San Francisco Van Tour: Denver to Wichita

The weather was a vibrant contrast to what we had experienced the night before. A few minutes before 10:00, the clouds literally parted, to expose a brilliant sun. (The event was scheduled from 10:00 to 1:00.) The immense Denver Capitol building has a lovely gold rotunda, and sits high on a hill. A Denver practitioner told me that Denver has the highest Capitol building in the nation, since it is the "Mile High City." Our site was adjacent to and across the street from the Capitol building.

We greeted media before the program. Most of them arrived on time this time. The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, and two TV stations participated. About 30 people passed by to hear some part of the program or receive a flyer. This was pretty good, as there was not too much foot traffic in the area.

Our press statement was read, and then several support letters from local government officials were read. Yang Li and Zhou Bin gave their personal accounts of harassment by the Chinese government.

We were pleased with how the program went today. We implemented some new ideas, based on our priority of being there for the media, and striving to meet a professional level. In our strategy meetings, we seem to be communicating more freely and directly, and getting better results for our efforts. At night, for most of us, more than 4 hours sleep would be a luxury, but we are getting used to this. Dozing in the car (when not driving, of course), also helps. We try to keep Teacher's tapes on while driving. On the way to the site today, it really helped to create righteous minds. The Chinese practitioners from the other van noted that there was a noticeable difference between our presentations when we listened a lot before Salt Lake City, compared to less, before Cheyenne.

One of the local representative's assistants arrived after our formal program. Huy talked to her, and at one point, they were both moved to tears over the tragic facts of the persecution. She vowed that she would come to the local practice group site to learn the exercises.

Afterwards, we walked downtown to go to lunch. The center of downtown is very pedestrian user-friendly, with spacious sidewalks, creating a pedestrian mall effect. The buildings are very tall. Our practitioners passed out flyers, and most all were accepted. So many practitioners have commented to me how "good" people here are, and how they have not been poisoned by the CCG's influence. In one interview today, the cameraman mention to me that not much was known about Falun Gong and the persecution in their area. I heard from someone else that there is a big tai chi influence in this town. Yang Mama, as we affectionately call her, works tirelessly to pass out flyers, and is very diligent about getting signatures wherever we go: restaurants, motels, rest stops, etc. She always speaks confidently to people in Chinese, no matter who they are, and gets positive results, even if having to wait for the person to come to their senses. She has no attachment about being refused, or that she does not speak English. (One practitioner expressed that it is purely a heart connection.) She also makes it her personal responsibility to see that everyone eats--so we do, whether we want to or not. Her powers of persuasion are awesome.

Further out from Denver, the countryside is gradually leveling out. One of our practitioners saw 3 mini-tornadoes in a field, so we did righteous thoughts to deter interference.

In lieu of stopping for dinner, we made a couple of pit stops. During the second one, after 9:00, we did the exercises in a grassy rest stop. Brad suggested we do Exercise One, which we did. Someone took a couple of pictures of us. It was nice and breezy, and the fireflies were out (something we don't have, in California). We arrived at our motel after 10:30, got details for the next day and cut our meeting short. We are losing an hour, crossing another time zone, so sleep will really be at a minimum tonight.