Our team focused on a particular area. Whilst walking we noticed a lady and decided to stop at her door. It was as she was standing there for us. It was easy to talk to her and I felt all the prayers said in preparing ourselves for the days teaching led us to her. I recently visited the lady again and have been in contact with her by the phone too. She knows I am a Bahá'í and likes the idea of the junior youth empowerment programme and is coming to visit me with her daughter.
My overall learning is that I have to focus more, try to teach everyday without letting my life distract me. In this cycle I left all my work and study aside and gave time to only making friends with new people.
Not long after the teaching project I met another lady at a train station. We talked and she said that she new the Bahá'ís but she did not know much about the Bahá'í Faith. Through visiting her at her home I presented to her the essentials of the Faith plainly and unequivocally from the illustrative example in Book-6 of the Ruhi Institute. I kept visiting her and sometimes we would say prayers together and I invited her for dinner and we became friends. As a friend I also helped her with other things that she needed help with. We were in contact by Facebook and she often telephoned me. After a particular visit to her home I invited her to join the Bahá'í community but she was no ready yet. She wanted to know more. Then one evening she called me and said that she was ready. I went to her house and we prayed and I explained to her what it meant becoming a Bahá'í and she declared. I continue to follow her spiritual progress.
As this was the first time such a day was being planned, the Local Spiritual Assembly decided to take a very natural and laid back approach, so it was decided we would meet up in the morning to say prayers together and then let each individual decide how best to channel their teaching efforts during that day. A Holy Day celebration was also planned for the following day to which many friends of the community would be invited and which was also considered as a teaching event where a devotional, history of the Faith and social time would be shared. We commenced our teaching day in the morning with prayers. Five Bahá'ís attended and we were also joined by one friend of our community. It was explained to her that we were saying prayers and holding a special day to focus on sharing Bahá'u'lláh's message with a wider circle of people, so that more people could feel the special bounty His message and teachings bring to our lives.
Some people were not able to attend the prayers due to illness or work, but were saying prayers in their own time. As the day unfolded, three people who had attended the prayers in the morning including a friend of our community. Our friend then spent time afterwards at another event in Belfast where a gathering was taking place.
The effect of the prayers really seemed to flow into the Holy Day. The celebrations started with a devotional at 12pm attended by 23 people of which nine were friends of the community. After the devotional everyone went to the beach for a picnic where a further five friends of the community joined us. It was a beautiful sunny day and some people even ventured into the water for a swim. Holy days are beautiful ways of sharing the Faith with our friends as it is a very natural way to talk about the history of the Faith and to share prayers as well as having a joyful social time. Our Local Spiritual Assembly has really been developing the Holy Day celebrations into beautiful events shared with many and they are a great bounty to everyone in our community and all our friends.
The purpose of the gathering was to see where we are at in relation to the children’s classes and how we can move the process forward. We began by going through and reflecting on various paragraphs of the 2010 Ridván message. One of the points of the learning from the friends present was that a much firmer relationship with the parents needs to be created in order for the class to be fully effective. A lot of work has to be done here to have co-operation with the parents. We touched on the ways we used Ruhi Book-3, the quality of the lesson and the time we took to go through it. We shared how we accessed supplementary material from websites, worksheets and from the Enkindle programme. A vision for the future is that improving the quality of the children’s classes and firmly establishing them will create a base for the junior youth groups of the future.
Similar gatherings between animators were also held.
We hold a Unity Feast every nineteen days at our home on a Saturday. This allows us to invite our friends to it. The Unity Feast takes the form of a devotional followed by the presentation and discussion of one of the deepening themes from Ruhi Book-2. A number of mothers and their children attend the Unity Feast, so we also offer children's classes after the devotional. This can be a bit tricky at times as we need more children's class teachers to assist with the classes (a class for the older kids and one for the younger kids). We hope that the mothers that come along will complete Ruhi Book-3 in the near future and will assist us in providing the children's classes. We also have devotionals with some of those that come to the Unity Feast, and we rotate whose home it is in. It's great to see our friends organise the devotional in their own home. Also some of the participants of the Unity Feast have also completed Ruhi Book-2. One of our friends who lived with us recently enrolled into the Faith.
Sunday 8 August 2010 Sunday 7 November 2010
Sunday 8 August 2010 Sunday 14 November 2010 Sunday 13 February 2011
Study Circles: Susie Agahi Junior Youth: Colin Rodgers Children's Classes: Marion Khosravi
Study Circles: Michelle O'Mahony Barr Junior Youth: (Not yet appointed) Children's Classes: Elizabeth Palin
Study Circles: Kevin Proudman Junior Youth: (Not yet appointed) Children's Classes: Elizabeth Palin
Study Circles: James Holmlund Junior Youth: Colin Rodgers Children's Classes: Patricia Jamshidi
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