“Our God has greater plans,” said Mr. Koonce, a businessman who is also engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry.
“We don’t live in fear of the pandemic,” Ms. Koonce, an interior designer, added. “So we’re careful and … we’re comfortable, we take cautions when needed, other than that, we live our life.”
“Soothing to our soul is how I would describe it. Very soothing to our soul, our inner being, our inner peacefulness,” he said. “We have so much distraction trying to make us upset and hurt us, but a show like this just puts our soul at peace—beautiful.”
“We will be an example of spreading the word of how beautiful the performance is, and we look forward to another year of seeing it since they change it up. Even if they didn’t change it up, I would still love coming and even bringing family,” Ms. Koonce said.
Her husband agreed: “I was thinking during the show that I would love to bring our two daughters and our sons-in-law. I would love to sponsor that, whether that’s here, San Antonio, or Austin. We were blown away. This is just beautiful.”
“We’ve become a fan, absolutely, and I look forward to learning more about the background and the heritage. I know my husband did his study on it before coming here, but this was my surprise for Valentine’s so I’m fairly new to learning about this, but I do want to look further into learning the heritage of all of this.”
“The thing that made me upset was the communism that took over a beautiful China, and that just communism has destroyed a beautiful culture,” Mr. Koonce added.
Seeing the athletic dancers of Shen Yun also inspired Mr. Koonce to become more active.
“I’m going to go back to the gym after this; I’m going to do the splits in 6 months! I’m going to get more flexible,” he said.