A wonderful family came this morning on their first visit to the aadheenam. They are originally from Hyderabad, Andra Pradesh. Grandpa was celebrating his 80th birthday today. Here he is being blessed by Bodhinatha.

Though he has never visited here, he has been a long time subscriber to Hinduism Today and has read many of Gurudeva’s books and knew all about Gurudeva’s life and work.

When the time came for this important celebration in a long life, he asked his family to all come together to Kauai.

So his wife, daughters & son and their spouses and grandson all came to share in this special day. Here, they meet with Bodhinatha for 30 minutes and ask many insightful questions.

Three generations pose with Bodhinatha to capture this moment which they said was a rare meeting. The monks also want to thank them for the wonderful lunch that they made for all of us. It was so very delicious!

With Dakshinamurthi towering behind them.

Rishi Manepalli with his grandfather.

The whole family hugs a rudraksha tree.

The whole family is honored and delighted to be able to help with some of the gold leaf work… Grandpa, despite his advanced age is sharp and nimble and has no trouble

The ladies put their hands to it. This stone is quite smooth and the work is progressing quickly.

Our team is putting on the sizing (a kind of glue) around 7 am… letting it dry for 2 hours, then applying the gold leave from 9 am to noon, then another sizing in the early afternoon and another application later in the afternoon.

An uplifting, joyful moment.

After 4-6 months of rains, off and on, the winter season has sudden gone dry, and cool with brilliant sunshine and spectacular sunsets.

Temperatures are dropping as low as 55 degrees fahrenheit… and with barefeet and no central heating, that can be chilly!

Meanwhile we are continuing to try to get communications from Sri Lanka on the Tsunami disaster. For the most part, it seems that phase one: immediate relief medical, supplies, food and water is well in hand, but the fate of so many people in the future is uncertain. Many relief organizations come in just for 30-60 days and when they feel the populace is relatively stabilized, they leave. The challenge now is long term rehabilitation and restoration. Thousands of refugees are in camps whose homes were only 1000 meters away. A sad twist: you might have thought there would be so many more orphans, and, of course there are, but, because adults are stronger and able to stand up to the flow of water, the greatest loss was to parents whose babies and young children were taken out to sea. While young people in the wake of losing their parents have some resilience, all those mothers and fathers who have lost their children are deeply troubled. Our prayers go out to everyone.