nced by the even more startling expansion of Baha'i activity
since the termination of the first stage of the Divine Plan. As a result
of this expansion spiritual assemblies have been established in all the
remaining republics, the number of localities where Baha'is reside has
been raised to over a hundred, almost double the number of localities in
which the Faith had been introduced after the completion of the first
Seven Year Plan, the number of spiritual assemblies has swelled to no less
than thirty-seven, three of which have been duly incorporated, a notable
impetus has been given to the activities of the distributing centers of
Baha'i literature in Argentina and Panama, historic conferences have been
held in these two republics, summer schools have been inaugurated in
Argentina and Chile, and a tract of land has been presented as a site for
the first Ma_sh_riqu'l-A_dh_kar in Latin America. No community since the
inception of the hundred-year-old Faith of Baha'u'llah, not even the
community of the Most Great Name in the North American continent, can
boast of an evolution as rapid, a consolidation as sound, a multiplication
of centers as swift, as those that have marked the birth and rise of the
community of His followers in Latin America.

The colossal tasks that now summon this Latin American Baha'i community to
a challenge, cannot but dwarf, if faithfully and promptly accomplished,
the magnificent achievements that have immortalized the first decade of
organized activity in Latin American Baha'i history. The seed-sowing stage
associated, in the main, with the labors and travels of that saintly soul,
that star-servant of the Faith of Baha'u'llah, the incomparable Martha
Root, links this decade of organized Baha'i activity in Latin America with
both the closing years of the Heroic Age of our Faith and the first
fifteen years of the initial epoch of the Age we live in.

TWO REGIONAL NATIONAL ASSEMBLIES A VITAL OBJECTIVE

The emergence of organized local communities in most of the republics of
Latin America will be forever associated with the exploits that have shed
such luster on the first stage of the Divine Plan launched during the
concluding years of that first epoch of the Formative Age of our Faith.
The constitution of two independent duly elected national spiritual
assemblies for the northern and southern zones of Latin America is now to
be regarded as one of the most vital objectives of the Second Sev