of them may become like unto a
regiment and conquer these countries through the love of God and the
illumination of divine teachings.

O God! Be Thou their supporter and their helper, and in the wilderness,
the mountain, the valley, the forests, the prairies and the seas, be Thou
their confidant--so that they may cry out through the power of the Kingdom
and the breath of the Holy Spirit!

Verily Thou art the Powerful, the Mighty and the Omnipotent and Thou art
the Wise, the Hearing, and the Seeing.

--'Abdu'l-Baha (April 8, 1916)

PART I

Letters to Individuals, 1939-1943. These were written prior to the
formation of the first Local Spiritual Assembly and reflect the early
development of the Faith in Alaska.

(1) March 12, 1939

(1) March 12, 1939(1)

Dear Baha'i Friend,

The Guardian has received your most welcome and inspiring message of the
19th February, and is inexpressibly delighted to know that you have
spontaneously offered your services for pioneer teaching in Alaska.(2) He
can well imagine the feelings of immeasurable satisfaction and unbounded
gratitude with which both the N.S.A. and the National Teaching Committee
must have welcomed your determination to teach and establish the Faith in
that far-off and hitherto unexplored territory, and he wishes me to
express also his own appreciation and gratitude for this remarkable step
which you have, notwithstanding the well-nigh insuperable obstacles in
your way, been inspired to take to carry the Message to that distant land.
The spirit of heroic self-sacrifice, and of unflinching resolve that has
prompted you to undertake so noble and sacred a mission, and make such a
warm and immediate response to his recent teaching call addressed to the
American believers cannot but fill all hearts with admiration and praise,
and evoke the memory of those acts of unrivalled heroism, of selfless and
unstinted devotion that have characterized the lives of the immortal
heroes of the Apostolic age of our beloved Faith.

Though labouring in an age and under circumstances wholly different from
those in which those early pioneers of the Cause have been privileged to
labour, yet it is that selfsame spirit of entire self-forgetfulness, of
whole-hearted and unwavering loyalty, and of absolute consecration that is
now, in this Formative period, inspiring you, and all our dear American
Baha'i pioneers, to forsake their all and undergo such privations and
suffe