Surprise
This story was told to me by Gopal Hari das of Boise Idaho where I was distributing books at the University campus.
In Russia there was a young boy thirteen years old who some how received one of Srila Prabhupada and became so attracted to the philosophy that he went to the temple and loved everything. The devotees gave him beads and more books. He gradually became more interested and eventually became a devotee. But there was a problem, at this time he was only sixteen and he knew his parents wouldn't approve, so he secretly continued his Krsna consciousness. Then he heard about a three day festival that was going to take place a few hundred miles from Moscow. He really wanted to go but again his parents would be a problem in allowing him. So he decided to tell them that he was going camping with a friend for a few days. Then there was another problem that he had to deal with, his books. He had all of Prabhupada's books but he kept them in his room and put away so that his parents wouldn't suspect anything. But if he went away they may come into his room and find the books. He knew that they would search so he decided to lock them up in a chest. They gave him permission and he went to the festival confident that there would be no problem.
However when he returned to his house there was no one home and he found that the lock on the chest had been broken. Now he was nervous, what are my parents going to say?
He was right, when his father saw him, he was very upset and asked him, "why didn't you tell us about these books! All this time we didn't know what you were up to, but when you left we decided to find out exactly what it was. We opened the chest and found your books, we were shocked to find so many books. Then we decided to find out what were in these books, so we read and we read and we read. Both of us were so happy to find these treasure-houses of knowledge, why didn't you tell us about this, why did you keep it to yourself?
The boy was shocked, surprised, and very happy. Then he told his father, "I thought you would not approve."
Then the father embraced him and said, not only do we approve but we want to know more." Then he said to his wife, "We're so fortunate to have a saint as a son."
