My name is Ah Fei. I'm a fourth-year university student. On May 12, 2019, my mother's birthday, I sent my mother a message on Wechat: "Happy Birthday, Mom!" That day, I checked my Wechat messages from time to time, wishing that my mother would give me an affectionate reply like this: "Thank you for your concern, my son. Please study hard at university!" But I hadn’t received her reply until night fell. By then, my mother had been missing for a month and a half and nothing had been heard of her.

More than half a month before, my mother called me that she, together with others, was going to work in a place away from home. The day my mother left home was at the end of April, but I hadn’t got her call telling me that she had arrived at her destination safe and sound, even up to late at night. For more than a week, I had been waiting for her message but in vain. Although my family kept reassuring me that my mother would contact us after some time, I knew that something must have happened to her. Suddenly, I thought of one of my discoveries before…

In 2017, I was admitted to the university and then I left my hometown to pursue my study. Henceforth, my mother was relieved of the burden of having to take care of my daily life at home every day, and her formerly busy life was now filled with tremendous emptiness. When I returned home from university on winter vacation, I found that my mother had changed. Sometimes, she stayed alone in her room with the door closed and headphones on, listening to something and humming quietly while doing housework. So, I had a look at her things without her knowing it, which made me break out in a cold sweat. It turned out that my mother had become a follower of the “Almighty God" evil cult.

That night, I quarreled with my mother. I told her that the “Church of Almighty God” was an evil cult, and listed some of the conscienceless things it had done. I persuaded her to quit the cult but to no avail. She had become a fanatical follower of the evil cult, unable to tell the truth from the lies. Then I tried to snatch the CD player off her hand and smash it, but she stuck it in her pocket and pressed it against her tiny body. Her eyes suddenly grew wide and round, her face red with blood, and she screamed at me, "You're Satan, the devil!" I felt confused and unable to breathe as if there was a big rock on my chest. I had a look at my sighing father and went back to my room alone.

This was not something that happened in my dream. My mother was drawn into the “Church of Almighty God” and she was so addicted to the evil cult she couldn’t get out of it. From then on, I began to reduce my contact with my mother as a way to escape reality, and it's hard for me to be as happy as before. I turned into a quiet man, reluctant to interact with my classmates and friends.

As time went by, the conflicts between my mother and my father gradually increased. My family was in straitened circumstances, so my father watched over my mother closely, fearing that she would give the money of our family to the cult organization in private. Later, my mother lied that she was going to work elsewhere away from home. But after she left, she cut off all contacts with our family.

I judged from what had happened to her that my mother must have gone away to preach the “Almighty God” cult, so I asked my father to call the police and I began to look for clues of my mother’s whereabouts. My mother only mentioned the city she was going to, but it was hard to tell whether it was true or not. My father and our relatives asked all those people who were familiar with my mother in our hometown. The police searched for my mother through various channels, but they didn’t find any clues in the end.

Time passed quickly, and I had been waiting to hear from my mother. In the blink of an eye, the 2020 New Year was around the corner. Was she dressed warmly? Did she have good meals? Would she come back someday? I wrote over and over in my diary: "I hope something good will happen tomorrow." Finally, on the night of December 27, my mother called my father on someone else's cell phone at my grandmother's house. I cried at that moment. I knew this could be my last chance to bring my mother back home.

I immediately rode to my grandmother's house to get my mother back home. At my sincere request, my mother told me the truth that she had been doing missionary work outside and that today marked her "new birth". Looking at her fanatical expression, I cried anxiously and she became panicked. She said that she would leave home again on the ninth day of the first month of the Lunar New Year, but I refused to let her go away. She insisted that she couldn’t abandon her responsibility to work for "God's house". I sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand in the hope that she would not leave me and our home. In the end, neither of us could convince the other, so we hugged and cried together.

At that moment, I could no longer bear to see my mother falling into the abyss of an evil cult. Then, pretending that I was going out to play, I got out of our house and ran to the back of the mountain, where I called 110 to report to the police and left a message asking for help on the official Wechat page of the Jianghuai Correct Path platform. The staff from the platform immediately replied to my message and contacted the local anti-evil-cult workers to educate my mother about evil cults.

On the afternoon of February 26, my mother and I went to the community center, where we watched anti-evil-cult warning educational films and learned about relevant laws and regulations. After being exposed to these contents, my mother softened her attitude. In the following days, Mr. Wang, a psychological counselor, met with us and we watched the educational films together. He asked my mother about the “Church of Almighty God”, defused the contradiction between my parents, and let her feel the love and warmth between mother and son. Then, a lawyer explained to us about the legal issues regarding evil cults; and a woman from the County Women's Federation had in-depth communication with my mother, which allowed me to learn more about the inner world of thoughts of my mother.

For the sake of my future, my mother summoned up the courage to make a break with the evil cult. I am very grateful to the Party and the government for helping my mother out of the swamp of the evil cult and saving our broken family. It’s particularly noteworthy that our county government helped our family solve some of the difficulties in our life, which made my mother and I feel the care of the Party and government toward us. I hope that I will contribute to the anti-evil-cult cause in the future.

If your parents fall into the quagmire of an evil cult, you may feel helpless and depressed sometimes. Just give them a little more love! Our parents have been accompanying us when we grow up, so we should help them as much as we can when they grow into old age. We should be confident that one day we can walk in the sun together free of any burden.