(Minghui.org) The annual 4th Street Lilac Festival was held in Calgary, Canada, on June 5, 2016. Hundreds of thousands of people attended this one-day event that featured over 500 vendors.
Falun Gong (also known as Falun Dafa) practitioners participated in the event, setting up a stall to inform festival-goers about the practice.
Practitioners tell visitors about Falun Gong.
Demonstrating the Falun Gong exercises
Crowds of people at the Lilac Festival
The festival was held on 4th Street between 13th and 28th Avenues, 13 blocks long. Many people visited the Falun Gong stall and paused to watch the practitioners' exercise demonstration. They took informational materials and asked where they could learn the practice.
Chinese visitors often greeted the practitioners. An elderly couple who had come to Canada from China just two days before collected a copy of each piece of information in Chinese. They listened to a practitioner explain Falun Gong and the lawsuits being filed against former Chinese dictator Jiang Zemin. They smiled and agreed that it was a good thing.
A young Westerner left his contact information and expressed a desire to attend the nine-day free teaching session. He said he felt the good energy in the Falun Gong stall and felt it was a good fit. A lady commented on a young practitioner, saying, “She looks like a fairy! Thank you for telling me about Falun Gong.”
While waiting to register for a nine-day free teaching session, a man mentioned that he had seen the Falun Gong exercise demonstration at the Lilac Festival a few years before. He said he was impressed with the practitioners’ peacefulness as they demonstrated the exercises in the noisy surroundings. When a practitioner gave him a paper lotus flower after he finished filling in the form, he said, “This is my fate!”
