s,
Local Spiritual Assemblies were established among people who had survived
a campaign of genocide almost beyond the capacity of the human heart to
contemplate, who had lost countless loved ones as well as everything they
possessed in the way of material security, but in whom still burned the
longing of the human soul for spiritual truth. An extraordinary
achievement of a related kind was that of the Liberian Baha'i community.
Driven from their homes into exile in neighbouring lands, many of these
intrepid believers transported with them their whole community life,
setting up Local Spiritual Assemblies, carrying on teaching work,
continuing the education of their children, using their time to learn new
skills, and finding in music, dance and drama powers of the spirit that
helped keep hope alive until they could return to their country.

As the process of education in methods of mass teaching was taking place,
the Faith's membership was being transformed. In 1992, the Baha'i world
celebrated its second Holy Year, this one marking the centenary of the
ascension of Baha'u'llah and the promulgation of His Covenant. More
eloquently than words could have done, the ethnic, cultural and national
diversity of the 27,000 believers who gathered at the Javits Convention
Center in New York City--together with the thousands present at nine
auxiliary conferences in Bucharest, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Nairobi, New
Delhi, Panama City, Singapore, Sydney and Western Samoa--provided
compelling evidence of the success of Baha'i teaching work around the
world. An affecting moment occurred when the network of satellite
broadcasts linked the gathering in Moscow with the one taking place in New
York City, and Baha'is everywhere thrilled to greetings in Russian--the
common language of some 280 million people from at least fifteen
countries--that proclaimed a new phase in humanity's response to
Baha'u'llah.

In the Moscow and Bucharest conferences could be glimpsed the rebirth of
Baha'i communities that had been nearly extinguished under the oppression
of the Soviet regime and its collaborators. One of the last three
surviving Hands of the Cause, 'Ali-Akbar Furutan, who had lived in Russia,
had the great joy of returning to Moscow, at the age of eighty-six, for
the inaugural election of the National Assembly of that country. Local
Spiritual Assemblies sprang up in all of the newly opened lands, and six
new National Spiritual Assemblies were elect