Dearly loved Friends,
The spiritual current which exerted such galvanic effects at the International Bahá’í Convention last Ridván has swept through the entire world community, arousing its members in both the East and the West to feats of activity and achievement in teaching never before experienced in any one year. The high level of enrollments alone bears this out, as nearly half a million new believers have already been reported. The names of such far-flung places as India and Liberia, Bolivia and Bangladesh, Taiwan and Peru, the Philippines and Haiti leap to the fore as we contemplate the accumulating evidences of the entry by troops called for in our message of a year ago. These evidences are hopeful signs of the greater acceleration yet to come and in which all national communities, whatever the current status of their teaching effort, will ultimately be involved.
We look back with feelings of humble gratitude and heightened expectations at the stupendous developments which have taken place in so brief a period. One such development has been the adoption of the architectural design conceived by Mr. Faríburz Sahbá for the Terraces of the Shrine of the Báb, which launches a new stage towards the realization of the Master’s and the Guardian’s vision for the path along which the kings and rulers will ascend the slopes of Mount Carmel to pay homage at the resting place of Bahá’u’lláh’s Martyr-Herald. Other developments include: the approval by the central authorities in Moscow of the application submitted by a number of Bahá’ís in ‘Ishqábád to restore the Local Spiritual Assembly of that city; the initiation of steps to open a Bahá’í Information Center in Budapest, the first such agency of the Faith in the Eastern Bloc; the establishment of a branch of the Bahá’í International Community’s Office of Public Information in Hong Kong in anticipation of the time when the Faith can be proclaimed on the mainland of China.
