My name is Wang Meili (alias), female, born in August 1972, with a junior high school education, living in Huangshan City, Anhui Province.

At the end of 2013, I was working alone in a clothing factory in a coastal city in Zhejiang. During this period, I gradually became friends with a colleague who often helped me in daily life. Under her influence, I began to come into contact with and joined the Church of Almighty God (CAG).

When I first joined, I often attended gatherings, reading books and listening to songs with the “brothers and sisters.” For someone like me, working alone away from home, it felt quite good. But then, they required me to constantly read, memorize, and write reflections on books. They also demanded that I write guarantees according to the God's will, fulfill my duties, and submit donation money. I had to do everything in my power to “spread the gospel” to my family and friends, and continuously reflect on whether my thoughts and actions were in line with God's intentions.

In the following years, although I worked very hard to “spread the gospel,” I didn't convert a single person. As a result, I was repeatedly reprimanded and told to seriously reflect on myself, or else face God's punishment!

Because I was afraid of my family's opposition, I didn't dare to tell them about my belief in God. I practiced my faith secretly, living a very painful and oppressive life. At the end of 2018, I quit my job at the garment factory and returned to my hometown to farm.

Who knew that just after I resigned and arrived back home, the Almighty God cult members from my hometown found me. They said that my CAG membership had been transferred from Zhejiang and that I was young and sincerely obedient to God. They also mentioned that the Church Leader in my hometown had recently been targeted by the police and “removed from the environment,” and they asked me to take on this responsibility. I initially wanted to decline, but I couldn't resist their repeated persuasion, so I reluctantly became the Church Leader in my hometown.

There were two other people who became Church Leaders with me, and together we managed about twenty people. We were responsible for organizing and supervising their meetings, reading sessions, and book storage. We also followed the “Community Leader” to learn how to arrange things, constantly thinking about how to collect more “Donation Money” and how to better “spread the gospel.” This whole so-called affair took up a lot of my time. I already had a lot of farm work at home, and to avoid affecting the work in the fields, I could only get up early and stay up late or use my lunch break to do it. But I couldn't take care of everything at once. Many times, I couldn't manage the household chores like cooking and cleaning, which led to complaints from my husband, son, and daughter-in-law. This caused many family arguments.

In July 2019, the “Work Arrangement” from above came, requiring “each church to store up at least a year's worth of food to prepare for famine.” The three of us discussed that we would need at least 5,000 Kg of grain for a year, and the money to buy the grain would be 15,000 yuan. This money could only come from the brothers and sisters. Considering that they had already contributed quite a lot in donation money usually, we finally decided that the three of us would split the cost equally. So, the three of us each contributed 5,000 yuan to buy 5,000 Kg of late-season indica rice and stored it at a sister's house, preparing for the “famine.”

More than a year passed, and the “great disaster” and famine predicted by the Almighty God did not occur. So much rice piled together, due to poor storage, some of it became moldy and infested with insects. The sister in charge of storage was worried about the grain being eaten by insects and having to compensate for the loss, so she urged us to quickly move it. At this time, there was an instruction from above to sell the hoarded grain to believers at the original price. So, the three of us discussed what to do with the moldy grain. Selling it at a low price to outsiders was not allowed, and selling it at the original price to the “Church brothers and sisters” was not feasible as none of them could afford it. After much discussion, we decided that each of us would contribute 5,000 yuan to buy it and store it at home. In the end, the three of us had each contributed 10,000 yuan for the hoarded grain. At this time, someone from above came and said that the money (15,000 yuan) we jointly contributed to buy food could not be kept in the “Church.” They said it was an offering to “God,” and no one was allowed to embezzle it. It had to be handed over as “Donation Money” step by step!

In September 2022, our activities were discovered by the public security authorities. Local anti-cult volunteers tirelessly provided me with psychological counseling and legal education, making me understand that Zhao Weishan's directive for believers to hoard food for emergencies was a lie. It was a means to deceive believers into working for him, intimidate them, and exploit them financially. This finally made me realize that the Almighty God I believed in was actually a harmful and deceitful cult organization.

Looking at the piles of rice at home, infested with bugs and moldy, neither edible nor sellable, and thinking about the 10,000 yuan spent on hoarding this grain, I felt utterly pathetic and foolish!

Source: https://www.chinafxj.cn/n174/c874094/content.html