Sunday's Preaching in Pretoria

Nrsimhananda Prabhu, my husband and I spent Sunday morning with some very special souls! Bhakta April Prabhu who runs a karate school teamed up with my husband, Nrsimhananda Prabhu to have a sleepover at Iskcon Pretoria with and entire crew of students. We woke at 2am and drove there to join them for mangal arati. Having arrived at the temple at 4am we were so enlivened so see that the devotees were all awake and excited in anticipation of the forthcoming dose of Krishna Consciousness.



Most of these students were extremely new to Krishna Consciousness. Eleven of them never even had japa beads or bead bags. They awoke at the temple, showered and put on tilak before coming to the temple room. The youngest was 11 years old.



All of the females doned saries and tilak and looked absolutley fabulous. They danced in great ecstasy in the kirtans and after being gifted with chanting beads and bead bags chanted japa with great enthusiasm. Once during our japa session I could here a new voice repeating the mantra clearly and loudly and when I glanced in the direction that the voice was coming from I saw one of the students chanting with a look of great happiness. Later in a conversation he told me that this was his first experience at chanting japa! Indeed who can fathom the mercy of Lord Nityananda!

Three of the 11 year olds chanted for the entire japa period non stop and remained awake throughout the entire class, despite having awoken for mangal arati at 4.30am. During the class, which was session one of the Bhakti Sadacara Course at BCEC (Bhaktivedanta College of Education and Culture) Nrsimhananda Prabhu gave a profound presentation - as he has been doing for the past fifteen years since the inception of BCEC in Johannesburg. His presentation will appear on his webpage, which is still under construction, in the near future.

After the class here are some comments from the audience:
First time chanter sounded like an ld timer
"Thank you for the outstanding presentation. The philosophy was presented so simply that the students could understand this profound subject matter! We are all in awe of what we just learnt." Bhakta April

"Left me completely enlivened!" Niri

"No one told me purpose of life before!! Actually this was so incredibly logical!" Bhaktin Rasalila

Most of these students assumed devotional names and suprised us all when they introduced themselves individually. Prior to coming to the temple they wanted to feel very much part of the society. Hence they called thhemselves; Nitai, Rasalila, Parijata, etc.