Thank you all for holding the Light for the Mandeville Press booth at the LA Times Festival of Books. The festival took place at the UCLA campus on Saturday April 26, and Sunday April 27. Logistically, everything went very well and very smoothly. In terms of the loving, Spirit was there supporting all of us in our work for the Travelers, and we had many opportunities to share our loving and share the teachings of MSIA with those people who were looking for them.

The volunteers who worked with me were wonderful. We started out at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday to set up our booth to be ready for the Festival beginning at 10 a.m.. By 9:45 a.m., our booth looked really great, and we were ready for the crowds. And the festival was very crowded! Featuring over 300 booths and over 400 author signing events, it seemed like the people came to our booth in waves. Our booth would be packed one moment, empty a few moments later, and then packed up again.

It was exciting to meet all the new visitors to our booth, as well as meeting people looking for our buck-a-book offers (they remembered us from last year). We had many new people come and look at our Spanish books as well. Seeing the familiar MSIA folks and USM folks who stopped by to check out the booth, was a joy! You all that stopped by and visited our booth kept reminding me that I truly am home here, and gave me a sense of rejuvenation.

Here are some of my favorite stories from people I met at this event. I loved it when people would come up to our booth and say something like, “Who is this John-Roger guy? He sounds so familiar to me.” We also had strangers come up to us who recognized the Momentum: Letting Love Lead book from bookstores or from a Paul Kaye booksigning at a bookstore. It seems people were drawn to our booth with this sense of recognition (perhaps they were recognizing themselves?) and drawn to the energy that was focused there. There was also someone who recognized the name John-Roger from having watched That Which Is on their local cable station.

We also had one person who sat in our booth reading Momentum, The Blessings Already Are, and Spiritual Warrior. She spent over one hour sitting in our booth reading those titles. I offered to give her one to take home, wondering if she had a financial concern in buying the books. She looked at me and smiled and said she just wanted to read them for a while.

John Morton and Paul Kaye came by on Saturday from 2:00-3:30 p.m. for a booksigning at our booth. It was great to have them there, talking with people and signing books. I heard one woman at a bus stop, after the festival, commenting on the aloofness of one of the authors who signed her book, I thought of the loving and openness of John and Paul and how grateful I was to be representing them in my work for Mandeville Press.

We had over 90 new contacts from this event, including people who bought books and who filled out a card for the Journey of a Soul book kit. The biggest hit were our Forgiveness bookmarks (we were giving those out for free). There were a few teachers who took bunches to hand out to their classes as well. In total we sold 191 books and did about $1400 in sales.

In my mind, each book we sold or bookmark we gave away is a seed planted. I send the Light to each person and all the Mandeville Press books that are now out there with new homes. I invite you all to send the Light to all the people we touched at this festival.

Until next festival, ciao!