PureInsight | October 14, 2012
[PureInsight.org] One of the projects in this year’s Shen Yun promotion was to contact each school and ask them to give a Shen Yun flier to each of their students to take home.
Our project coordinator started by assigning schools to practitioners according to the postal codes they live in. After receiving my assignment, I drove to each school in my district in just one afternoon, but had little effect. Rarely could headmasters be met and in most of the cases receptionists would receive our contact letters and indicate that they would let their headmasters or some other relevant people know out of politeness. The best that could be expected was to talk to whoever was in the office at the time.
I knew it should not be like that. Headmasters or persons in charge should be contacted directly. Searching online, I found all the administrative information about the schools in my district. I was very happy and immediately wrote down the names and email addresses of the headmasters of the schools. Small changes were made to our contact letters according to each person, like speaking cordially to a friend. The response was good. Some of them agreed and others asked for more detail. We had grouped a certain number of fliers together to reduce the workload on the staff. One school even took the initiative to tell us they would be holding a party for the students and parents and we could give out fliers before the event. I gave out the fliers one by one accordingly. Things had changed this time with the office receptionists being more agreeable. We were able to talk more about Shen Yun and played video clips for them.
After this experience, I suggested to the coordinator to promote Shen Yun this way as I felt it to be a good method. The coordinator disagreed however, saying we had sent emails en masse before. People would think it was junk mail if we sent emails to them twice. I also said assignments could be given according to school districts so as to be more considerate of the receiver. But the coordinator disagreed saying that had already been done as well.
I thought for a while, but did not argue with him. In fact, mass mailing emails were usually filtered and could not be received at all. Or, few people would read them thinking it was advertising business and push delete. But, what should I do?
Master had said, “If you discover that someone hasn’t done something well, or if during your discussion at meetings certain things aren’t handled well or your idea isn’t adopted, yet you feel that it really is how things should be approached, then, if you can manage to quietly see to it that that thing goes well even though your idea wasn’t adopted, that is being a Dafa disciple” (“20th Anniversary Fa Teaching, 2012”).
Because of little manpower, schools belonging to districts without a responsible person were given to me. All mailings were sent individually and headmasters were contacted one by one, and I even called some. By doing things this way, most of the schools agreed to give students fliers to take home. Some other schools did not agree to hand out fliers but took the initiative to post large posters in their auditoriums or place the fliers in areas where parents would gather for meetings. What’s more, the receptionists at some schools showed great interest and listened attentively and watched the Shen Yun video clips.
My mentality at that time was to do things without pursuing outcomes, and working earnestly and wholeheartedly. Even if, for various reasons, people might not attend, they should be left with a good impression of us so as to be saved.
It was forgotten thereafter, but on one occasion an email from a fellow practitioner reported that a person responsible for purchasing a group ticket was interviewed. The correspondent asked how they got to know Shen Yun. Little did we think the old man would say it was because his wife discovered a Shen Yun flier in his granddaughter’s schoolbag and showed it to him immediately. He liked it so much and decided in no time to buy 20 tickets at $200 each. Talking more, it was found to be one of the schools I was responsible for, a primary school in fact.
Learning the news, I was ashamed inside. I’m conscious that this was encouragement from Master, but while some aspects were properly dealt with, it was also a hint for me not to consider issues with human thoughts. At the time of approaching that school I had thought, “This school is not in a rich area and may not bear results.”
But in the end, you can see how things turned out differently! This really was a manifestation of “cultivation is up to you, gong is up to the Master!” Once our xinxing conforms to the standard, Master would do everything for us. So it’s really important how to regard each thought in our minds when doing things.
Translated from: http://www.zhengjian.org/node/112307
