Dear Baha'i friends,
As we approach the threshold of the second year of the Five
Year Plan, it is evident that the need for travelling teachers as indicated in
the message launching that Plan is acquiring greater urgency and importance.
During the past year steps have been taken to revise the
functions, broaden the base and strengthen the work of the Continental Pioneer
Committees and to bring them into much closer collaboration with the
Continental Boards of Counsellors. Already, with their assistance an army of
pioneers has moved and is moving towards its objectives, and a general
readiness has been evinced by the friends, particularly the youth, to serve as
itinerant teachers.
The strenuous efforts being made to fill the pioneer goals
by the midway point of the Plan must now be paralleled by well-considered and
determined efforts to swell to a mighty river the stream of those friends who
will travel to foreign lands to reinforce the efforts of those who are
labouring so valiantly to expand and consolidate the widely scattered Baha'i
communities and to proclaim the Message of Baha'u'llah to every stratum of
society.
At our request the International Teaching Centre has evolved
a plan, which we have warmly approved, comprising specific goals of
international collaboration in the field of travelling teaching. This plan is
now being sent to the Continental Boards of Counsellors who will, in turn,
present it to the National Spiritual Assemblies, whose task it will be to
implement it. In consultation with the Counsellors each National Spiritual
Assembly is to work out specific proposals which it should then present to the
other National Assemblies with whom it is to collaborate, so that, as soon as
possible, actual projects can be worked out and set in motion, thus
inaugurating a process which should rapidly gather momentum and be prosecuted
with undiminished vigour in the years ahead.
The Continental Pioneer Committees should be kept closely
informed of all projects so that they may know how best to reinforce the flow
with those many volunteers who will undoubtedly arise outside the framework of
the specific projects now to be conceived. It is our hope that, as far as
possible, travel teaching projects will be self-supporting or can be assisted
by the National Funds involved, but where necessary, the International
Deputization Fund is available to assist. Whenever assistance from the Deputization
Fund is required, the request should be made to the Continental Pioneer
Committee, giving details of the project. If the sum required is small the
Committee may be able to help immediately; otherwise it will pass the request,
together with its recommendation, to the Universal House of Justice for
consideration.
We sincerely hope that in the forefront of the volunteers,
the Baha'i youth will arise for the sake of God and, through their driving
force, their ability to endure inhospitable and arduous conditions, and their
contentment with the bare necessities of life, they will offer an inspiring
example to the peoples and communities they set out to serve, will exert an
abiding influence on their personal lives, and will promote with distinction the
vital interests of God's Cause at this crucial stage in the fortunes of the
Plan.
We shall offer our ardent prayers at the Holy Shrines for
the confirmation of the efforts of all those who will heroically respond to
this call.
With loving Baha'i greetings,
The Universal House of Justice
(Messages from the Universal House of Justice, ‘1963-1986’)
