At this conference, held from November 6-9 in San Fransisco, I had these experiences.
On the first day, a person came up and told me, “I have read the whole Bhagavad-gita, and I wanted to meet other devotees. It is a miracle that is happening.”
He told me that he chants Hare Krishna whenever possible, and he has never met a devotee before or been to a temple. He took some books and gave a donation.
On the second day, he came again, and we talked for a while and he accepted some prasadam.
On the third day, during the closing hours of the conference, we were talking again, and I casually suggested that he come to the temple with me in the car. He agreed, and he heard the Wednesday evening class given by Shubha Vilas Prabhu. At the end of the serving of prasada, he asked whether he could render service and help clean the kitchen.
Through all the conversations we had, he never looked as though he were a person new to Krishna consciousness. He was saying that before reading Bhagavad-gita As It Is, he read five other editions, and none of them made any sense to him. He was also telling how he has read about many of the sciences of the world (being in the technological field for eighteen years), and this was the culmination of all the sciences he has read.
Your servant,
Madhava Govinda Dasa