Dear Friends,
The week leading up to Mitti Seva weekend at Ishwar’s dera is a busy time for the sevadars lucky enough to participate. The days are filled with preparations for the arrival of Ishwar’s friends, who are traveling to Wisconsin to celebrate their love and devotion for the beloved. The pre-event seva includes cleaning all of the buildings and grounds, planning menus, harvesting prashad from the gardens, purchasing supplies, staging construction projects, setting up tables and chairs, organizing the kitchens, creating flower bouquets, organizing all of the tools and materials required for the dozens of seva tasks, and so much more.
This year, there was also an extra buzz in the air concerning the upcoming restart of Ishwar’s special building project dedicated to his Master, Baba Sawan Singh. Much of the steel framing for the ISHA Meeting Hall has been delivered to the dera site, and if all goes well, the assembly of the building will begin within the next month. Preparations for the installation of the steelwork have been happening up on the Hill for the last several weeks, and Mitti Seva attendees got to see the completion of this exciting seva.
Ishwar again blessed us with excellent weather for Mitti Seva, and many beneficial, indoor and outdoor tasks were completed. Here are some photo highlights of a few of the many happy sevadars who gathered for Ishwar’s September 19-22, 2025 event.
Harvesting and cleaning Ishwar’s prashad garden is always the center of attention!
And once again, the prashad was bountiful, beautiful, and delicious!
The bounty was gracefully prepared and processed by blue-clad sevadars.
The new patio project was advanced nicely by a gleeful sevadar team who were inspired to build the first retaining wall.
As always, there was plenty of brush to cut, weeds to whip, and grass to mow.
A pair of skilled visitors volunteered to custom-weld wonderful new steel handrails for the entrances to the ISHA office and the greenhouse.
The tea emporium was a popular stop for sevadars in need of some rest and a delicious cup of fresh hot tea.
As always, Ishwar’s amazing, talented chefs and kitchen helpers provided four days of an abundance of fresh food for the entire group, including vegetables from the prashad garden.
The dera “Bad Boy” buggy was a great hit (including with these chefs!), both for recreation and for moving tools and equipment to the Meeting Hall worksite on the Hill.
A team of exuberant and inspired sevadars worked in the dirt for several days to complete preparations for construction to begin on the steel frame and roof of Ishwar’s Meeting Hall. The seva was completed (ahead of schedule!), and so the steelwork can begin soon.
Posing after a job well done on the Hill!
Some of the chefs left the kitchen to inspect the mitti seva project on the Hill.
All are invited to visit Ishwar’s Wisconsin dera any time between May 1 and November 1, 2026.
There are also two special, 4-day events planned for next year:
Mitti Seva, May 29 – June 1, 2026
Mitti Seva, September 18 – 21, 2026
In either case, please let us know when you will be visiting by emailing dera.seva@ishanews.org.
We hope to see you there!
To learn more about Ishwar’s 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
