namahatta.org - Congregational Development Ministry

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.

Reflection on the Congregational Educational Festivals in South America

Mother Dharmada, President of ISKCON Peru, shows HH Jayapataka Maharaja the highlights of the work on strategic planning.

From La Paz, a couple of days after the festival, we went to Peru as a group of 13 devotees. It took more than 24 hours, traveling by mini-bus, taxi, bus, etc., touching the height of 4,700 meters over sea level, having the chance to visit Tihuanaco, a city considered by some at least 12,000 years old (which would put it firmly in Dvapara-yuga), and coasting the famed Lake Titicaca (being, we hear, site of subtle if not extraterrestrial life).

We were in good company: Srila Prabhupada's disciple Anuttama Prabhu kept delighting us with readings from Srila Prabhupada's books and anecdotes.

It's the evening of Thursday 17 November 2005; we are at the Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai Temple in "Wilson," one of the three ISKCON centers in Lima, city of six million people and capital of Peru. The occasion: the public presentation of the recently formed Bhakti-vriksha group Srila Prabhupadanuga. I arrive as the kirtan gains in speed and vigour.

Yogesvara Prabhu acts as Master of Ceremonies; after the kirtan he invites Mother Dharmada Devi Dasi, President of ISKCON Peru, to speak; she wishes the whole audience a good "festival Bhakti-vriksha tonight." Then one of the historical leaders of ISKCON Peru, Kanu Pandit Prabhu, born in France but a pillar of ISKCON Lima since many years, says a few words of praise on the Bhakti-vriksha program.

Yesterday morning my wife and I returned to Lima, Peru, after about twenty days in Ecuador. In the afternoon we went to the local Govinda Restaurant, a few blocks away from where we stay, and we received an invitation for a birthday, to be celebrated today.

I didn't know the person and I went mainly to eat the cake, in open contravention to Lord Caitanya's dictate: "One who is subservient to the tongue and who thus goes here and there, devoted to the . . . belly, cannot attain Krishna" (CC Antya-lila, 6.227).

It happened a couple of days ago, during the First National Congregational Educational Festival in La Paz, Bolivia. We had scheduled a three-hour "Introduction to Mediation," which was supposed to start after breakfast. But after the Bhagavatam class a devotee (a senior and controversial person in these parts) approached me asking for a mediation with his guru, HH Jayapataka Swami Maharaja. Maharaja considered the offer and while taking breakfast the table got gradually crowded with different local leaders, and all got involved in discussing the proposal. To make a long story short: the idea of the mediation was accepted in principle, but not to have it immediately, in the middle of the festival (and the scheduled seminars). Instead everyone was invited to attend the presentation and learn more about the process of mediation.