Haribol Dear Devotees,
Just want to share my recent experience celebrating Jagannath Snanyatra.
I run a small devotional company called mayapurmemories.com. Every year for the past three years we were able to celebrate Jagannath Snanyatra in a wonderful way by doing a unique service to Lord Jagannath Baladev and Subhadra devi and their devotees by serving cool juice or buttermilk. It's really appreciated by the devotees in the hot weather in Mayapur.
This service was sponsored regularly by a wonderful group of devotees from Malaysia. Unfortunately this year they were not able to sponsor this service fully.
In my heart though I desired to do to this service and was feeling little sad thinking i could not perform seva this year. I thought about it a lot and finally just around 1 week before the festival, i thought "let me write an email to all my customers and the devotees of Mayapur community. Maybe they will contribute."
I was very hesitant and shy and unsure of so many things. So many doubts came to my mind. Somehow Lord Jagannath gave me courage and the idea, on how best to request donations from the devotees. I wrote and email requesting 50$ each from about 15 devotees. That would be sufficient to complete this seva. I prayed to Jagannath and sent the email.
Next morning after waking up i checked the emails and already about 7 devotees replied offering their support for this seva. With in the next three days i was able to get the full sponsorship for this seva. I was really overjoyed that this year also our mayapurmemories team would be able offer this service to their Lordships and their devotees.
With in the next couple days, we managed to arrange everything with the help of Jagannath Mandir Management, Sulab Kitchen and enthusiastic bunch of devotees. We were able to distribute about 12000 cups of buttermilk.
So the whole purpose of sharing this story with all of you is that .. if you ever feel like doing some service with in your heart for the deities and their devotees....just do your best and Krishna will take care of the rest!
Hope this story inspires you to do more service.
Jay Jagannath