namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

Sarvasakti Mataji, reporting from Lima, Peru

The following is a brief report of the highlights of our Latin American Convention on Congregation Development, held this past weekend in Lima, Peru. Over twenty-five devotees attended; fourteen devotees representing seven countries, and another twelve from Peru. They all came to share their experiences and to learn from each other, and from the various topics our Ministry had to share.

From day one we started connecting, meeting everyone, allowing everyone to introduce themselves, and to share how they became involved in taking care of other devotees. By the end of the day we all had a laugh together, ready to work with each other.

by Kauntya das

The days started early, by waking up spontaneously (if you don't include the Vayasaki bhajan CD playing loudly in the nearby temple room) at 3:15 am. It always helps to chant a few rounds before mangala-arati...

Mangala-arati was the most attended I ever saw here: young and senior devotees alike filled up the temple. For the occasion we sang Vibhavari Sesa instead of the customary Guruvastaka prayers.

Saturday May 26, 2007 the "First Extraodinary Convention for Congregational Development and Devotee Care" was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. HH Jayapataka Maharaja, Minister for Congregational Development, and HH Gunagrahi das Maharaja, GBC Secretary for Argentina, attended.

You find an article covering the event (in Spanish) at mundonamahatta.org, the Ministry's web site in Spanish, and many photos from the event here.

An automatic translation of the Spanish article into English is available here—for some reason, though, Google's translation tool stops translating in the middle and continues in Spanish ...

[Inside this article you find a larger version of the advertisement.]

By Ekanath Gaura das

Dear Maharaja's GBC's, devotees, and friends!

During this year's Festival of India tour over 40 young devotees have been traveling to the main cities of Peru and Bolivia. We have been to Cusco, Puno, Uros Iland, La Paz, Oruro, and Cochabamba.

The Festival of India program started three years ago in South America and was immediately a huge success. Organized by youths from all over South America in a spirit of devotion, the festival travels to many countries, preaching Krishna Consciousness in a cultural way, focusing on "World Peace" and preaching against drug abuse.

FESTIVAL OF INDIA 2007

3rd Annual Festival of the Chariots

April 7th 2007, Panama

Fotos from last year's Festival

Respected Maharajas/Prabhus

Please accept our humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada. On the behalf of ISKCON Panama we humbly request you to accept our invitation to kindly attend Lord Jagannath Rath Yatra as an honorable Special guest on Saturday, 7th April 2007 to honor the ceremony.

Hare Krishna!

That special time of the year has already come and we will soon celebrate, once again, the historical festival of Jagannath Ratha Yatra 2006.

Traditionally, each year in Puri (India), millions of people gather to pull the Rath (Chariot) for the pleasure of Lord Jagannatha and dance with great joy. ISKCON has since 1967 carried that ancient festival to all corners of the world and all major cities. It is therefore our pleasure to inform you about the Jagannath Ratha Yatra which will take place on Saturday, 7th April, 2007 in Panama City.

This is not going to be the most systematic of articles, but you might find something interesting, in relation to the dynamic of establishing systematic congregational development in a Yatra (and perhaps something about South American geography).

Yesterday evening my wife, Sri Radhe, and I arrived back in La Paz (do you remember that there has been a Congregational Educational Festival here, back in October 2005?). The (previous) plan was to go from Peru to Chile, but then, despite waiting for almost two months, the visa for my wife never materialized. I didn't feel to leave my wife alone in the middle of South America and therefore changed plan and itinerary: from Cusco (yes, the ex-capital of the Inca Empire), we moved to Puno (yes, the main harbor on the Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the world), for the Sunday Programs there (the weekly morning “Hare Krishna Hour” at a local TV and the Sunday Program in the home-temple of Prahladesvara Prabhu).

Omkara Krishna prabhu, on harinama.

As part of the strategic planning sessions that we concluded yesterday, in the Key Result Area of Structure for Personal Caring, the devotee fixed a seminar on Sunday, 18 December (today) by Omkara Krishna Prabhu, at 15:00. So, it's 15:20 and I am sitting in the temple room, only Omkara Krishna Prabhu is present with me, and we are waiting for the participants ...

I take the opportunity to introduce Omkara Krishna Prabhu to those who might not know him. I consider him the most accomplished Bhakti-vriksha preacher in South America, and one of the most experienced in the world. Originally from Colombia, he joined ISKCON in Ecuador, in 1991. In 1992 he took initiation from H.H. Jayapataka Swami Maharaja. In 1998 he started implementing the Bhakti-vriksha system in Lima, Peru, which now has the most developed and organized Bhakti-vriksha program in Latin America I know of.

Harinam in front of the cathedral of Arequipa.

Arequipa, in the South of Peru, is known as "White City" because many of the old buildings in the center are made of a whitish stone from the lava of a nearby volcano; and the white flag is the universal symbol of requesting a truce. ISKCON Arequipa has been traditionally marred by interpersonal and inter-groups conflicts and tensions (for a change…). Somehow it seems that presenting the "Vaisnava Self-Reawakening Course - Level One - Sattvik Introspection & Effective Communication Skills" has helped ease the burden among the devotees. It seems that they opened up a lot to each other and shared deeply, with emotion and sincerity. This was the eighth time I presented this course and, in one sense, it had the most impact, also because the devotees took it very seriously and because they all knew each other so well (or so they thought…).

The nucleus of ISKCON Trujillo Renaissance.

A city founded one year after Lord Caitanya's disappearance from the planet, Trujillo at one point had a full-fledged ISKCON temple. It was closed. Eight hours by bus North of Lima, Trujillo has approximately one million people (the third largest city in Peru) but no preaching center and very few devotees. The only active initiated devotees aren't even from here: Krishna Kumara Prabhu is the official in-charge of ISKCON's activities in Trujillo. He lives with his family in Lima but plans to move here, to better concentrate in building the congregation. He is a dedicated Bhakti-vriksha preacher and has many good things to say about the Bhakti-vriksha method.

The other initiated devotee (initiated last month, during the Congregational Educational Festival), Hrisikesa Govinda Prabhu, is an ex-Gukukula student and studies architecture in a local university.

Also here I thought of focusing on Strategic Planning. The first of the three evenings we spent in Krishna-katha, discussing Bhagavad-gita 17.15 (the austerity of the word), so relevant to our community development: it's through speaking words that pierce the heart or agitate the mind that often conflicts and frictions spring and spread.

The Govinda Restaurant, venue of
productive strategic planning sessions.

Sri Radha Govinda Dasi and I were in Chiclayo, in the North of Peru, for the weekend of 19 and 20 December. It is a frontier-type yatra: a city of about 160,000 souls (in the human body), 10-12 hours by bus from Lima (10 hours if the ride is quick and smooth; in our case we had a couple of stops and it took 12 hours: someone threw a stone and broke a window and we had to stop for the hole to be fixed, and, second, the police stopped the bus to scrutinize the passengers' passports). There are 7-8 initiated devotees, including a couple of Srila Prabhupada's disciples. One of them, Payonidhi prabhu, is the natural local leader. He was born in Argentina, has been the first Temple President in the history of ISKCON Peru, and runs a Govinda Restaurant here.