(Minghui.org) Master Li Hongzhi said:

“Thus great numbers of beings are to be saved by you. Dafa disciples, don’t forsake the magnificent responsibility that has been bestowed upon you in Fa-rectification, and even less should you disappoint those beings, as you are now their only hope for entering the future. For this reason, all Dafa disciples, students both new and veteran, should get to work and begin comprehensively clarifying the truth. This is especially so for the Dafa disciples in mainland China: each must come out and clarify the truth, bringing it to every field and valley, mountain and hill, not omitting a single area where there are people.” (“Let Go of Human Attachments and Save the World’s People,” The Essentials of Diligent Progress Vol. III)

I live in the countryside of Shandong Province. Our Falun Dafa practitioners work on the farm in the daytime and gather together at night to study the Fa. In addition, we often clarify the truth about Falun Dafa and give informational pamphlets to people in the public markets. We also frequently hang banners and affix posters in the nearby villages in the evening. We sometimes hang the banners on high voltage lines, making it difficult for them to be removed.

Even on the eve of Chinese New Year, when every family reunites and celebrates, we put up posters and banners in nearby villages until after midnight. Although it was often freezing, we felt warm in our heart.

We focused too much on doing things, however, and not enough on cultivating ourselves and looking inward. The evil factors took advantage of our oversight and controlled people to report us to the authorities. The police told the village officials to constantly monitor and harass practitioners.

We discussed the issue during our study group and realized that the first thing we needed to do was talk to the village officials about Falun Dafa. If they could understand that we were good people who wanted to help offer salvation to people, while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was doing harm, they would not persecute practitioners. This would not only give the officials a great future, but also clear a hurdle that was preventing us from saving more sentient beings.

I was tasked with talking to the village CCP secretary. Everyone was a little hesitant to tell the Party secretary the facts about Falun Dafa since it could lead to increased persecution. I was reluctant since I had not spoken with him much before, but I had to try no matter how difficult it felt.

I first put some pamphlets in front of the secretary’s home. I also sent righteous thoughts and asked Master Li to give me strength. Before going to the secretary’s home for the first time, I thought about what I would say. On the way there, however, my mind went blank, and my legs didn't want to move. I became so nervous that I started to doubt myself. I calmed down and encouraged myself by remembering that all these fears were not my own. They came from my attachments.

I finally arrived at his home and started to talk about Falun Dafa, but he immediately pushed back because he was heavily brainwashed by the Communist Party culture. When I returned home, I felt discouraged and started to look inward. I realized that my approach was wrong. I needed to save him as a person—not as a CCP official.

I subsequently sent righteous thoughts and went to his home again. First, I started by talking with his wife. When I changed the topic to Falun Dafa, he still said, “We should not do things that the CCP does not allow us to do, and whatever the CCP deems illegal must be illegal.”

I realized that his mind was hindered by the notion of considering himself to be an official and me to be a commoner. I said, “I told you Falun Dafa is good and what the CCP told you is lies. But you didn't hear what I said because you see yourself in the role of being a Party secretary and me as a commoner. However, a commoner does not have as much responsibility as you do and won’t waste the opportunity to learn the facts.”

I continued, “Let’s chat as neighbors instead. Let me be honest with you and tell you what Falun Dafa is, what the CCP is all about, and why Jiang’s regime decided to persecute Dafa.”

I could feel that the evil factors in other dimensions which were controlling him were being dissolved by my righteous thoughts. He stopped arguing with me and attentively listened. I told him about the CCP’s history of using political movements to persecute over 80 million Chinese people, including the Cultural Revolution, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the persecution of Falun Dafa. I then explained the practice of Dafa in great detail.

He and his wife listened, and when I finished, he smiled and genuinely praised me. His wife even asked me whether she could read the book Zhuan Falun. I asked him to protect Dafa practitioners at work, and he agreed.

He kept his word. When the police went to ransack practitioners’ homes, he warned them in advance to hide their books, banners, and pamphlets. When the upper level authorities came to harass practitioners, he no longer led the way.

Someone reported us to the county police department for giving them some pamphlets. When the village party secretary heard that there may be a large-scale arrest of Dafa practitioners, he immediately notified us to leave home and go into hiding. The police were canny, however, and did not come on the scheduled day.

Another group of officers from the county police department, domestic security team, and police station suddenly arrived at the party secretary's home two days later and asked him to lead them to the practitioners’ homes.

He had no time to notify us, but he was quick-witted and told the police that there were no Falun Dafa adherents in his village. The police did not believe him and wanted to look for themselves. He directed them to call any village official they wanted to check with. So the police called the directors of the village committee and women's league to come over.

As soon as the directors entered the door, the secretary said to them, “The leaders in the county think there are Falun Dafa practitioners in our village. I told them there was no such thing but they don’t believe me and wanted to ask you. Can you tell them whether there are practitioners in our village?”

The directors all replied that there were no practitioners. The officers were befuddled and ended up calling off the planned arrests.

The township often held meetings to arrange how to persecute Dafa adherents and assigned the highest quota to our village. The party secretary said at the meeting: “Let me be honest with you. You always want to arrest Falun Dafa practitioners. What’s wrong with them? Let me tell you, if all the villagers practiced Falun Dafa, my job would be much easier. The practitioners in my village always proactively pay their taxes. But many villagers often refuse to pay no matter what I say to them.”

After he returned, he told many people what he had said during the meeting. Soon, all the villagers knew and said, “If you want to practice Falun Dafa, please feel free. Even the party secretary supports you!”

The practitioners in our villages are no longer harassed. The party secretary was also rewarded with good blessings. When the trend of withdrawing membership from the CCP started in 2005, the secretary became the first person in my village to withdraw. Many people in our village understood the truth about Falun Dafa, and someone in almost every household has withdrawn from the CCP and its related organizations.