{"id":5734,"date":"2008-05-06T08:19:55","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T07:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=5734"},"modified":"2008-05-16T11:27:33","modified_gmt":"2008-05-16T10:27:33","slug":"remembering-mitravinda-devi-dasi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=5734","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Mitravinda devi dasi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Nartaka Gopala dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Our godsister Mitravinda devi dasi  passed away in Alachua on April 22, 2008 of stomach cancer. She was a much-loved member of the community and performed many years of seva to the Deities, mainly sewing, making jewelry and garlands, and dressing the Deities with much devotion, and practically non-stop. She was married to Ram Vigraha Prabhu for over 30 years and they raised 3 wonderful Vaishnava children: Samba, Ragu &#038; Nandini.<\/p>\n<p>For the last month of her life she was staying in a hospice, with devotees near her 24 hours. Mitravinda was barely eating or drinking, and she astonished everyone by telling them a few weeks before she departed: \u201cI am going to leave my body on the 22nd.\u201d And she did.<\/p>\n<p>It made me recall last year when she drove with me from Alachua to Miami ISKCON  so she could dress Radha Vraja Bihari for ten days. At that time she told me \u201cEverything in my life happens on the 22nd. My birthday, I was initiated, my marriage\u2026\u201d and she went on and on with more examples. So I related to her why 22 is a very auspicious number. About twenty years ago we were distributing books in Miami Intl. Airport and a man was walking around our distribution area saying over and over in an animated voice: \u201cNumber 22, love, Lord Chaitanya!\u201d After several minutes of this I asked him what he was talking about. He had a Bhagavad-gita As It Is in his hand (another devotee had sold it to him) and he explained that in numerology number 22 is the most auspicious number, it stands for love, and in the introduction of the Bhagavad-gita Srila Prabhupada lists the disciplic succession, the Brahma Madhva Gaudiya Sampradaya, and Lord Chaitanya is number 22.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few months ago Mitravinda first found out that she had stomach cancer, at stage four, the most advanced stage, and that it had spread to her other organs. At that time I was talking with her and I said \u201cPobrecita!\u201d (you poor thing.) She turned to me and said: \u201cWhy poor? I am lucky! I get to go back to Godhead, and I am going to beat you there!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It is the general consensus among the Alachua devotees that after all of her years of sincere loving service she has indeed reached her goal, and is now most likely making garlands for her beloved Lords, Sri Sri Krishna and Balaram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/imag4vv4es.jpg\" alt=\"Hare Krishna\" \/><strong>By Nartaka Gopala dasi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p> Our godsister Mitravinda devi dasi  passed away in Alachua on April 22, 2008 of stomach cancer. She was a much-loved member of the community and performed many years of seva to the Deities, mainly sewing, making jewelry and garlands, and dressing the Deities with much devotion, and practically non-stop.<!--more--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,88],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memoriam","category-obituary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5734\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}