Dearest Śrīla Prabhupāda,
We, who are blessed to live at your Radhadesh yātrā, beg to offer our humble obeisances at
your divine lotus feet.
As a pure devotee completely surrendered to the desire and guidance of your most exalted spir-
itual master, His Divine Grace Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, you engaged in immea-
surable sacrifices in his service. You left no stone unturned as you fearlessly persevered in the
face of every possible and impossible challenge while fighting to rescue souls ensnared in Kali’s
clutches. As we try to contemplate your astounding devotional prowess, we recall one of your last
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam purports.
The word svakārthānām refers to great desires … the glance of Lord Viṣṇu creates the
desires of the devotees. A pure devotee, however, has no desires … because the desires
of devotees whose attention is fixed on Kṛṣṇa have already been fulfilled, the Lord’s
sidelong glances create variegated desires in relation to Kṛṣṇa and devotional service.
(Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam 10.13.50)
In response to your unadulterated surrender in pure devotion to guru and Kṛṣṇa, they have
infused your pure heart with boundless transcendental bhakti-śakti. Now your glance upon even
conditioned souls like us continues to create so many desires to engage in activities related to
Kṛṣṇa and devotional service. Without your loving glance and sublime leadership, we shudder to
think of what our fate would have been. As we endeavor to enact the inspiration and variegated
desires you endow us with, we humbly request Your Divine Grace to consider how some of the
resulting endeavors and activities have manifest in your Radhadesh branch here in the Belgian
Ardennes.
Śrīla Prabhupāda, you repeatedly emphasize the utmost necessity and efficacy of regularly
hearing and discussing kṛṣṇa-kathā for anyone desiring to progress on the path of bhakti. The
Radhadesh community takes this edict very seriously; thus, the devotees here are being sanctified
by several visiting preachers who share with us their vast learning, wisdom, and realizations in the
practice of Kṛṣṇa consciousness. In fact, at least one third of the morning lectures in 2024 have
been given by preachers like Trivikrama Swami, Ūrmilā Devī Dāsī, Mādhavānanda Dāsa, Hari
Parshad Dāsa, Kartik Chandra Dāsa, and many more of your devoted disciples and granddis-
ciples. Hearing from such staunch and learned devotees purifies and enthuses us to improve our
devotional attitude and endeavors. Furthermore, on one day each week, we are blessed to hear a
lecture given by Your Divine Grace, and on another day we are delighted to hear about your tran-
scendental līlā from authorized books written about you by your faithful disciples like Satsvarūpa
Mahārāja and Hari Śauri Prabhu.
In regard to regular hearing and discussing Kṛṣṇa conscious topics, Ūrmilā Devī Dāsī, your
deeply dedicated and brilliant daughter, gave a course at Radhadesh last year on some key points
concerning how to practically assimilate and apply your teachings on varṇāśrama. This has moti-
vated the Radhadesh community to take small, incremental steps toward implementing some
principles of varṇāśrama-dharma here.
Furthermore, in relation to varṇāśrama-dharma, another service you urge us to undertake is
cow protection. At the Radhadesh goshala, the herd is being responsibly and lovingly cared for.
Community members are also regularly invited to visit the goshala and participate in feeding and
caring for the cows. This creates a blissful camaraderie among us, reminding us of how urgent and
satisfying it is to protect and cherish Kṛṣṇa’s favorite animal.
A closely related devotional project to this is the Radhadesh garden, which is being developed
in such a wonderful manner that the late, blessed Kadamba Kānana Swami dubbed the project
Premaculture. With the garden crew’s great care and expertise, the garden is thriving, supply-
ing the temple and the Radhadesh Govinda’s restaurant with fresh produce to be prepared and
offered to Their Lordships. Those fortunate enough to partake of the resulting transcendental
foods are blessed in body, mind, and spirit. Moreover, as the urgency of the world’s instability is
increasing exponentially, the garden and goshala departments are working tirelessly to promote
self-sufficiency, eager to embrace your vision that actual life means depending on the bounty of
our universal mothers, the earth and the cows.
To ensure that the Radhadesh community members and our many visitors all have the oppor-
tunity to peacefully partake of kṛṣṇa-prasādam, the huge prasādam hall, which has been under
construction for some time, was finally almost completed this year. The hall’s ceiling, tables and
chairs, etc., are all composed of wood from trees from the Radhadesh property, beautifully pre-
pared and finished by community residents. However, in the last weekend of January, the tables
and chairs were put aside, as Radhadesh hosted our seventeenth Radhadesh Mellows kīrtana
festival. We hosted 1,700 attendees with room to spare. So, as it turns out, the prasādam hall is
multifunctional, but as far as prasādam distribution is concerned, the hall has proven to be a great
asset during festivals. We are eagerly looking forward to serving the community and public in this
capacity in the upcoming years and far into the future.
Radhadesh has also traditionally kept Kṛṣṇa conscious education a priority, and to this end,
onsite courses in Bhakti-śāstrī and Bhakti-vaibhava are regularly going on here. There is also a
special short course called “Be a Monk for a Week” available for visitors and the public, as well as
a bimonthly invitation to our congregational members to participate in sevā days. Some attendees
in these events decide to join the Radhadesh bhakta course, and most continue to take an increas-
ingly serious interest in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, remaining very favorable and supportive of the
Radhadesh community.
These are some of our attempts to follow your spotless teachings, dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, by
which our lives are being transformed from despair to delight, from dense darkness to brilliant
discovery of the Absolute Truth and how to approach Him and His entourage. The result is
that Radhadesh is maturing into a “community of love,” consisting of many generations, rang-
ing from new arrivals to recent departures, all being blessed by the oasis you provide and will
continue to provide for countless generations to come. We pray that you are finding satisfaction
in our humble attempts and that we can engage in further devotional improvements in our com-
munity. For example, we want to greatly increase our systematic book distribution in Belgium,
and to construct a parikrama path all around the Radhadesh Domaine to further enhance the
devotional atmosphere. We also want to make the terrain here more wheelchair-friendly for our
congregational members and visitors with disabilities. To be successful in anything we attempt,
dear Śrīla Prabhupāda, we continue to endeavor and depend on your mercy. Without your mercy,
how will we ever hope to attain the mercy of the paramparā and our presiding Deities, Their Lord-
ships Śrī Śrī Gaura-Nitāi, Śrī Śrī Rādhā-Gopīnātha, and Śrī Jagannātha, Śrī Baladeva and Śrīmatī
Subhadrā? Kindly keep us under the shelter of your lotus feet.
Your eternally grateful and dependent children, grandchildren,
great-grandchildren, and on and on at Radhadesh-dhāma

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