Blog

It has been the desire of HG Vedasara Das, President, Atlanta Hare Krishna temple, for quite some time to adopt the Bhakti-vriksha program in this temple. We have seen so many visitors aspiring for some spiritual mentoring, association with people who they could trust and a long lasting loving relationship. Due to the lack of any such program which would cultivate these visitors, the temple was unable to fulfill their needs, and this was always a void that our President wanted to fill.

We were fortunate to meet HG Advaita Chandra Prabhu and HG Kalasudha mataji at the temple presidents meeting in Houston. It was the opportunity we were looking for, and we discussed our needs with Advaita Prabhu. He advised us on the advantages of having a Bhakti-vriksha program, with the temple as our base, and this would provide us the means to serve our community and nurture our visitors to our content.

As a result of this meeting, we scheduled a seminar for our congregation in April 2013, and were fortunate to have both Advaita Prabhu and Kalasudha mataji provide much needed guidance on this program.

The seminar was held over two days, for a period of 8 hours on each day, and covered the various aspects of the Bhakti-vriksha program. It provided us the three Cs of Bhakti-vriksha, which was what we were looking for. We learnt how we could make contacts, cultivate them and provide long term care as well. The seminar provided us ideas on how to effectively manage our Sunday feasts, through welcome booths and affectionate exchanges with our newcomers. It taught us how to encourage our current congregation members, in their Krishna conscious development, through Sraddha-kutir programs, and through recognition of advancement in chanting, through appreciation certificates.

The Atlanta temple is working earnestly to implement this program, both in the temple and at devotee homes, and we are receiving very good support from Advaita Prabhu and Kalasudha mataji. 

We feel very good about this program, and are confident we will be providing success stories one year down the road.

Our heartfelt gratitude to the ISKCON Congregational Development Ministry, and to HG Advaita Prabhu and HG Kalasudha Mataji.

Shyam Bihari Das
Program Coordinator, ISKCON Atlanta.