The World Sankirtan Newsletter for February 2015
February turned out to be a great month for the Pune temple: It was the No. 1 temple in the world. Look out, Mayapur and New Delhi! Pune is entering the transcendental competition. Rightly so, since 160 brahmacaris live there.
I just visited the recently constructed Pune temple, where the presiding Deities are Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai, Sri Sri Radha-Vrndavana-chandra, and Jagannatha, Baladeva and Subhadra – all very beautiful Deities. The temple is one of the most beautiful in the world. Krsna certainly rewarded these devotees for their sincere service. Srila Prabhupada said, “If you distribute books everything will come.”
Among the medium temples you will see Ahmedabad in the No. 1 spot, with a 245% increase over last year. Ujjain is close behind, with a 98% increase.
Phoenix (in Mauritius) is in the No. 1 position in the small temple category, with a 999% increase.
It's nice to see book distribution increasing worldwide. Last year we increased by 10% throughout the world, which is most pleasing to Srila Prabhupada and Lord Sri Krsna. Of course, Prabhupada would prefer that we double it every year.
As we all know by now, this year is the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of Srila Prabhupada in America, and next year is the anniversary of the beginning of ISKCON. A global committee of devotees, along with many committees of local devotees, will make big arrangements to commemorate the occasions. After a discussion, some senior book distributors and I decided that our goal will be twelve million books for 2016. We have not done that many books since 1978, when the momentum from Srila Prabhupada's presence was still there and the devotees were honoring him after his disappearance by distributing in huge numbers. I will travel around to encourage devotees to distribute books and will go out on book distribution every day of the year, Krsna willing and my health allowing.
Your servant,
Vijaya Dasa
