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EVENTS IN THE UNITED STATES- In the United States of America, the home of the champion-builders of a fast-evolving Order, an official invitation was extended to the Baha'i Community by the San Francisco Council of Churches to send representatives to attend a Service of Prayer for Peace and Divine Guidance to the United Nations, an invitation to which the Community warmly responded. At this inter-religious gathering, held in the Cow Palace in San Francisco, the birthplace of the Charter of the United Nations, which united nearly sixteen thousand people in worship and silent prayers, and at which government leaders, among them the United States Secretary of State, were present, the voice of the Baha'i representative was the first to be raised, reciting a prayer revealed by Baha'u'llah, after whom a prayer was read by each of the representatives of the Christian, the Muslim, the Jewish, the Hindu, and the Buddhist Faiths, all of whom were similarly invited to participate in that immense and historic gathering. A prayer revealed by `Abdu'l-Baha for America was presented by the elected national representatives of the United States Baha'i Community to President Eisenhower, who acknowledged its receipt in warm terms and above his own signature. (96:1) OTHER VICTORIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS- Nor should mention be omitted in this brief survey of Baha'i victories and achievements in the course of the closing year of the second phase of the Ten-Year Plan of the establishment of a Baha'i Publishing Trust in India; of the establishment of over thirty new centers and fifteen Assemblies in India, Pakistan and Burma; of the purchase of some of the holy sites blessed by the footsteps of Baha'u'llah in Adrianople, the Land of Mystery and the scene of the proclamation of His Message; of the holding of the first Baha'i Summer School in Central Africa, in Kobuka, Uganda, attended by about one hundred African and white believers and representatives of no less than twenty-eight Baha'i local Assemblies; of the convocation of the first historic All-France Teaching Conference, the first fruit of the combined labors of the believers of about thirty centers already established throughout the length and breadth of that country; of the setting apart of a plot to serve as a burial-ground for the members of the Baha'i community in Tripoli, Libya and in the capital of Tanganyika; of the purchase of land for the establishment of a Baha'i Summer School in`Iraq; of the extension to the Baha'i women in Egypt of the right to be elected to the Egyptian Baha'i National Spiritual Assembly as well as to participate as delegates in the National Baha'i Convention; of the purchase, in an island near Muara Siberut, Mentawai Islands, of a plot supplementing the Baha'i endowment established in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital; of the pushing of the northern outpost of the Faith in Alaska to Point Barrow beyond the Arctic Circle; of the initiation of auxiliary plans for the promotion of the Faith in the Seychelles Islands and in the Sudan; and of the arrival of a pioneer in Praslin Island forming a part of the Seychelles group.
(96:2)
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