(Clearwisdom.net)
Greetings, Master! Greetings, fellow practitioners!
I was very excited to see Minghui's notice about collecting papers for the Eighth Internet Experience Sharing Conference. In the previous two conferences, my human notion of thinking I did not cultivate well enough and did not have any outstanding sharing to write about caused me to miss the opportunity to report to Master. Through reading fellow practitioners' sharings, I was determined this time to write about the little things in my cultivation to share with fellow practitioners and to report to our great Teacher.
I am 80 years old and I obtained the Fa in July 1999. Over the past dozen years, with a firm belief in Master and Dafa, I have been able to cultivate until today. Before I began practicing Falun Dafa, my left leg was almost disabled due to many illnesses I had, and, as a result, I retired early. After obtaining the Fa, all my illnesses, including lumbar and cervical bone hyperplasia, fluid accumulation in my left kidney, and urinary tract stones, all disappeared. In the past 12 years, I also was in serious danger three times (I fell from great height and had a compound fracture that healed in 20 days; I was hit twice by a motorcycle and I bounced more than four meters away, but I didn't get hurt at all; something fell from a high building under construction, but I happened to be leaning away, so it just missed me), but Master protected me and gave me second chances. I have the greatest respect for Master. Through studying the Fa, my perspective on life completely changed. I found the real purpose of being a human being, which is to return to one's true self. I was determined to follow Master and to cultivate until the final day. Fellow practitioners and I went into many rural areas to spread the Fa, and many people with predestined relationships walked into Dafa cultivation. I was also a volunteer assistant in an exercise site.
On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started to aggressively persecute Falun Gong. I continued to believe in Master and Dafa. I encouraged myself with Master's teachings and eliminated the notion of fear. The evil Party said that they would stop giving me a pension. I said, “There are more than one billion people in the country and only a very small percentage get a pension. The rest all feed themselves by their own labor. Why couldn't I do that? If you really stop my pension, then even if I have to pick up trash, I will still cultivate until the end.” The Party closed down our exercise site, but they could not stop me from practicing on my balcony. They had big speakers play slanderous messages, but we have more than 100 million “small speakers” to clarify the facts. Since then, I have used my own personal experience to spread Dafa and clarify the facts. I used the facts to expose the evil CCP lies and to explain to people that Dafa is truly beneficial for the country and for the people. Fellow practitioners meet with each other in all kinds of different ways and in different locations to study the Fa together, share with each other, and exchange materials. We also planned and set up many Fa study groups so that everyone could improve together. There are a dozen of us in the Fa study group that I'm part of, and the time and location we meet varies every time. We meet one to two times a week and have never stopped since July 20, 1999. With Master's care, we have not suffered much persecution. Each practitioner in our group takes on responsibilities such as distributing informational materials, clarifying the facts, convincing people to quit the CCP, getting on the Internet to download materials, transferring the names of people who have quit the CCP, etc., depending on the different abilities we have. In the past years we have convinced over 20,000 people to quit the CCP.
Since 2004, two major incidents of persecution have taken place in our area. The material site was shut down twice and more than a dozen practitioners were sentenced and sent to labor camps. Our technically skilled practitioners were arrested and their equipment was confiscated. As a result, we had an extreme shortage of materials. We could not read Teacher's new articles, could not read the sharing articles on Minghui, and did not know where to get the pamphlets and DVDs to save sentient beings. We searched within and found that one of the major problems we had was the notion of always relying on others. We did not follow the principle of “having material sites blossom everywhere” and the evil took advantage of it. Several coordinators discussed the problem and we asked all capable practitioners to come, learn, and take part in making materials. I also took on the responsibility.
In order to make materials, the first thing one must know is how to use a computer. I had no clue about computers, and I thought I was too old to learn. However, most of the practitioners here are elderly and few of them had gone to school like I did. I thought that Master had arranged for me to go to school when I was young just for this day. So I was determined to learn to use a computer. Master said on the last page of Zhuan Falun,
“In fact, that is how it is. Why don’t you give it a try when you return home. When you are overcoming a real hardship or tribulation, you try it. When it is difficult to endure, try to endure it. When it looks impossible and is said to be impossible, give it a try and see if it is possible. If you can actually do it, you will indeed find: 'After passing the shady willow trees, there will be bright flowers and another village ahead!'”
Master's words have given me much encouragement. With Master's hints, I first took out the computer that my oldest son had left at home and connected it to the Internet. I then asked my grandson, who was in junior high school, to teach me. At first I could not remember the steps, so I asked my grandson to slowly click the mouse, and I wrote down every step. Then I would try to do it on my own again and again. Within half a day I learned how to get on ordinary people's websites. Then I got fellow practitioners to install the special software to break through the Internet blockade and teach me how to get on Minghui. When I first saw Master's articles, I didn't know how to download or print them, so I just hand-copied them. For the short ones, I would hand-write a number of copies and give one to each of the Fa-study groups. For the long ones, I could only hand-copy it once and then spread it around each Fa study group. But how long could we keep this up? Eventually, Master put out a new article that was quite long. I remembered that my grandson's home computer had a printer, so I went to his home and got on Minghui and asked him to print a copy. I took it to the Fa study group and a fellow practitioner who knew some people in the copy-shop took it there to make many copies.
In this difficult process, Master saw my heart of wanting to save sentient beings and arranged a fellow practitioner to teach me how to download, copy, and print. A coordinator also helped and prepared a laptop computer and a printer. The technically-minded practitioner patiently helped me, and I used my old method of writing down each step and then tried it on my own again and again. The hardest thing for me was to type the characters, because we needed to type up the names of the people who quit the CCP as well as to report local information. I had never learned pinyin, but I was determined to learn, whatever it took. I first was going to try a method called “Wubi,” but I could not understand it at all. Then I bought a large poster with the letters for pinyin and hung it on the wall, so that I could try to make up the words. That still didn't work, and I ended up using a dictionary to search character by character. It was too slow, though, and I could not do many characters in a day. Later I heard there were handwriting boards, so I immediately went to a computer shop to purchase one. It worked well after I installed it, and this problem was finally resolved.
Through several months of practicing, I learned most of the techniques for downloading, copying, and printing Minghui Weekly; copying DVDs; and putting up the names of people who had quit the CCP. Fellow practitioners also helped me to install double systems in the computer and a software for creating encrypted files. Several dozen practitioners in the area all bought MP3 and MP4 players, so I took the responsibility for downloading and installing the files for them. That way they could read Master's new articles in a timely manner and hear the voices from Minghui, and this would help them cultivate and save more sentient beings. Other practitioners also shared the load of copying files, burning DVDs, making cards, writing messages on paper currency, etc. Gradually we reached the goal of “having material sites everywhere.”
It was really all by Master's arrangements that I learned how to use the computer in order to save sentient beings. Every time I encountered difficulties or interference, Master helped and hinted things to me, opened up my wisdom, and solved the issues. Every time I could not open a webpage, it was with Master's help and a righteous mind that I was able to break through. As long as we have the thought to save sentient beings, Master will always help us.
I encountered lots of problems here and there, and I could not always bother technically skilled practitioners to help me. Thus I went to computer sale or repair shops to learn about different things, and they have helped me resolve some difficult issues as well. Now I am able to take care of some simple issues.
The material site in my home was established not long ago and still has many issues. I still have many notions and do not do a good job in clarifying the facts face-to-face. I still have many attachments, such as being afraid of hardships, wanting to do things, impatience, a competitive mentality, attachment to fear, etc., and some of them are severe. However, I am determined to eliminate them in my cultivation and become a truly qualified Dafa practitioner.