Arohanui: Letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand

Your letter to Shoghi Effendi and the enclosed one to Ruhi with the postal order for £10 have been received and read with keen interest and pleasure.

We are all very happy to know that you have had such a pleasant journey back home and that you had the opportunity of delivering the message on so many occasions. We hope and pray that the seed you have sown has fallen on fertile soil and that in time it will grow and bear abundant fruit.

We hope that now through your sustained zeal and effort new life will be infused into your small Bahá’í group, and that it will in the near future grow sufficiently in number to enable you to form an assembly the first to be established in that land. We shall pray at the Holy Threshold for your guidance and the success of your work.

The Greatest Holy Leaf and the Holy Mother remember you well, and they and the other members of the family send their loving greetings to you.

You will be interested to know that the new pilgrim house is being completed, and it will be all ready in a month time for the new pilgrims that will come. 14

We still have our dear sister Effie Baker with us, and we all love her so; she is so sweet and helpful.

We have just now two American lady friends with us, Auntie Victoria Bedekian and Mrs R. Kehler—very fine Bahá’ís they are and we are expecting some more soon.

I always remember the happy day I spent with you and Effy in London and shall look forward to the pleasure of meeting you again some day—perhaps here in Haifa or in New Zealand, who knows?

I am back at home now for the present, and I am trying to help Shoghi Effendi a little in his enormous task.

He is keeping in good health I am glad to say in spite of his many activities and heavy and manifold responsibilities.

To you he sends his brotherly love and the assurance of his prayers for your welfare and happiness.

With all good wishes and loving greetings,

[From the Guardian:]

I cannot but add a few words personally expressing my deep appreciation of your persistent, self-sacrificing services to the Cause. I have devoted your gift towards the Fund for the Western Pilgrim House and I wish to assure you that when I visit the Holy Shrines I tenderly supplicate for you Divine Guidance and strength in your labours for our beloved Cause.