Book distribution is happening again in France
France, in the 1980s, was sometimes the No. 1 country in the world.
Now something is again happening in France. Jananada Goswami is heading up the book distribution, and so far he has twenty-three devotees going out. He himself is the No. 3 distributor.
He was one of the big-book distributors in England in the early years. Now he has his sankirtan shoes back on and is out there giving the mercy and getting the mercy.
Here’s a recent story from Marseille, France.
When I travelled with Jivananda Prabhu on sankirtan, in the Metro station we were searching how to get to the center city. Jivananda asked people.
A young man who didn’t speak much English, but was dedicated to helping us, started to ask people whether they speak English. He was so enthusiastic and so very quick. He stopped a girl, and both of them had the same idea of the direction to travel. They offered to take us there.
The lad took Jivananda´s trolley full of books, because he really wanted to help. When we got to the city center, I asked the girl if she liked yoga. She said yes. So we stopped and spoke a bit about philosophy. I gave her Sri Isopanisad, which she was immediately interested in. She had no money, so she said she would go collect some money and later meet us somewhere.
With a smile I said, “If not, that’s OK.”
We continued to go out of the station with the young man. His name was Diallo. He already had some plan how to help us as much as possible with book distribution and harinam. Diallo is a local musician, and he knew how these things work in Marseille. He showed us some places.
Then the young girl came back. Her name was Maria, and she gaved me ten euros. She thanked me for everything.
Meanwhile Daillo drew the interest of a few people and started to present what we are. Then he showed them the books. After that he showed us good places for book distribution and for harinam.
He got an idea, and on a small piece of cardboard from a box he wrote a few French requests that asked people for donations. After all that, he gave us his contact info, if we needed something more.
It was for me an unbelievable and memorable meeting. This boy had such a nice service attitude and during the month of Kartik! Jivananda laughed a lot about how nicely Krsna engaged this young man, who took his trolley with the books of Srila Prabhupada, helped with harinam, and even made a cardboard banner and wrote there nice requests. We used this later, also, for other Harinams. Till today we are not sure what he wrote there.
