From, agtSP, Divya-nama Das, Temple President, ISKCON RichMond, Virginia, USA.
Respected Srila Hanumat Presaka Swami Maharaj,
Please accept our humble and respectful obeisance at the dust of your lotus feet. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!!
HpS - In this body, agtSP, we are aspiring for maybe properly tended human feet, yet in our Svarupa I guess that both you and I may have lotus feet, if not lotus hooves.
Maharaj, your mercy, blessings, and guidance is always a beacon for our services to Srila Prabhupada at ISKCON Richmond Yatra. We often remember your clear and exact prediction for us to have a full-fledged beautiful Temple that will serve and nourish tens and thousands of people in Richmond and near-by areas, in their spiritual journey.
For your pleasure, we would like to share some of the major developments that have happened in the past 8 months or so, since the last visit of your Holiness.
HpS - Thank you, THANK YOU, T H A N K Y O U! Our visit was a landmark in our life. After that we posted into our Base Camp at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and then we have ended up for eight months, Camped here in ISKCON Houston.
Tomorrow we will be back in Tennessee for three weeks.
Then we have a Campsite reserved 13th September until maybe 23 December.
1. Since for any major project, the first thing that is required is water. We had a well with limited supply of water. We recently completed a well project which took us about four months to acquire permits, drill a new 350 feet well, install a commercial grade water pumping system with 119 Gallons of Pressure tank and 500 feet of pipeline with water outlets in our residential building, barn area, and garden area. Now we have enough water supply all over the property.
HpS - Does it pump continuously or do you pump for some time and then have to let the water build up at the bottom again? How much can you pump a minute if you are pumping continuously??? Thank you.
What is the seasonal rain like?
2. Since our Temple inventory has grown exponentially, we recently added a 10x40 feet storage container, which will house all our festival related items, books, gift shop and other inventory. We are constructing 80 feet wide storage racks for the same.
3. In preaching and outreach activities - HG Radheshyam Prabhu visited us in April this year and under Prabhu's guidance, since then, we have conducted multiple outreach events, which attracted over 200 potential new devotees from the Richmond area. With that we are planning to start two new weekly programs in Mechanicsville and Westend areas. HG Radheshyam Prabhu will be coming again in September.
HpS - Super. I have one associate in Santiago, Chile, he has been working professionally in Social Media for years, and apparently he never had any trouble getting a lot of new people to come for events in the city of santiago, but the bottleneck was receiving them properly once they came for the specific event and then later programs.
Your news is great.
4. We have also reinitiated the college preaching at VCU. On average monthly twice a group of devotees goes on Book distribution in the university area and connects with VCU students. We are also in process of starting a Bhakti Yoga Club there under guidance of HG Radheshyam Prabhu.
5. Maharaj, this year we had one of our grandest Janmashtami Festival, where we served around 2500 guests. Some of the highlights of the festival are:
- Around 500 of Srila Prabhupada Books were distributed to include 119 Bhagavad Gitas and 1 SB set
- Around 2500 plates of free Prasadam was distributed
- Around 100 families did some sponsorship for the festival and participated in Kalash Abhishekam, Aarti and Archana
- Around 250 platters were served at Govinda's
- Other highlights included Diorama Radha Krishna Deities, Gopi Dots, Gift Shop, Jhulan, Cultural Program by kids etc.
6. Recently, one devotee from Phoenix AZ, who is a professional Architect came to visit us and look upon the Temple Property. He will soon start to work on a conceptual site plan, to provide a vision of our Temple Project.
Maharaj, all of this was possible because of Srila Prabhupada's mercy, blessings of your holiness and other senior Vaishnavas, and collective devotion/selfless service of the devotees here at Richmond. We sincerely pray at your lotus feet to keep us under your divine shelter and empower us to be an instrument of our Acharyas. We have a long way to go..
We beg your blessings that we can sincerely take shelter of the Holy Names and avoid all offenses, especially Vaishnav Aparadh.
your servant,
Divyanam Das
HpS - Jaya! 😃 Jaya! Jaya!
Srila Prabhupada's voice boomed through the Temple-room in Berkeley, San Francisco, "The magic will not be done by me, nor you, nor any living being. The magic will be done by Krsna when we become pure devotees of KRSNA!".
Hare Krsna. Hare Krsna!!!
May this movement fulfill in great abundance the mission of Lord Caitanya: https://vedabase.io/en/library/noi/preface/#bb5769