Revealing the Facts of the Persecution at a Half Marathon Race in the United Kingdom

Good day! My name is Ben and I am from the United Kingdom, I have practised cultivation for about eight months and in this time I have had many interesting experiences. Today I am going to talk about a very good experience of informing people about Falun Gong and the persecution that is taking place by running a half marathon in a town called Reading in the UK.

I have a friend who is also a practitioner and lives in the same town as me a place called Dorking. One day he phoned me and told me that a friend of his had dropped out of a race due to an injury and he was asked to run in his place, this race was the Reading half marathon. He was going to run in a Falun Dafa T-shirt and asked me if I would come along and hand out factual materials about Falun Dafa in the crowd; I agreed but, I always used to be quite shy so I was a bit nervous about the idea. The next weekend we set off for Reading my friend with his running shoes and me with a large rucksack full of Falun Dafa news papers as well as some smaller leaflets that I was given unexpectedly just before I left, both of us wore Falun Dafa t-shirts. When we got to Reading we had to take a bus to where the race started, we were sitting next to a very nice lady on the bus who we were able to clarify the truth to. We were late to the start point so my friend had to start immediately, I said good bye and got out some papers from my bag ready to give out to people.

As the race had already started, there weren’t many people left at the start and the ones that were left didn’t seem to want to accept my Falun Dafa newspapers. I looked within and found that I was nervous. I thought maybe I’d do better if there were more people to give the papers to. I had a map of the race and realised that there was a point in the course where I could take a short cut to get in front of the runners so there would be a larger crowd as they would be waiting for the runners to pass. I knew I had to be quick so I started to run, I was far behind the main group of runners but, there were still a few slow or older runners and some spectators left. As there were spectators on the pavement I had to run on the road, as I was running people were looking at me and clapping saying “c’mon your doing really well! Keep it up!” I found this strange and thought “Wow! They think I’m in the race!” As they were smiling at me I thought that they would probably accept the paper. So I handed some out as I ran, and sure enough they accepted them with much gratitude, some times even asking me for one. My nerves and fears started to disappear too.

Then I got to my short cut which cut about 1.2 miles off the course. After the short cut I arrived at a place where the main group of runners were going past, I stopped to catch my breath and see if my friend was running past, but I couldn’t see him. I tried to hand out some papers in the crowed but, most people didn’t accept them and looked at me as if I was a nuisance, spoiling their enjoyment of the race. I looked in my mind and found that when I was running my thoughts had been very focused, so the out come of my handing out papers had been good but, now my shyness had returned and this was impeding my work. I realised at that point “I’ve got about 400 papers in my bag if I’m to hand them all out I’m going to have to run the whole race!” I had never run 13 miles before but, I thought that maybe it was Master testing my endurance, so I’d better do it. As I started to run my mind became clear again and people were happy to accept the paper some even saying “Thank you very much young man” as if they had been there waiting for me to come past. Everyone I saw was happy and smiling which gave me great strength to keep going. There was also one very obvious predestined relation ship which stuck in my mind: at one point my shoe lace became untied so I stopped by a wall a short distance from a street corner to tie it and get some more papers out of my bag; this took about a minute. I then started running again; as I went round the corner four Chinese girls stepped out of an alleyway and were suddenly standing right in front of me, they were very pleased to accept the leaflet. As I ran on the course turned around and came back on the other side of the street, I looked across and saw them still standing there eagerly reading the information. I can’t help but think that maybe it was teacher who untied my shoe lace as I would have missed them if I hadn’t stopped.

As I ran further I handed out many more papers to people with pre-destined relationships, I experienced a very wonderful feeling and was not tired at all. But, inevitably I ran out of papers, though I was still quite far from the finish. I decided to walk for a bit so as to think about what to do and I started to feel very tired which I found strange as I had been so full of energy a few moments ago. I then thought “maybe I need food?” so I got a sandwich out of my bag and started to eat, but this did no good. Then I thought maybe it’s my attachments but, I looked within and found no obvious attachment. Then I suddenly remembered, I had been given about 200 extra small leaflets just before I left which were hidden in the bottom of my bag. As soon, as I got them out my energy started to return and many more people accepted them with a smile and encouraged me a lot. When I finally ran out of the small leaflets, it was only about 3 miles from the end of the race and as the last section was out of town there were no more spectators, which I thought was very convenient. One of the marshals asked me about my t-shirt as I passed so I told her about the persecution, and she replied “You stick up for them!”

About a mile from the end I went through a park and started to walk, gazing up at the sky as it looked very beautiful with the sun shining through the clouds in rays. I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to read some Falun Gong teachings now.” I remembered that I had one of Teacher’s poems in my wallet, so I got it out to read:

“Pre-destined relationships spanning endless life times,
Each connected by the thread of Dafa
Through hard ships a body of gold is tempered
Why such slow and leisurely steps?”

I looked down at my feet and they were taking very leisurely steps, so I immediately started to run and made it to the end where me and my friend were reunited and joyfully exchanged stories of the race. Both our legs were very painful afterwards as we hadn’t done any training for the race but neither of us cared!

This experience proved to me the power if Falun Dafa and how only two practitioners can reach many hundreds of people. I really am not a runner and probably would have collapsed half way through that race if it wasn’t for the power of Dafa pulling me along. I still have many attachments to release but, I think it was this experience that set me on the path of Fa rectification cultivation. I thank our benevolent Master and hope that we can all do very well in the time to come.