Norway: Promoting Falun Dafa on Norway's National Day

By Norwegian Dafa practitioners

Practitioners from Bodø (Northern Norway) and Oslo came to Sandnes, a town in Southern Norway to help the local group in Sandnes and Stavanger with activities to promote Falun Dafa during the Norwegian National Day and Whitsunday.

May 17th is the Norwegian National day. The Norwegians celebrate this day with big parades and everybody is on the street either watching or taking part at the parade. The majority of Norwegians wear their traditional costumes, which are extremely nice to look at, and which contributes to the serene and festive atmosphere. The city-office liked the idea of Falun Gong contributing to these celebrations so much that they gave us permission to decide freely for ourselves where in the city we would like to do the activities.

After the morning-parade, we first distributed balloons and demonstrated the exercises in the streets. Before the second afternoon-parade, we found a very nice place to hang up our banners (reading Falun Dafa and Truth-Compassion-Forbearance in Norwegian), so that the people taking part in the parade or watching it, could see it. Then, we demonstrated the exercises and distributed flyers to the spectators who were standing in lines along the street.

On May 18th, we first distributed flyers in the middle of the City of Stavanger to passers-by and demonstrated the exercises in a little park nearby the pedestrian mall.

Afterwards, we walked through the amusement park and distributed balloons to the kids. There was one Swedish man in his forties, working at a stand. When he got the flyer, he became very excited and said: "Oh, my friends have been looking for such a long time for someone who can teach us Qi Gong; but so far, we could not find anyone. It`s really difficult to find someone. It’s so good that you gave me this flyer! As soon as I get back to Sweden, I will call this Swedish Falun Gong contact-number!"

Later on, before we returned to Sandnes on the train, a man came up to us. He had seen us doing the meditation-exercises but had not get a flyer so far and was now looking for us. However, we weren’t in the park anymore - he just saw us again by chance. He told us that he also was doing some meditation at home, but what we were doing looked very interesting and he wanted to come to the Falun Gong practice-site.

On May 19th, we demonstrated the exercises in a park in the City of Sandnes and on May 20th, we demonstrated them again in the same park in Stavanger. A lot of people had already called the contact person of Sandnes and Stavanger and therefore, we could teach Falun Gong to the initial group of interested people in the late afternoon of May 20th.

Afterwards, we visited a Chinese man and his family who a practitioner had happened to bump into once on the street. They were extremely glad to see us and to talk with us because they had experienced (and suffered) the injustice of the Jiang regime for themselves. They enjoyed looking at our Chinese truth-clarifying material. (And offered us delicious Chinese food).

(This article was previously published without photographs of the event)