High Endeavours: Messages to Alaska

To: Delegates and Visitors assembled at the Convention of the Bahá’ís of Alaska

I welcome, with joy, pride and thankfulness, the convocation, on the northern fringes of the Western Hemisphere, and in a region that must needs play a prominent part in the shaping of the destinies of mankind, of the first Alaskan Bahá’í Convention. So auspicious an event constitutes an important milestone in the progressive unfoldment of the Bahá’í World Spiritual Crusade, and represents the fruition of the valiant efforts exerted, in the course of several decades, by the American Bahá’í Community, which has striven so steadfastly to ensure the emergence of independent Bahá’í Communities in that hemisphere. 32

So great a triumph, crowning so much patient and painstaking labour, won at the hour when the Bahá’í World Spiritual Crusade is entering the second year of the third phase in its irresistible unfoldment, must be celebrated through the initiation of a subsidiary Six-Year Plan on the part of the newly-formed Alaskan National Spiritual Assembly, for the purpose of speedily increasing the number of the followers of the Faith; of multiplying its Centres; of adding to its existing Local Spiritual Assemblies; of inaugurating a National Bahá’í Fund; of establishing a Summer School; of initiating local Bahá’í endowments; of incorporating the newly-emerged National Spiritual Assembly as well as all firmly grounded local spiritual assemblies; of obtaining recognition for the Bahá’í Marriage Certificate, as well as the Holy Days on which work is forbidden; of stimulating the conversion of both the Eskimos and American Indians, and of purchasing a plot of land to serve as the site for the future Mashriqu’l-Adhkár of Alaska.

I appeal to the members of the American National Spiritual Assembly to persevere in their highly laudable endeavours on behalf of a Community so small yet so valiant and promising, and to ensure by every means in their power the steady development and consolidation of the institutions of an Order to whose rise and establishment they have so conspicuously contributed.

May the process now set in motion gather momentum in the years lying ahead, through a liberal effusion of the grace of Bahá’u’lláh, and may those whose privilege it is to stimulate its development, be guided in every step they take, and fulfill every desire they cherish for its ultimate consummation.