It was indeed a ground-breaking trip to Hungary from April 6th to April 12th. His Grace Sundar Gopāl Prabhu was accompanied by Mahāprabhu and our humble self. We met very nice devotees there who are now enthusiastic to start a temple for Śrīla Prabhupāda and Kṛṣṇa.
We would like to extend our special thanks to Haripada Prabhu, Bhakti Candrikā Mātājī, Anātha Prabhu, Īśvara Kṛṣṇa Prabhu, Mālinī Mātājī, Bhakti Priyā Mātājī, Annapūrṇa Mātājī and Bhakta Andras. There are others also who have kindly cooperated to make the visit a memorable one.
Our special thanks to the German devotees — the fired up young brahmacārī team of Mathurāpati Prabhu. They drove down 15 hours to give us their valuable association in Budapest.
We conducted the first Ṛtvik initiation in Hungary wherein seven devotees were initiated — 5 from Hungary and 2 from Germany. We also had a nice Harināma Saṅkīrtana in a park in Budapest.
We discussed strategies on how to develop the preaching in Hungary and all the devotees were very much enthused by the prospects that await.
A major highlight was our visit to Haripada Prabhu’s farm house. He and his wife hosted us with such affection and devotion that we felt a special bonding with them. Haripada Prabhu is a senior devotee in Hungary and while he was in ISKCON, he was a very influential devotee there. Late last year, he had an accident which broke his skull in many places and also his ribs.
Though he is 52 years old, he is recovering at an amazingly quick rate. Once back in gear, which he said he would in a few months, he pledged to work for Śrīla Prabhupāda’s movement with great vigor. The visit to his home was extremely inspirational.
We see great hope for the real movement of Kṛṣṇa consciousness to grow in Europe.
We pray that Śrīla Prabhupāda and Śrī Śrī Gaura-Nitāi bless the devotees there with great success in their efforts!
