(Clearwisdom.net) My wife and I obtained Dafa early in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Fellow practitioners urged us to write our experiences for publication on the Internet.
The story happened in the backyard of a Christian church in a small town, which is located at the side of a railway station in the southeast part of our province. It was in the winter of 2001.
In the middle of November 2000, we went to Tiananmen Square to validate the Fa and appeal for an end to the persecution, and we were immediately arrested. We were later held in the provincial office of Heilongjiang Province in Beijing. I managed to flee from there and came to a small town during my homelessness. After my wife was released from her detention, we rented a room to live in with the help of some local Falun Gong practitioners.
Our house had two rooms and accommodated two families. The rooms were connected to each other with a wall separating them. The condition of the rooms were very poor. When we would speak loudly, we could hear each other, and outside, we could also see each other, as we were separated only by some wooden boards in the yard. The roof was covered with a kind of paper soaked with asphalt, which could easily catch fire. The yard was very small, so we piled the coal for the winter outside the room between the door and the window. We also bought some wooden boards and stacked them in front of the window and the wall. Our neighbor also had their coal and a wooden warehouse in their yard.
During the winter of that year, I was detained in a detention center and my wife was living alone. One day, she went to visit her sister-in-law, who lived very close to our house. When they were talking, her sister-in-law saw a house in the neighborhood that was on fire with thick black smoke, and the sky was instantly lit up by the raging flames. In haste, she said to my wife "Sister, you better go home immediately. There is a fire in the neighborhood of your house." My wife then left her and went home, thinking, "My home cannot be on fire, for I am a Falun Gong practitioner."
The fire spread very fast. The two houses at the right front side and the right back side of our house were on fire, and the room of our neighbor living next to us was also on fire. The wooden warehouse and coal pile in his yard were also on fire. At the time, the fire was so big that no one would dare to get close as their face might be burned.
At the moment my wife arrived, she tried to enter the yard. Someone said to her "Do not enter the yard. The fire is too big and it is dangerous." She went ahead and entered the yard and said "I will be fine." She thought she should not leave the Dafa books and Falun Gong exercise tapes in the fire. Then she broke into our room, put the Dafa books and tapes into a bag and left.
When she entered the room for the second time to get our money, she tuned her head and saw a Falun rotating above the roof. Seeing this, she was in tears and thought, "Teacher thank you for protecting your student."
When the firemen arrived, the wood manufacturing factory in the neighborhood was almost completely burned, leaving only the building frame. Since the fire hydrant was at the back of the church in the street, the firemen has to lead the water pipe to the fire though the garage at the side of the church, and it took them quite a long time to put out the fire.
Later, the fire was found to be caused by a power failure in the wood manufacturing factory. The home of the mayor of the town and the factory were almost completely burned. Our neighbor also suffered great losses. The window and door of their room were burned, and their warehouse, their coal pile and the separating wooden boards in their yard were also completely burned. As for us, we suffered no loss, as everything, including our room, the coal outside our window, and the wooden boards in the yard, were left intact.
At the time, people at the site of the fire were very curious about what they saw. "The fire almost burned everything of theirs. But their neighbor, living just next to them, escaped the fire. It is really incredible!" They did not know that Falun Gong's Teacher is protecting his students, and it was the Falun that was the reason for the miracle.