After their father, Bob Poppleton, passed away several months ago, late one night, she found an email that he had sent in 2020.
“I knew nothing about Shen Yun,” Ms. Poppleton said. “I had never even heard of it.”
She said she texted the article to her sisters, “We got to go see this, so we bought tickets that night.”
In February 2019, Mr. Poppleton saw Shen Yun perform in Escondido, California.
“He's talking about the show and how it has a positive spiritual message,” Ms. Poppleton said.
“He says just the whole message of why we're on this Earth. He said, ‘The fact that we have a bright future for us, not possibly in this life but there is a life after that awaits us, and the message became clear to me that it's how we live our life here is important.’”
“And that just really hit me. After losing my dad, I genuinely felt like it was a message from my dad,” she said.
Established in 2006, Shen Yun’s mission is to revive traditional, divinely inspired Chinese culture from before communism through music and dance.
“It brought tears to my eyes because I did feel like it very much had a message of, there is a God, there is an afterlife, and we'll get to be with the people we love after this life,” she said, mentioning that was the inspiration to come to the performance.
Ms. Poppleton attended Shen Yun with two of her sisters, Heidi Anderson and Lani Sabin.
“What I took from it is these people were persecuted, were killed, but then they still got to be together in the end. I mean that definitely brought tears to my eyes,” Ms. Poppleton said.
“I do think it's really important to stick up for what we believe in because really it's not people's opinions that matter, it's God's opinion. And so, God will bless you for sticking to what he wants you to do and not listening to all the people around you,” she said.
Ms. Poppleton said Shen Yun made her want to learn more about Chinese culture.
“After this, I was like, I'm going to go do some research,” she said.
