Bodhinatha blessing a young Hindu born outside of India and Sri Lanka…..

At home today it was the monthly Ashram Sadhana day and the monks were busy with their various chores.

At lunch today the Pillaiyar Kulam took their turn to share news:

Shanmuganathaswami got 40,000 envelopes for special mailings. The large numbers the the Pillaiyar Kulam uses these days tells a lot about how our mission work is growing. He and Satya packed up a lot of books to send to libraries here and there. The funds for this initiative comes from the noble entrepreneurs of our Hindu Businessman’s Association.

Muruganathaswami is helping adminiter the Mauritius Spiritual Park activities and is also working on silpis visa matters.

Sadhaka Jothinatha shared progress on advance preparations for events in Minneapolis and at venues along the way in Canada at each place where Bodhinatha will be visiting, Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary. Heis especially inspired to get our Hindu literature into the hands of families at these well-attended festivals.

Sadhaka Jivanandanatha is preparing for the visit of Andre Garzia, one of our IT associates who is visiting from Brasil again this year as an extra leg to his annual trip to an IT conference held in Monterey. Sadhaka and Andre will be working on some high-end techy tools.

Below you will enjoy a short time-lapse of the roof stones being lifted up onto Iraivan yesterday.
Look closely and you may be able to see how the sun light disappears as the stones for the roof are placed one after the other.

Manish and Radhika Thakkar are here visiting from Chicago. Their families originate in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. They are here on their honeymoon. They visited the Iraivan Temple and watched the silpis putting the finishing touches to the stones that were placed on the roof yesterday. Both Manish and Radhika were very happy they were able to be here to see this remarkable Chola-style temple being built, the only one of its kind in the Western hemisphere.

Jill Pandian and Sara Bartlemay from Bend, Oregon, openly shared how deeply moved by today’s visit to the temple. Sara plans to visit India next year and feels deeply drawn to Hinduism. Both of them want to return in the near future.

More photos from activities this year in Sri Lanka, taken some time back, they slowly make their way to the US, get scanned and sent to us…

Sri Subramuniya Kottam celebrated Gurudeva’s Jayanthi or Birthday on January 5th with a Padapuja to Gurudeva’s Tiruvadi followed by cultural events for the Kottam’s children.

Kottam priest and student Meruja Sharma doing the Pada puja. Seated behind Meruja is his mother and Kulamatha Sivalosani Kanagaratnam

Cultural performance….

Kottam children, sitting for meditation.