(Clearwisdom.net) I'm a Western practitioner who began to practice Falun Gong in January 1999 in Canada. In the last five years, I've had the privilege to work on many truth-clarifying projects. One area I'd not supported very well outwardly was the 24/7 appeal in front of the local Chinese consulate.

In Lecture Nine of Zhuan Falun, Teacher writes, "It has been said: "When I come to this ordinary human society, it's just like checking into a hotel for a few days. Then I leave in a hurry." Some people are just obsessed with this place and have forgotten their own homes." I've always tended to treat my apartments like hotels, and have moved often, so as to be close to where my current focus of action is. At the end of 2003, I moved to a small apartment half a block away from the Chinese consulate. It provides numerous opportunities to validate Dafa!

It's not easy to forget to send righteous thoughts when living close to the consulate! Within the first week or two, one experience showed me just how important it is to maintain our peaceful appeals outside these ordinary-looking buildings. I was sitting in the lotus position with my palm erect when I suddenly became aware of a huge mass of black matter standing behind me and towering over me with a feeling of incredible hatred towards me. Immediately, I asked Teacher to help me eliminate it. And it disappeared. There is much evil in the vicinity.

During the first few weeks of 2004, I helped to polish many English translations of letters written by the Chinese practitioners to our Foreign Minister, asking him to take the necessary steps to remove an exhibit of photographs and articles on the wall of the Visa office inside the Chinese consulate. This defamatory exhibit contravenes the United Nations International Law Commission's 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and Optional Protocols. The Convention states that the visiting officials must act "in accordance with the laws and regulations of the receiving State." Displaying and distributing hate literature is a criminal offence in Canada. The pure hearts of so many practitioners expressed through those letters made a deep impression on me, and made me much more determined to validate Dafa near the consulate to mitigate future poisoning of the people who go there.

Last week, I realized that there was nothing to stop me from talking to any of the Chinese people parking their cars near the consulate. It was a personal breakthrough for me, although many might think it seems such an obvious thing to do. Some visitors refuse the truth-clarifying literature offered by the Chinese practitioners, but because I'm an older woman and not Chinese, those same people will stop and listen to me politely when I say, "Excuse me! I hope you don't believe those pictures inside the consulate. They are lies." ... and I tell them that Falun Gong is a wonderful practice and that it restored my health after cancer. Some have had a genuine change in their eyes and I know that one layer of poison has been destroyed. One very refined-looking businessman had such a sadness in his eyes and shook his head with a quiet "sorry" when I asked if he would like to ask me any questions after I'd told him how good the practice is. But even so, it felt as if at least one seed of doubt had been sown and a little ray of sunshine of the goodness of our practice had penetrated those layers of poison planted in his mind against us.

Today, I passed by just before the gate re-opened after the lunch break and there were almost 20 people waiting! It was a great opportunity. I did my best, and many of them listened carefully when I said that for seven years, the government in China supported Falun Gong and that it was only after Jiang Zemin learned that there were more practitioners than members of the Communist party that he began the persecution. And I asked them to look at things rationally.

If your city has either a Chinese embassy or consulate, I'd like to encourage you to take part in as many Fa-rectification activities there as you can. My cultivation has definitely intensified and I know that my efforts are helping to save people.