Becoming Your Devotee (Part- 1)

Being born in the movement as a second-generation devotee, I was told that I still had to make the choice to actually join the movement. Instead of taking my "devotee identity" as a given, I had to make my own choice of becoming a devotee of Krsna. We all have the seed of bhakti within our hearts which just needs to be watered with love, care and positive experiences in our Krsna conscious life. Due to the spiritual nourishment that I received from my parents, my spiritual master -His Holiness Jayapataka Swami-, and the Vaisnavas throughout my entire life, it was the easiest decision I have ever had to make.

My childhood memories helped me to develop a higher taste and to not want to experience the world out there because I know that there is no better life than being a devotee. The memories of being engaged in devotional service; in a drama, making garlands, excitedly worshipping my first Deities, cooking for a festival or learning harmonium - these are the experiences that I have carried in my heart until now and this is when I think, "how can life be any more blissful?" It is due to the love and care that I received and the many happy and fun spiritual experiences deeply ingrained in my heart that I can humbly say that I have found love and beauty in being a devotee of Krsna. So, when my time came, I made the choice - I decided that I wanted to be a devotee.

Although I consider myself fortunate in my upbringing, I also realised that there was a large need to care for and nourish ISKCON's children and youth but I found that there were not sufficient materials for systematically engaging our children and youth in Krsna consciousness. After graduating from high school, I joined the Congregational Development Ministry (CDM) and, following a request from my Guru Maharaja, the Ministry established a Children Services department - which I took up as my service. This gave me confirmation of my purpose and role in Srila Prabhupada's movement. I decided that my goal in this life was to ensure that the next generations would have more opportunities to be engaged in Krsna consciousness rough Children Services, at home and elsewhere. I wanted to practically share the love that was passed on to me of being engaged in Krsna consciousness with other children and youth. This is my conviction, that when their time comes, such engagement will help them to make the decision of "yes, I want to be your devotee".

The vision of Children Services is to help all the congregations around the world implement children's programs or expand existing ones by creating a variety of methods to capture the hearts of children and nurture their seed of bhakti. Our purpose, not only of this book but of CDM Children Services in general, is to engage children in Krsna consciousness in a fun way; to nourish their love for Krsna and to help give them positive experiences in which they find so much taste and happiness in devotional service, that we help them in their decision to be a devotee of Krsna.

Haribol Kids!

The cover of this book, Becoming Your Devotee, shows how we have already started our path of bhakti by taking steps towards Krsna through the process of devotional service. After countless lifetimes of being away from Krsna, we are finally turning to Him in this lifetime by trying to become His devotee. Krsna is eagerly waiting for us with open arms to come back to Him, to our real home - back to Godhead. This book will help you to learn about the process of bhakti in a fun way so that you can practically apply this spiritual knowledge and easily make Krsna the centre of your life. The goal is that at the end of this life, we can all be finally reunited with our best friend, eternally.

Becoming Your Devotee explores, in depth, eight interesting topics of Krsna consciousness such as putting on tilaka, the nine processes of devotional service, following Ekadagi, Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda and even how to offer bhoga and a rati! Every chapter starts with a lesson explaining the topic with a story and fun facts and ends with a checklist to tick what you have learned. The special thing about this book is that every lesson contains many exciting activities such as crafts, dramas, cooking, games and so much more! This book is especially for you!

You can do most of these activities on your own, but do you know what will be even better and more fun? If you can meet up with your friends and do all the activities together! There are more than 150 activities to engage you and your friends in Krsna consciousness and you can do them in whatever order you like. The most important thing is that you will have fun!

Srila Prabhupada said that Krsna consciousness is so awesome and unlimited that ISKCON could continuously print Back to Godhead magazines and never run out of things to say. Similarly, there are so many beautiful aspects of Krsna consciousness and they cannot possibly be described in just one book. This is why we decided to develop these ideas into a series of books. The book that you are holding in your hands is the first of them!

We hope that you have an exciting time on your path towards Krsna!

For Parents and Teachers

Imagine if, one day, your child comes up to you and with all his or her sincerity, tells you, "I want to be Krsna's devotee"? The purpose of Becoming Your Devotee is to help them to make that decision as a steppingstone on their path towards Krsna. Even if your child has already made this decision, this book is to further encourage and deepen their experiences in Krsna consciousness. We have started this series of books with the conviction that learning about Krsna consciousness is fun and enjoyable. Learning should be exciting and this is what this book is trying to achieve. Children learn best when they are actively hands-on engaged in the topic rather than when they are simply told about the topic. This is why we have included a wide range of activities to not only cater for different learning styles, interests and inclinations but also to reinforce their assimilation of the knowledge of each chapter's theme.

**Contents and Sample Pages**