|
The African Campaign, outshining the brilliant success of the enterprise launched in Latin America, throwing into shade the splendor of the victories won in recent years on the European continent, eclipsing all previous collective pioneer undertakings embarked upon in the Asiatic and Australian continents, has almost doubled, in the course of a single year, the number of territories opened since the introduction of the Faith in that continent over eighty years ago. The total number of converts to the Faith belonging to the African race has passed the six hundred mark. The total number of African Baha'i centers has now been raised to over one hundred and ninety. The total number of the tribes indigenous to the soil of that continent represented in the Faith is now over sixty. (62:1) A single territory out of the forty-five territories already opened to the Faith in the African continent, situated in its very heart and which, a little over two years ago did not possess a single Baha'i, now boasts of over five hundred colored converts, who are settled in over eighty localities, are drawn from thirty tribes, are provided with thirteen local Assemblies, and anticipate the immediate formation of about ten additional Assemblies. This same territory has, moreover, distinguished itself throughout the entire Baha'i world through the dispatch of nine members of its mother Assembly for the purpose of pioneering in neighboring centers, as well as in territories situated on the eastern and western coasts of the African continent. A number of the newly-won recruits in some of these territories have, moreover, been instrumental in winning the allegiance of some of the members of their race, and have, in their turn, succeeded in opening no less than three neighboring territories in that continent. (62:2) Contact has been established with no less than twenty-two American Indian tribes, raising the total number of tribes contacted throughout the Western Hemisphere to thirty-four. The first Greenlandic, the first Pygmy, the first Berber, the first Fijian, Baha'is have been enrolled, swelling the number of races represented in the Baha'i World Community to thirty-five. (62:3) The opening year of this World Spiritual Crusade has, moreover, gathered significance through the convocation first of the Stockholm, and later of the New Delhi Intercontinental Teaching Conferences, which, together with the two previous Conferences held during the first part of the Holy Year in Kampala and Wilmette, assembled a total of over thirty-four hundred followers of the Faith from more than eighty countries of both the Eastern and the Western Hemispheres and representing the principal races of mankind.
(62:4)
|