The power of book distribution
In the early 1980s, my father was a doctor working with the United Nations. He had some friends who were visiting the United States, and while there, they met a devotee in the airport who gave them a BTG. They were Buddists, so they weren’t very interested, but they knew that my father was a Hindu, so they took the BTG magazine back to Burma, where we lived and gave it to my father. He never read it. But I saw it and read it. I was eighteen at the time, and I was searching for higher truth. I found it interesting. In the BTG, there was an offer to receive a free book, “Coming Back,” by filling out a card and sending it to Los Angeles. I did that.
A few years later, I got home one day, and there is person sitting in my house holding that card with my address on it. His name was Imapati Dasa, now Bhakti Vikasa Swami. The devotees in LA knew that he was preaching in Thailand, so they thought maybe he could go to Burma and see about this person. He showed me some books, and I bought many of them.
Burma at that time allowed only 24-hour visas, so he came, sold me some books, preached to me a little, and then had to leave. Eventually some other devotees gradually came, and to make a long story short, I got initiated, traveled around the county preaching, and we now have twelve temples in Burma, all because of one BTG coming from an American airport, from one hand to another hand and then to this fortunate soul’s hand.
Your servant,
Srivas Pandit Dasa
