nama oṁ viṣṇu-pādāya kṛṣṇa-preṣṭhāya bhū-tale
śrīmate Jayapatākā-svāmin iti nāmine
namo ācāryapādāya nitāi-kṛpa-pradāyine
gaura-kathā dhāmadhāya nagara-grāma tāriṇe
Dear Śrīla Gurudeva,
Please Accept Our Humble Obeisances at the dust of your lotus feet !
All Glories to Śrīla Prabhupāda! All Glories to Your Divine Grace!!
Happy 70th Appearance Day to you !!
Words cannot describe how fortunate we are to have come in contact with this Kṛṣṇa Consciousness movement and Śrīla Prabhupāda's teachings. It is purely mercy of the Lord that it happened, otherwise what qualification do we have to come under the loving shelter of such a caring spiritual father. Your holiness have lovingly accepted us as your children despite all our shortcomings.
With immense gratitude we thank Śrī Śrī Rādhā Mādhava, Pañca-tattva, Narasiṁhadeva, Śrīla Prabhupāda and all our previous ācāryas for giving you back to us. We also pray to Them every day to keep you in good health for a long time so that you can travel far and wide and give this message of Kṛṣṇa to millions of people as you used to do.
Every time I think of your compassion and love for all the fallen beings around, I could not stop myself from crying. This only show how much surrendered you are to your spiritual master and how determined you are to fulfill his instructions. Whenever I hear or read about the wonders you perform wherever you are, I'm amazed and can see how dear you are to Śrīla Prabhupāda and Lord Gaurāṅga. You are our great inspiration Guru Mahārāja. Though I cannot fathom how much trouble you are going through physically, I understand that nothing can stop you from giving out Kṛṣṇa to the fallen conditioned souls like us. Though there is so much to learn from you, I'm taking this one thing that "I should never allow my physical well being to affect or impede my Devotional service" as inspiration, as it is much needed for me at the moment. Being a baby, I'm taking baby-steps towards learning from your example and trying to imbibe at least a fraction of your qualities but hoping to eventually learn to appreciate and understand how much pain and suffering you are going through for our sake.
Guru Mahārājā, when I got initiated in 2016, I promised you that I will help you in your mission of fulfilling Śrīla Prabhupāda's instructions to you by helping you preach the message of Lord Caitanya. Though few of our god brothers told us repeatedly to start Bhakti-vṛkṣa in our area, we are not able to start it in a full-fledged manner. But one good news I have to share with you this year is that I'm slowly getting out of my comfort zone and going out on book distribution and also have started giving classes in our local temple. Though I am nervous every time I attempt to do either of these, I keep telling myself "this is my service to Guru Mahārājā and if I do this it will please him", this is my only motivation. Though it is not so great, hope to increase this year with your blessings. I also have started transcription sevā through JPS Volunteers group which makes me feel that I am covering up for all these years of association of yours that I have missed.
We live in an area where there are practically no god-brother/sister of ours live and because of my on-going health condition we do not get to meet or associate with them often. But this year it so happened that one of our god-brothers has come to our local temple as a pujari and also another god-brother has moved along in to our local area with his family. This really made me feel assured that we have that support from you which will help us in serving you better this year.
On this auspicious occasion of your Vyāsa-pūjā we only beg and pray that you bless us that we can be of some use to you and improve in our service to you. Please do bless us that we do not fall prey to the allurements of Maya and stay your faithful servants forever. Please forgive us for all the offences that we may have committed.
Your servant,
Utkarṣiṇī Simantinī devī dāsī and Bṛhat Gaura Hari dāsa