last November, Australian Falun Gong practitioner Ms. Jane Dai filed a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin and Luo Gan in Sucre, Bolivia. Although there were no local Falun Gong practitioners at that time, media reports about the lawsuit aroused attention and sympathy from people from all walks of life.
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| Being interviewed by a TV station |
On the morning of February 9, we met with three TV news anchors who were reporting on the government. We talked to them about Falun Gong and the unreasonable persecution suffered by practitioners in China. They listened attentively and sympathetically, and some of them said that they would come to the practice site to conduct an interview. That afternoon, we visited the newspaper offices of El Diario and La Prensa. Both daily newspapers are distributed across the country. A reporter from La Prensa was quite moved upon hearing about Falun Dafa and expressed her deep sympathy to practitioners who are currently persecuted in China. She interviewed us herself and told us that the report would be published on Friday.
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| Talking about Falun Dafa and the persecution with local media and the staff of La Paz City Hall | |
On February 10, we visited La Paz City Hall and delivered information materials to members of staff. One after another, they asked us for leaflets and asked about the local practice site. Several expressed a wish to learn the practice. In the afternoon, after we talked to him about Falun Dafa, a columnist from the newspaper La Razon told us that he would like to write about our story in his column.
At around 4:30 p.m. on February 11, we were invited to Fides, a popular radio station. Vladimir, the new practitioner from Bolivia, talked about his own experience of how practising and studying Falun Gong has helped him to increase his wisdom and get better grades in his studies. After listening to our introduction to Falun Gong, the anchor told the audience that she believed that Falun Gong's principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance are more important than the exercise itself. Our program at the radio station interested another host, who joined our enthusiastic discussion. The original anchor said that we had only 20 minutes for the interview, but it turned out that she talked with us for an hour and still wanted to talk with us more. After the interview, we went back to our hotel and were interviewed by TV Channel 18. We demonstrated the five sets of exercises for the television audience.
On Saturday morning, Gilberto and I went to the plaza before 8:00 a.m. About forty people were already waiting there to learn the exercises. Several more people came to learn the practice before they left. When the second group of 15 people attentively learned the exercises, film crews from TV Channel 18 and Channel 2 came over to conduct an interview. The reporters felt the peaceful and auspicious field and learned the exercises along with the others. The reporters from the two TV stations were very satisfied about the interview and told us when the story would be broadcast.
In the afternoon, we said goodbye to the practitioners in Bolivia and took the bus back to Lima, Peru. As the bus was leaving La Paz, a rainbow appeared in the sky above the city.
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