April Activities

Namaste:

It feels very eerie for me to write to remind you that temple pooja that is held every third Sunday of the month (which is tomorrow) is not an open event this month.  I would like you all to spend personal time in devotional activities between noon and 3 PM tomorrow, the traditional time in which we meet at the temple and partake in group activities.  To keep up with our monthly pooja routine Prof. Bhawuk will perform the regular pooja by himself but we should be following our community effort of Shelter at Home to continue to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

LOTUS leadership would like to invite volunteers to help with sewing masks that we plan to donate to the needy in the community. LOTUS will purchase the fabric but would like interested people to donate their time to sew.  Saguna Verma, our Vice-President will be sharing a prototype in the upcoming days and we hope to sew at least 100 masks by the end of the month. If interested, please email [email protected] to confirm your commitment. 

LOTUS is also committing a monetary donation of $1500 to The Hawaii Food Bank to support needy individuals during this time. If you want to continue to support LOTUS in these community ventures, please continue to donate to LOTUS through our website. We know that this may be a difficult and uneasy time for many of us, but it is important, now more than ever, for our community to (metaphorically, not physically) band together. We welcome any suggestions for online community activities that LOTUS can host or support.  I believe the LOTUS community has the bandwidth within its ranks to venture into larger community projects.

Our return to organized group activity at the Wahiawa temple will be dictated by the directives of the City and County of Honolulu and the State of Hawaii.  Please continue to practice personal hygiene (good and frequent hand washing and avoiding touching your face very frequently) as the primary way to protect yourself during these times in addition to other interventions such as physical distancing, use of a face mask in public places and copious use of alcohol based sanitizers.

Stay safe and warm aloha,

Venkataraman Balaraman
President