(Minghui.org) My ordinary family is the most extraordinary family in China.

Let me begin by explaining why we are just an ordinary family. We are farmers in a rural village in northeastern China. Life has never been easy, but we make ends meet by working hard. My family is one out of the countless farming families in China.

Now let me describe how extraordinary we are. When I was 12 years old, I came down with an ailment that made me shake involuntarily. As I got older, the condition worsened. I later suffered from tuberculosis, pleurisy, and rheumatic arthritis that affected my heart. Another girl in our village who came down with the same illness died, while I lived.

The village women were meeting to play cards one day at the end of 1998, and I wanted to go, too. My husband was upset and said, “Look at how you tremble and shake. Do you think you could ever win like that?”

That made me angry, and I said, “I worked hard all year, and you can’t even give me 20 or 30 yuan to go have some fun? Even if I lost, what would it matter?”

Still angry and upset, I thought to myself, “What is the point of arguing with him. I might as well go over to my mother’s. I heard they are watching a qigong video.”

My brother gave me Zhuan Falun, the main text of Falun Dafa, and told me to read it. When I said I didn’t want to, he said, “This book is great. I am considered to be a good person. But, if I were to compare myself with this book, I would fall far short. Take this book home and read it. Cultivating one’s heart is a good thing.”

I took my six-year-old son with me and learned Falun Dafa’s five exercises with everyone that evening. I didn’t go to be cured, but after that, all my ailments disappeared without my noticing it. I felt light, and I suddenly had energy for farm work again. I thought to myself, “This practice is truly wonderful. I must cultivate it for the rest of my life.”

I never expected that Jiang Zemin would initiate a nationwide suppression of Falun Dafa, which officially began in July 1999. I read in the truth-clarification informational materials that over 50 Falun Dafa practitioners had been persecuted to death. I told my husband, who was not a practitioner, “This isn’t right. This injustice cannot continue. We know that the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance are good. If we don’t stand up for Dafa, who will?”

My husband did not oppose me, but he cried the night before I went to appeal. I said, “If I do not come back or if I am beaten to death, take care of our two children. Whatever you do, never say anything bad about Falun Dafa.” He cried as he saw me off the next day.

Finding a daughter-in-law for my son wasn’t an easy task because we were poor. I put away all my Dafa materials, because I was afraid the girl might have been misled by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda. Not long after my daughter-in-law married into our family, I accidentally left out a copy of the Minghui Weekly. She picked it up and realized that all the articles were written by saints. It was because of that copy of Minghui Weekly that my daughter-in-law started to cultivate Falun Dafa.

My son and daughter-in-law have three children, all of whom are now in elementary school. My grandchildren are very obedient and love to read and listen to cultivation sharing articles on the Minhui website. They listen to the sharing articles while doing their homework and even while going to sleep. They get good grades in school and rank among the top three. Their teachers often compliment them on their good grades and polite manners.

When my daughter-in-law was arrested, my son hurried home. He did not complain, ust started to cry, and said, “The path that she chose is not wrong. What is wrong with being a good person?” My granddaughter knelt in the yard, put her palms together in “heshi,” and said, “Master, please save my mother.” I took my three grandchildren to the police station to ask for the release of their mother. We were there for more than half the day, and the children never cried or made a fuss. They stayed quietly next to me. They still didn’t cry when we returned home. Instead, they divided up the chores, cleaned the rooms, and washed their own clothes.

The township government told me to stop by the office. When I did, they said that they would release my daughter-in-law if I wrote a guarantee statement. My heart was moved by this. Just then, it started to rain, and my grandchildren came to pick me up. They held an umbrella for me, saying they weren’t afraid of getting wet.

As soon as we got home, my granddaughter started to cry. She said, “Grandma, apologize to Master. Master has done so much for us and yet you still want to betray him. You have let him down. Grandma, if you don’t do well, my mother will never be able to come home. You have to be diligent.” As she spoke, she clenched her tiny fists and made the hand gesture to be diligent. I was struck by her words. How could such a young child say what she did!

This is how extraordinary our family is.