It’s Sun Two and the Ekadanta Kulam reported on their activities. Saravananathaswami shared news on the Kauai Aloha Endowment that Gurudeva envisioned. The endowment gave out its first two grants to worthy causes on Kauai. It is Gurudeva’s vision manifesting for our island neighbors!

Ben and Gail LaMar, from California, are our guests this week. Gail just completed the Level 1 of Gurudeva’s Master Course Correspondence Course and is about to enter Level 2. Congratulations to you!

The news from Iraivan is the delivery of four containers of stones. These arrived from Bangalore this week, and the teams here have been several days unloading them.

Lots of roof beams in this shipment.

Yoginathaswami does the careful work of unloading with the forklift.

As the Talaivar of the Siddhidata Kulam overseeing the silpi work, he prefers not to delegate this mission critical job. One mishap and a stone that took a few years to carve might need to be done again. In his book, this just isn’t ever going to happen.

Our primary builder on the right with Silpi Chellaiya, who has been working on Iraivan Temple for 13 years, since he was just a young boy. They watch the stones coming out of the containers…

On Himalayan Acres, our 407- acre parcel across the Wailua River, Sadhaka Adinatha continues the long-term initiative to plant trees on what has been previously covered with sugar cane for decades. Here is is planting a grove of Nara Trees, one of the premium woods of the world.

The land will be immensely enhanced to finally have trees growing here again, after 150 years of sugarcane harvesting which takes a toll on the soil.

These Nara trees are the national trees of the Phillippines. They have the unusual behavior that logs remain alive and you can stick them in the ground like giant cuttings and they sprout… Sadhaka looks closely at some new buds from the cuttings that were put in the ground just three weeks ago.

Guinea grass is everywhere. It is a wild grass that is powerfully invasive, and a lot of work goes into controlling it… mowing is an important maintenance job.

The Kalepa land, (we call it Himalayan Acres) is a beautiful place to be… not a single man made sound can be heard (when you turn off the tractor)…. perfect peace.

Our two task forcers, Potriyan from Malaysia and Tyler from Tennesee, enjoy joining the team on the retreat days for an outing in nature. Sixteen-year-old Portiyan is standing next to a mahogany tree that is doing very well.

Here is Tyler next to a Koa tree. It’s the finest and most prized tropical wood grown in Hawaii.

We also have some successful Noni trees… These fruits are highly medicinal and used in the islands to boost the immune system and stop a cold or a flu “dead in its tracks.”

Though small, and only two years old, these Noni trees are already bearing lots of fruit. Tylernatha walks along the rows and picks ripe Noni to take back to the monastery.