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Mahasuvat Paptaso, Temple Monk, finds time to do repair work for the temple in his open air workshop on the grounds of the Wat Keopa Samakhitham. Birds are also regularly fed as part of piety by the monks and devotees. |
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Mahasuvat Paptaso prepares the temple for his congregation. Notice the Buddha statue, the pagoda trees, and pictures depicting Buddhist legends. Behind the monk are bowls with a variety of food preparations. |
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Bundles of daily items for offering at the temple serve to raise donation money for the temple projects. |
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Wat Lao Siriwathanaram Buddhist Temple, Akron, Ohio. The abandoned church building had once been a small protestant congregation. The building consisted of a sanctuary on the second floor with a balcony in the rear, and rooms in the basement. When the Temple acquired the property, the building was in ruins, and was actually in the process of being condemned by the city. |
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The building is easily identifiable as a Buddhist Temple from two blocks away, what with its bright colored relief carvings decorating the facade of the building, and the two dragon snakes which sit atop the sides of the front steps and face out to the street. |
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The elaborate facade was attached to the front of the building on the second floor and roof peak in the Summer of 1998. The facade was crafted out of wood by a fabrication company in up-state New York. Members of the temple drove trucks to up-state New York and brought the facade back to Akron in pieces. After very painstaking work to paint the symbols, sometimes having to repaint the same pieces numerous times in order to get the colors just right, the facade was installed in late summer. |
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A decorative shrine brought by a devotee. |
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Wat Lao Siriwathanaram Buddhist Temple, Akron Ohio |
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Wat Lao Siriwathanaram Buddhist Temple, Akron Ohio |
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Kham Phouk (Secretary of the Temple) and Pouchouang Xaysongkham (President of the Temple) immigrated to the United States from Laos in the early 1980s. Very soon after arriving in Akron, the two men began a fund raising campaign for the establishment of a Temple. In 1993, enough money was collected and there existed a large enough Laotian community in Akron that several families were able to establish a Temple in a small rented house a few blocks away from the present location. |
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As interest increased with the growing Laotian population in the Akron area, and the economy for skilled and unskilled workers in industrial northern Ohio improved, the community purchased an abandoned church in an older residential neighborhood in an old industrial area in south central Akron. The Temple purchased the building and began an extensive remodeling project, including putting on a new roof, siding, and extensive dry wall work inside. |
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Sri Lakshmi Narayan Temple building, Youngstown, Ohio. Construction was started in 1984. Unlike several other temples in the United States, where images of many different deities are installed for worship, this temple follows the more traditional Indian practice of a single central shrine of one presiding deity in the temple. |
