We've just completed five days of meetings in New Vrndavana. It was a marathon and a serious first for ISKCON. This was the first time the GBC met and concentrated pretty much as a full body on future planning. The meetings in Mayapur feature a lot of proposal processing and attending to regular business. This precludes a lot of forward planning as the time gets taken up in necessary but time consuming routine work. The meetings in New Vrndavana concentrated on planning the future of ISKCON. Routine work was confined to only dealing with emergencies so the focus was placed fairly and squarely on the future.

Today was pretty warm with a predicted top of 90 F which means 32 degrees centigrade. After a short morning session we spent the afternoon at Prabhupada's Palace engaged in some team building exercises facilitated by Praghosa Prabhu and Nrsimha Kavaca Prabhu. Tomorrow we drive back to New York for the Ratha-yatra on Saturday before I fly out at 7.00 pm bound for Los Angeles and then Melbourne. I'll be flying with Ramai Swami to LA and who knows from LA.

On the way to the airport when I was leaving Melbourne Acintya Rupa mused who I might be sitting with on the way to LA. I mentioned that you never can tell. All sorts of people fly around the world every day.

When I got to the Qantas Club lounge I wandered around looking for a quiet spot. As I spied an empty area I heard a "Hari Bol" and to my surprise found Anandini Mataji and a work friend Samantha welcoming me.

"Where are you going?" Anandini asked me.

"I'm off to Los Angeles. Where are you going?"

"I'm going to LA." she replied.

"What's your seat number?" I enquired.

"35B" she said. "What's yours?"

I knew I was in row 35 so I said "35, hang on I have to look at my boarding pass. Yes look at that, it's 35C."

What a coincidence. Well actually there is no such thing as coincidence. It was definitely Krsna's arrangement. How could two devotees who didn't know that either was travelling on the same flight end up sitting in the same row next to each other? Before I bumped into Anandini I was a little anxious about my first trip to the US. Now I definitely felt Krsna was looking after me.

Radha Vrndavana-candra looked very beautiful this morning.

# Posted by Aniruddha at 8/6/07; 11:26:37 AM to the News dept.
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GBC Meetings in New Vrndavana

As senior Kazakh officials arrive in Romania for an OSCE conference on combating discrimination, the local administration chief ordered members of the embattled Hare Krishna near Almaty to demolish their own temple and other buildings within ten days. "If we don't do it, the authorities will," Hare Krishna spokesperson Maksim Varfolomeyev told Forum 18 News Service.

Please visit www.kazakhkrishna.com to see how you can make a Paypal donation for the relocation effort.

# Posted by Aniruddha at 8/6/07; 10:46:16 AM to the News dept.
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KAZAKHSTAN: "Tolerance" in Bucharest, Krishna temple ordered demolished in Almaty