About 35 people have shown up for Bodhinatha’s talk at the beautiful Hindu temple in Temple, TX, this evening. http://t.co/cYHwYFVP

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Former Kauai Mayor sent us this photo today, a sign, one of 6 Gurudeva gifted the island, was just renovated

On Tuesday, February 28, the First Baptist Church of Midland hosted the Permian Basin's second interfaith dialogue event. Participants this time included Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami from Kauai's Hindu Monastery, Rabbi Holly Levin Cohn from Temple Beth El in Odessa, Pastor Dr. Randell Everett from First Baptist Church in Midland, Monsignor James Bridges from St. Stephens Catholic Church in Midland and Imam Wazir Ali from Masjid Al Islam and Masjid Al Qur'an in Houston. The questions that each of the panelists answered in turn were: What is the role of women in your faith community including leadership and worship? What is the central nonnegotiable truth on which your faith is built? What are some of the important practices done in the home in your faith? The morality of capital punishment? How does your faith acknowledge, value, teach and promote diversity? Is the humanity considered one family? Each of the speakers was eloquent and clear in his and her responses. This educational style of interfaith panel, repeating the pattern from last year's event, worked extremely well. The well received two-hour event, arranged by Dr. Padmaja Patel, one of our latest Saiva Siddhanta Church arulsishyas, was attended by around 500 members of the Midland-Odessa community. It was webcast live, and in the coming weeks it will be available on YouTube for those who were unable to attend in person or live online. Stay tuned! Read the full report by Sara Higgins at mywesttexas.com here.

After the interfaith event on Tuesday, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami was hosted by Nathan and Madu Medi in their beautiful home in Midland. There was even a sign in the foyer welcoming Bodhinatha!

The long-awaited renovation of our Kauai Aadheenam's kitchen facility began early this week. The monks moved the stove and sinks completely out to the back pantry area. Then John Anderson and his team came in and completely gutted and cleaned out the entire old kitchen room. Much of the wood and unmentionable material behind the walls was is over 50 years old. After several days of very hard work, jack hammering cement risers, replacing rotten wall studs and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning -- the team is now in the process of putting the kitchen back together, starting with a fresh new plywood ceiling that was covered with wall board.