A wonderful soul named Kanai has appeared in the family of our dear devotees and friends Ana and Tomislav Pereglin.
We ask your esteemed blessings for little Kanai to progress successfully and quickly in Krishna's service!
For the first time in the city of Zagreb, and perhaps in Croatia, was held if not one of the largest, but certainly one of the "sweetest" Vaishnava festivals, Govardhana-puja. Outdoors in the very center of the city of Zagreb, in the Zrinjevac Park. Over 200 visitors marked this historic event with bhajans, offering lamps to Lord Damodara, kirtan and abundant prasadam.
The audience was addressed, first by the Ambassador of India, His Excellency Raj Kumar Srivastava, then the Deputy Mayor of the City of Zagreb Svibor Jančić and finally our President of ISKCON in Zagreb Vaikuntha-murti das.
In total, over 50 devotees and our well-wishers actively participated in the realization of the festival. Since it is only thanks to joint efforts that it is possible to perform such a great festival, we would like to take this opportunity to thank them all. We would especially like to praise one devotee, our dear Mrgendra das, whose idea was to organize an open-air festival and who, with his enthusiasm and services, contributed the most to the organization itself. Mrgendra das is also strongly committed to implementing jumbo posters with the large inscription: "Hare Krishna" at as many as three strategic locations in the city, so that countless "random" passers-by can hear and uttered the holy name.
We cannot fail to mention Gaura-mitra das, always a steadfast and devoted to the service of cooking, who spent hours and hours cooking and planning a great feast for days.
We would like to point out one interesting thing. Namely, it rained all day, testing our faith (does this remind you of something, just about the pastime of raising Govardhana Hill?), Only to stop just before the festival started, so in the end it all ended successfully.
And finally, another piece of information. The organization of this event cost a little less than 10,500.00 kn, and you can see the financial report in the picture below:
You could hear about the glories of the Kirtan night's hosted and organized by Mataji Ljerka in the last issue of the Newsletter. In this we would just mention how we successfully continued to hold them regularly every Saturday, and on one of them, we were honoured by the association of Candramauli Swami, who gave a brief inspiration on that occasion.
Another kirtan program of a similar format, Mantra Waves, organized by Lila-avatar devi dasi, was successfully held twice this month and, as usual, attracted several completely new people.
The first congregation nama-hatta was held in November at the Joyful Kitchen. A special guest was Candramauli Swami from whom about 60 guests had the opportunity to hear about the initiatives and levels of progress in bhakti-yoga.
Anyone interested in participating in nama-hatti can contact the responsible person Ayodhya-deva das.
In the last issue of the Newsletter, we informed you that our temple brahmacari's went on a trip to the neighbouring Country to distribute books. The tour continued in part in November. Although at first it may seem unbelievable, but on that occasion they shared as many as 1300 Caitanya Caritamrita's! Among those who had the opportunity to get their copy, for who knows how many times, was again Semir Osmanagić, a great friend of the devotee who whenever there is an opportunity to give the devotees space for harinam and sankirtan and thus provides all visitors to the Bosnian pyramids come in contact with the Holy Name and books of Srila Prabhupada.
Due to the growing interest of young people in Krishna consciousness lately, we have increased the frequency of regular home gatherings, so instead of every two weeks, we hold programs with them at least once a week. Very often a new face appears, and on one occasion as many as four new young people appeared, which we consider a great success. We are also happy that the activities for new and young people do not end there, but they continue to visit the temple regularly and get involved in various ways in the services.
After a long time, our GBC representative Prahladananda Swami came to visit us. During his stay in the temple, Maharaj gave daily lectures from Srimad Bhagavatam.
Maharaj used part of his time to go to Koprivnica, where he took part in the celebration of Govardhana-puja to the satisfaction of local devotees.
Maharaj continued his journey by visiting devotees in Zadar and Split, accompanied by Patita-pavana das and Vaikuntha-murti das, who distributed about 100 books of Srila Prabhupada in Split in just three days.
We tried to hold harinams at least on Saturdays, and the rest of the time and energy we invested in distributing books, which paid off in terms of results.
Thus, in November, about 1,500 transcendental books of Srila Prabhupada were distributed.
(This figure contains only a small part of the already mentioned number of distributed books from Bosnia and Herzegovina, as part of these books were distributed and mentioned last month).
That sharing books is fun and easy can be seen in the example of the young girl Laura, who despite the fact that she is in a wheelchair, energetically and ecstatically distributed books. We are very lucky to be able to testify through her example that there are no material obstacles on the spiritual path of service.
Although the traditional book distribution marathon begins and lasts during the month of December, sankirtan devotees from Nova Jaladuta could not wait, so they started the marathon in the last week of November. Hearing this news, Nayanananda das immediately "demanded" the urgent delivery of 1,000 books, which is known to him to be not a large quantity (we later gave him another 1,300).
This year, the day of Srila Prabhupada's departure was marked by about forty devotees. As Prahladananda Swami was our guest, we had the opportunity to hear his lecture. Vaisnava-seva das and his sister Krsna-katha devi dasi led the team in charge of abhishek, while the prasadam feast was in charge of mataji's Sadhumati-sakhi and Saridvara.
