Haifa, May 25th, 1946.
Dear Baha'i Sister:
Your letter dated April 27th has been received and the beloved Guardian
has instructed me to answer it on his behalf. He also acknowledges receipt
of the enclosures forwarded with it.
He trusts that by the time this letter reaches you the complications which
arose at Convention, about the election, will have been satisfactorily
straightened out; as he already cabled you, this was a question for the
out-going N.S.A. to decide.
He feels that the National Spiritual Assembly during the coming year
should focus both its and the believers' attention on the all-important
teaching work, and the necessity of increasing the number of groups and
assemblies throughout Australia and New Zealand. The friends should be
urged and encouraged to arise both as pioneers and travelling teachers,
and they should receive, in cases where they cannot afford it themselves,
financial aid from the National Fund. Such measures are at the present
time absolutely necessary, as the believers are few, the hour very
pressing, and most of them not sufficiently well-off to do such work
without assistance.
The Baha'is in the United States have just embarked on their second Seven
Year Plan; India is working hard on a Four and a half Year Plan; England
is straining every nerve to achieve, during the Six Year Plan the friends
have chosen for themselves, 19 assemblies. It is only right and proper
that such a vast and promising territory as Australia, New Zealand and
Tasmania represent, should likewise win for itself new laurels in the
Baha'i teaching field during the next few years! He therefore suggests you
choose, after surveying your own possibilities and soliciting suggestions
from the friends, certain immediate objectives, and then work unitedly
towards achieving them.
He assures you that he will offer special prayers on your behalf, that the
N.S.A. members and the Baha'is they represent, may speedily forge ahead,
and enter into a new era of development of the Faith in that distant but
promising land.
With warm Baha'i greetings,
R. Rabbani.
[From the Guardian:]
Dear and valued co-workers:
The activities in which you are engaged, are the object of my fervent and
constant prayers. To teach the Faith, to stimulate the dispersal and
settlement of pioneers, to enable the existing groups to attain assembly
status, and to multiply, steadily and speedily, the number of groups in
Australia and New Zealand are the paramount tasks which demand the
constant attention, the prayerful consideration and the united and
vigorous collaboration of the believers, and particularly of their
national elected representatives. No sacrifice is too great to further
these manifold and noble aims and purposes. Effective measures,
unprecedented in scope, should be carefully and immediately devised,
proclaimed to the believers, and, through sustained and organised effort,
carried into effect. There is no time to lose. The masses, greatly tried
by the calamities of the age, restless, disappointed, and eager to obtain
real and complete relief in their hour of trial, hunger for the Message of
the new Day, and will, if properly approached and appealed to, embrace the
great verities it enshrines. Firm and unassailable unity among those who
profess to be its bearers, unshakeable fidelity to the principles on which
it is founded, generous and unfailing support of the institutions designed
to propagate it, are the vital prerequisites of their urgent and sacred
task. Every consideration, however profitable and laudable, must for the
present be subordinated to the vital needs of the strenuous task now
confronting the Australian and New Zealand Baha'i communities. The
administrative machinery designed to provide the necessary agency for the
diffusion of the Message has been sufficiently consolidated to enable it
to perform the glorious task for which it was originally erected. It
should be utilised to the fullest possible extent. Its scope should
simultaneously be enlarged to provide a still wider basis for the future
extension of teaching activities. May the coming year witness a notable
advance in the organized activities of the community for the furtherance
of so glorious and meritorious a purpose.
Your true brother,
Shoghi.