(Minghui.org) My cousin got meningitis when he was a year old. My aunt was a poor farmer and did not have the money to take him to a doctor. Instead, she found a local healer who put drops of some potion in his ears. After that he was deaf and did not speak.
My cousin always went out for a walk after breakfast. If someone was busy, he would want to help them without asking for compensation. Although not everyone welcomed him, he often stubbornly insisted on helping out. He also helped people in other villages. Because of this unusual behavior, everyone in the village called him “Big Dummy.” My aunt called him “Mute.” After my uncle passed away, my aunt and my cousin had only each other to depend on.
When I was little, my cousin often walked dozens of miles to my house. He then walked home after dinner. He would also take stuff from my house. Perhaps he didn’t realize he was stealing. He also took money from my mother’s pocket every time she visited my aunt, and he was still doing that when he turned 60. But he never spent the money. When my aunt asked for the money, he always returned it to my mother.
The government considers my cousin “first-degree disabled” and in a low-income household, so he gets a subsidy of a little over 400 yuan per month. He and my aunt also lease their farmland for about 8,000 yuan a year. They are frugal, and manage to make ends meet on this limited income.
In early March 2021, my aunt had to take my cousin to the doctor, and she asked me to watch the house and feed her chickens and ducks while she was gone. She tried to make dumplings for me when I arrived. Before I sat down, she showed me how the fingers of her left hand trembled.
My cousin came home at dinnertime. He looked like he was in pain and sat down with a deep sigh. My aunt said that he was always gritting his teeth recently but she didn’t know where he hurt.
My aunt’s fingers were really trembling after dinner and her hand was icy cold. I said, “Auntie, you can learn Falun Dafa and it will help you.” I decided to teach her the sitting meditation, “Strengthening Supernatural Powers.”
Once we started, the spasms in my aunt’s fingers ceased. After a little while, she said that she felt a stream of cool air flowing out of her left hand and left armpit. I told her that Master Li, the founder of Falun Dafa, was cleansing her body.
I thought that my “dumb” cousin could not learn the exercises. But when I looked at him as we were about to “conjoin the hands,” he was watching us with intense concentration, so I taught him how to “Conjoin the Hands.”
He immediately sat down, motionless. After a while, I could feel that his cold hands were warm. That really surprised me.
On a whim, I decided to teach him the exercises. We started with the four mudras in the meditation exercise. To my surprise, he learned them quickly. At first, even the half-lotus posture was difficult for him, but as he learned the movements, his knees slowly lowered, and in the end, his legs were almost flat.
In just over an hour, he went through all four of the other exercises with me, and most of his movements were correct.
“He is not dumb!” I said to my aunt.
She pointed to the corn basket and the wheelbarrow in the courtyard and told me that my cousin had made them. They were made so well that I wouldn’t have even believed they were made by hand if she hadn’t told me.
She suggested that I play Master’s lecture recordings for my cousin, so I put the MP3 headset on him and tuned up the volume. Suddenly, he became serious and had a solemn expression on his face.
He stood up and pointed to the sky several times. I said, “Right, this is the Heavenly Fa.” He then sat down with both elbows on the table. He repeated this twice. I guessed that he must have seen this through his celestial eye and said, “Yes, that was how Master sat when he taught the Fa.”
He then stood up again and moved his arms around, seemingly to imply that this person was tall and at a high position. He also flapped his arms like he was flying, but I did not understand what he meant.
It was almost midnight, so I told him to go to sleep. In bed, he started to open and close his mouth nonstop, as if he were making sounds. He kept squeezing and rubbing both sides of his throat with his hands.
About half an hour later, he suddenly burst out with the words, “Mama, Mama....” No words can describe what I felt at that moment. It was utterly amazing, and every cell in my body was stunned.
Almost overcome with excitement, my aunt said, “I am your mother, Xiaochun. I am your mother.” “Xiaochun” is my cousin’s nickname.
I closed my eyes, tears streaming down my face, and pressed my palms together in the “heshi” gesture of respect. My cousin copied my gesture, smiled, and then laughed. For the first time in decades, I saw him truly happy.