The representative of the communication department of Nova Jaladuta, Devarsi Narada das, sent a cordial letter to the President of the Republic of Croatia, Mr. Zoran Milanović. The reason for this was the President's recent greeting with Hare Krishna at the end of one of the press conferences. This sympathetic event provoked very positive reactions from both the devotees and the broad masses of people who had the opportunity to watch the video. In this regard, one of our members testified to us that he and Mr. Milanović were acquaintances in their youth and that they sang Hare Krishna together. Therefore, we should not be surprised to see that Mr. President knows the "matter". We can only hope that there will be more and more such greetings with Hare Krishna, because from such positions the holy name can be heard far and wide and thus bring good to all who hear it, just as it brings good to those who say it.
Another incredible proof that there are no restrictions in preaching, so that anyone involved in the process regardless of position, conditions and age can preach, we were convinced by the example of little Lilit, daughter of Devarsi Narada das. Although she is a small, seemingly helpless girl, she is already showing great preaching potential. To better understand what this is all about, here is a story about the service she did.
For a long time now, Lilith has been telling her friends from school about exciting adventures related to staying in the temple and attending programs, especially in the morning (mangala-arati). With special attention, she tries to convey interesting things from the temple, in order to arouse their interest and desire to come to the temple themselves. The moment she talked about the morning program in the way she called it, “The Festival Before Sunrise,” the matter was settled. Her friends had her full attention and desire to see for themselves what it was all about. This enthusiasm of the children aroused in us a little concern about how their parents would react. But, to our surprise, they too became very interested and attracted by the idea of spending the night with their children in Krishna's temple and participating together in this "Festival before sunrise".
Our young and old guests have been actively involved since the moment of their arrival. In the evening program they sang and danced with Gaura-arati and kirtan. We then offered lamps to Lord Damodar and listened to a lecture by Vaikuntha-murti das on "What is Krishna consciousness?" After drinking a glass of homemade milk from the Divya-prabandha das farm, the children pitched two tents, one for “brahmacaris,” the other for “brahmacarinis,” where they happily fell asleep with descriptions of parties from the Krishna book. The description of the fun about the Syamantaka gem especially caught their attention.
After such an exciting day, everyone got up in the morning with great enthusiasm (even a three and a half year old boy!). The children had the opportunity to sing and dance during the mangala-arati, offer lamps and serve the Tulasi-devi arati.
The children used the time for japa to "sleep" a little more, while the parents learned mantras during that time. After darsana and Prabhupada-puja, which the children also assisted, everyone was able to listen to a lecture by Devarsi Narada das, adapted for young and old.
And of course, we rounded off this adventure with a particularly delicious and long unseen abundant prasadam that everyone enjoyed to their full satisfaction.
Lomancita das made sure that our guests did not go home empty-handed, handing out sets of books and packets of maha-prasadams while preparing for sankirtan.
We all wondered, "When will something like this happen again?" and we immediately started planning the next get-together.
We would like to take this opportunity to invite all parents with children to join us and thus further magnify this, apparently incredibly successful preaching program.
In the last issue of the Newsletter, you could hear about the idea of establishing a Hare Krishna / Vaishnava religious education that would be written for children in primary school under regular religious education classes. A step forward in this direction is that Dharma-setu das and Devarsi Narada das have indeed begun to work seriously on the book of religious studies (curriculum) itself.
Devarsi Narada das had the opportunity to take part as a guest and one of the exhibitors at the round table of the European Business School in Zagreb. The whole tribune took place live, physically and online. During the forum itself, the emphasis was on world-changing ideologies, where the life of Srila Prabhupada was presented as a famous example. In addition, the topic of "Sustainable Ways of Living" was discussed, which was presented to the audience through the example of Prahlada Maharaja. Devarsi Narada also made sure that each of the exhibitors received his own copy of the Bhagavad-gita.
Again in action, this time at the LQ Alumni Club LQ Conference in Tuheljske Toplice, at a large gathering of entrepreneurs and senior management, Devarsi Narada das distributed seventeen Bhagavad-gita as part of Ms. Ivana Conjar's seminar entitled "Dharmic Leadership".
As we are late with the issue of the Newsletter, the Live to give campaign ended on January 7, 2022, and we continue to offer you Bhagavad-gita at especially promotional prices if you take more pieces.
The campaign for the renovation of the parking lot is in full swing. So far, out of the required HRK 206,000, over HRK 150,000 has been collected. The architects are nearing the end of the plan, and work is underway on the final selection of stone cubes in accordance with the recommendations of the profession. The temple management is in regular contact with the selected company in charge of project implementation. The duration of the works was estimated at four weeks. Many thanks to everyone for their kind donations, and we would like to take this opportunity to urge you, if you have not already (and even if you have), to pay your contribution to the temple account for capital projects shown at the bottom of the Newsletter.
We remind you that you can also pay donations via Paypal, e-mail: zagreb@iskcon.hr
Donations for the temple or for Club 108 can be paid at IBAN: HR1123400091110102369.
Donations for the construction of parking lots or other capital projects can be paid at IBAN: HR5623400091510955126.
THANK YOU
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