New believer: "I tell them who Baha'u'llah is"

The following stories from the ATC of Washington DC (A) share many examples of consolidation reported about new believers.

C____ embraced the Faith during this trimester's expansion phase, and at the same time enrolled her young son. Right away she was invited to begin to study. Within a week of accepting Baha'u'llah, she had been visited twice and was studying Book 1 (Reflections on the Life of the Spirit), and has been doing so regularly since then. She is now in the middle of the second unit of the book, and understands that this is a sequence of courses, and she is excited about moving through the sequence and carrying out the practices.

When she completed the first unit, the tutors (who also were the teachers who presented Anna's presentation to her during the expansion) gave her a gift of the Hidden Words. She was thrilled with the book, holding it carefully in her hands, saying how it is "so beautiful on the cover and what's inside". She understood that the practice of the first unit was to read from this book or from some of the Baha'i writings every morning and evening. And when she came the next week to study again (and join her tutors for dinner at their home), she had obviously gone beyond her personal reading and had begun to share the Writings with others.'

Over dinner, we asked her if she might want to share some thoughts with the cluster about her experience over the past weeks. She talked about how during the last week "friends have asked about Baha'u'llah, and I tell them who Baha'u'llah is. I have shared prayers with friends and co-workers. One friend commented how nice the Hidden Words are. One of my friends had a difficult day and had a problem, a test, with another coworker and I shared with her 'when a thought of war comes, replace it with a stronger thought of peace' and my friend really liked that."

She also talked about how she is using the Baha'i Writings now rather than making up her own prayers. She said, "I've always been in the habit of saying my own prayers, short prayers that I make up, now I am beginning to develop the habit of saying these prayers from Baha'u'llah."

She has begun to teach the Faith - arising immediately to share with others the Message she has embraced. She told us, "I've told several peple about the Bahai Faith and people seemed interested." Also she said that some family members have asked, "Who is Baha'u'll'ah, who is this person?", showing a little bit of reluctance about the "new religion" she had accepted and begun to promote. She said that when they spoke to her like that, she told them that, "The Baha'i Faith is about love, it's about unity, it's about the oneness of all religions." And with this response "...they calm down, they even begin to get interested." She has a plan to share Anna's presentation with one person who has expressed interest, and, together with her tutors, is thinking about other people she can present the Faith to during the next few weeks.

In addition to this story . . .

There are two other people who speak Spanish who embraced the Faith during this trimester's expansion phase who are engaged in the study of Book 1 in Spanish. The people who had taught these people during the expansion phase took responsibility for making sure that the new believers were visited with themes of Book 2, and that they were connected with the study of Book 1. This involved calling people who could be tutors and then sharing that information with the coordinator of the institute, at time going with the tutors to begin the study circles, and at certain points actually studying Book 1 with the new believers if the tutor couldn't come or in order to stay connected with the people.