Continental bliss
Hare Krsna,
Please accept my humble obeisances, all glories to Srila Prabhupada!
I just returned from a book distribution tour in South America. I visited Brazil (before the World Cup), Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Guyana. Devotees are increasing book distribution all over the continent by the mercy of Srila Prabhupada.
For the past twelve years, in Cupina Grande, North Brazil, they have also been running a nice devotee school, headed by Dhanvantari Swami. The devotees in their late teens and early twenties study Bhakti Shastri and absorb themselves in Srila Prabhupada's books. They also like to distribute books. After my talks on book distribution about twenty of us went to the center of Cupina Grande and distributed books to people. It was transcendental fun.
In Argentina the devotees have a large building, which includes a temple room, restaurant, asrama, and yoga studio. This facility was aquired solely by book distribution. Gunagrahi Swami is the inspiration there, and he lets the devotees know about the importance of book distribution.
Chile's book distribution is mainly being done by householders. They are able to both maintain their families and help people by giving out Srila Prabhupada's books. There is also a steady team doing harinam. The harinam is joined by the book distributors, so together there is the brhat mrdanga and the mrdanga, a nice combination, very pleasing to Lord Caitanya.
Peru distributes a lot of books, but unfortunately is not well organized in regard to reporting book scores. What I do is when I visit a temple is give talks on book distribution throughout the week, then on Saturdays, when the congregation devotees are free, we go out to distribute together. In Lima, about fifteen of us distributed books, and there was a harinam alongside us. Many devotees had never distributed books before and loved it. My Spanish is not very good, so I was stumbling along distributing small books, because they're easier. Then I ran out — Krsna's mercy! One devotee ran up to me and gave me a Bhagavad Gita.
I thought, “How am I going to distribute this without knowing the language?” I prayed to Krsna to send someone who knows English. Two minutes later a man who looked like he may know English stopped when I spoke to him in English. Again, Krishna's mercy. As I was showing it to him, he started waving to someone behind me.
I looked back, and it was one devotee he was waving at, the devotee who translated my classes. It turns out that the man was a student of this devotee at a university many years ago. The devotee taught photography.
He came over to us and said, “This book, Bhagavad Gita, is the most amazing book I've ever read, and you have to get it.”
He said, “All right, on your recommendation I'll take it, since you were the best professor I had at that university. I still use many of the things you taught me.”
He also got Krsna. If we only had more professor devotees!
