Please accept my blessings. I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated 31 December, 1969 and have duly noted the contents. I have just arrived here in Los Angeles from London via Boston and your letter was forwarded to me here.

I am glad to learn that there is one boy, Neal Delmonico, now staying with the devotees at the Temple. Now I am in Los Angeles, and many students will be initiated next Sunday, January 25th. So if you recommend, he may be initiated at that time. If he sticks to the principles of our devotional service, it will not be difficult to save him from the draft.

We have been recognized by the draft board as a religious society and if our student seriously understands the philosophy of Bhagavad-gita or Science of God, follows the regulative principles strictly with clear heart without any doubt, then naturally he is promoted to the ministerial status. So our Society is authorized to award the ministerial status but the students must be equally serious in understanding the philosophy.

We require hundreds of bona fide students in Krishna Consciousness. The world is in need of this function. People are going to hell for want of proper guidance. No other religious institution are so much serious about God consciousness as we are. So you must train your contemporaries in such spirit of alertness, then we shall be able to open hundreds of centers, and the people in general shall be saved from being misguided.

Hope this meets you in good health.