Dear Friends,
Ishwar carried bricks for Great Master at the dera in Beas, and soon ISHA will have trucks carrying steel to the dera in Wisconsin!
Yes, that’s right, visitors to the dera this summer will see the Meeting Hall rise from the top of the hill. The steel will form the framework of the large building that Ishwar began planning in 2012. As you may recall, the concrete foundation for the building was poured in 2022, and now ISHA Chairman Jagannath Kerai and the Building Committee have approved this major step forward. If all goes well, in June and July, steelworkers will arrive at the dera and install the metal skeleton and roof of the 16,583 square foot building. The metal is “structural steel” consisting of the steel columns that hold up the building, the steel beams that form the roof, and the steel joists that fill in between the roof beams. The roof (known as the metal deck) will be made from sheets of galvanized metal. The dome structure is expensive to fabricate, and so will not be installed this summer, but will be added to the building when donations are sufficient.
The steel columns will rest on the concrete foundation and footings that were poured in 2022 and 2023.
An overhead view of the Meeting Hall site on the hill. The concrete foundation shows the outline of the future steel building.
The floor plan of the Meeting Hall.
An artist’s conception of the completed building.
Ishwar Ji describes the purpose of the Dera and the ISHA Meeting Hall in Wisconsin:
” The Great Master paid a tribute to his master for the sake of other followers of the spiritual path by building a small dera or a place where they could hold meetings and where they could hold satsangs, initiations, things like that. That he named Dera Baba Jaimal Singh. He named it after his master. I had said I would love to do that too, just out of respect and tribute to my own master, so I announced at the last Bhandara that I would like to have a Dera Baba Sawan Singh. Since he says the axis of spirituality is shifting to America, I thought it appropriate to set it up in America, the United States of America.”
It’s going to be a great summer at Ishwar’s dera. All are invited to visit any time between May 1 and November 1.
There are also two special, 4-day events planned on:
Memorial Day, May 23 — 26, 2025
Mitti Seva, September 19 — 22, 2025
In either case, please let us know when you will be visiting by emailing dera.seva@ishanews.org.
To learn more about the Meeting Hall, check out the dera website at https://dera.ishanews.org
If you would like to offer seva to Ishwar Ji, please visit https://ishanews.org/voluntary-contribution/
Any questions related to Ishwar’s dera can be directed to Jagannath Kerai’s email at chairman@ishanews.org
With warmest regards,
Paul Bauer
ISHA Dera Building Committee
