Swami Vivekananda stayed at 309 Monterey Road, South Pasadena, for six weeks as a guest of the three Mead sisters during his visit to Southern California in 1900. It was one of the sisters, Mrs. Carrie Mead Wyckoff (known later as Sister Lalita) who came to Portland toward the end of 1928 to help Swami Prabhavananda. A place near the City (ten acres of land in Lake Oswego, Clackamas County) was selected for purchase, but to show how difficult things were in those days for a new religious movement, the Vedanta Society was not welcome in this suburb.

Theresa Olson is one of those who helped Swami Prabhavananda in his pioneering work of establishing a Vedanta Society in Portland. She was the treasurer of the Society for 35 years. "Through the Grace of the Lord," recalls Theresa Olson, "I was born to good Christian parents, and at my Mother's feet learned a prayer remembered throughout the years. In my Sunday-school days I used to receive as gifts books of people in foreign lands, and I enjoyed reading them and thought that some day I would even see these people. Destiny brought our family to this beautiful city of Portland, and it was here after a few years that I found my wish answered. I did not have to go to a foreign land, it came to me right here.

"At the time I was entertaining a friend who had been ill, and one evening looking over the paper for some place to go, I saw a picture of a face that I seemed almost to recognize, and said, 'This is where we will go.' It was to be a meeting in the lobby of the famous Portland Hotel, and there I sat on the front seat with my friend before a person from a foreign land. It was in the year 1925 that Swami Prabhavananda of India came to Portland, and it was before him that I sat on this occasion.

"A musician had played on a harp, and when the Swami began to speak, it was as if a new heaven and a new earth was opened for me, and I said to myself, 'Is it possible that this is happening?', but I knew it was and that it was very real because in my very inmost heart I answered 'Yes, yes' to every word he said. It was as if I was sitting under a huge fountain of Divine Perfection and Bliss and cleansed of all doubts and fears and born anew, and that Bliss is still mine.

"Once, Swami Prabhavananda gathered the few of us and gave us our names. Mine is Hari Priya (dear to the Lord), and I still feel the blessing and Divine protection of that occasion."

However, after four years of fruitful service to the Portland Centre, Swami Prabhavananda moved to Hollywood in 1929, at the invitation of Mrs. Wyckoff, who donated her house at 1946 Ivar Avenue (later named Vedanta Place) to start the Vedanta Society there.¹¹

Swami Vividishananda was sent from India in 1929 to take charge of the Portland Centre. The Society still had no place of its own, and he too lived in a modest apartment at the Wheeldon. Sometimes they screened his bed off with a curtain and held meetings in the balance of the same room. Unfortunately after a year of service he went to San Francisco on account of ill health.