Archive for November, 2006

Chance wants to change the world. -gw
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Today i had an epiphany. I was watching X-men III and (if you haven’t seen it then you may not understand exactly where I’m coming from) I was watching the part where Jean has killed everyone on the island and Wolverine is standing below her and the view pans out to show everything she has done… and I thought why can’t I do that? Why can I not do something that will change lives, something that will change the very face of the earth? I realized that I can. I wish I could do justice to what I felt because if everyone that has seen that movie left with the feeling I feel then the world would be changed. You have the power to effect every person you come in contact with, it is your choice whether the experience is a good one or a bad one, but why not choose good? It’s not that hard when you allow the love you feel for people to radiate rather than remain supressed.

Hardcore Chance, “God Works in Mysterious Ways,” MySpace

http://xbean.cs.ccu.edu.tw/~dan/ChineseBahai/readings/CONV_BIG5/homepage.html

With inspiration from Chinese-speaking world citizen Child-of-Africa, I was inspired to copy and paste this - 巴哈伊 - into my browser. I got “Results 1 - 10 of about 11,500 for 巴哈伊. (0.44 seconds).” -gw

peoplepress.net/

bahai.org.tw

巴哈伊信仰创立于一个半世纪以前，今天已跻身于最快速发展的世界性宗教信仰之列。有五百万以上的信仰者居住在地球上的每一个国家，已经成为分布第二广的信仰，在地理幅度上超了除基督教之外的所有其它宗教。巴哈伊分布于全世界约100,000多个地点，其范围之广反映了祂们对世界公民这一理想的奉献。 http://info.bahai.org/chinese/

And check out http://blog.xuite.net/doris629/Bahai. Xuite! -gw

“And here is a picture of our dearest Dr. Samandari, taken in Buea on Sunday November 26th, who has never ceased to be a wonderful and loving inspiration to us all…. He is seen here with Nysa and Mehdi” - Just News

Community blogs are up-and-coming. More Baha’i communities are establishing one, starting up a blog being easier than starting a separate website.

just news… sharing stories, events and activities from the Cameroon Baha’i Community is such a community blog. Reading a post about the appointment of Auxiliary Board members serving this part of Africa, I am struck by the sound of their names, the familiarity of their first names and the exotic beauty of their last. Yes, we should keep them in our prayers. -gw

The Auxiliary Board members were appointed early in November and will work under the guidance of Counsellor Tiati a Zock for the Next 5 years. Here are their names and the areas they will cover. Some areas have more that one ABM serving.

Mrs OTTIA Helen (Littoral (excluding Douala) and SW (Fako))
Mrs TIATI Beatrice (East and West)
Mr. ARREY John (Littoral and SW (Mamfe))
Mrs TCHAMEGNI Christine (Far North, North, Adamawa and Douala)
Mrs TANGU Constance (NW and West)
Mr GABANA Felix (East)
Mr. ONDOBO Fridolin (Centre, South and Equatorial Guinea)
Mr. DJOULDE Alain (Far North, North and Adamawa)
Mr. NKOUAGA Ferdinand (Centre, South and Equatorial Guinea)
Mr. TEM Gideon (SW and NW)

We should keep these wonderful and devoted friends in our prayers as they undertake the prodigous task of assisting the communities in implementing the 5 year plan.

“Auxiliary Board Members appointed,” just news… sharing stories, events and activities from the Cameroon Baha’i Community

{Re-posted with permission}

Interesting site promoting interfaith dialogue in the Middle East. -gw

“Night out at Bangladore’s China Town,” uploaded on October 7, 2006 by spraveenitpro on flickr.
Some rights reserved.

Mingshu, “To Everyone,” Mystic Me

What if the best blogs in the world aren’t in English? Or Persian? Or Chinese? Or German? Or Tagalog? Or Portuguese? Or…

Sometimes I feel like I am missing out. My blog-search engines are failing me, it seems. I can only understand English, and there are so many blogs out there in other languages. Native-speakers of other languages know English but this English-speaker knows only…English. I don’t want to be limited. I don’t want to be parochial. Google’s Language Tools are helpful, but…

I view with admiration the many blogs in Portuguese and wish it were my native tongue, so to do justice to the posts by the likes of João Moutinho whose A Paz Universal is another first-class example of a Baha’i-content blog. I counted 178 links on his blog. This man is a blogger. -gw

Katherine is thankful. -gw

with other members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States in 1953

My son-in-law back home in the USA with the family

The news story from the Baha’i World News Service excerpted below is a month old. But it came to mind when I visited with my son-in-law on Thanksgiving Day. I recalled the story he told me of his visit to Iran earlier this year to see his father who has cancer and all the rest of his family. On the last day of his visit, when he and his family members there were briefly out of their home, someone entered and took $800 from my son-in-law’s personal belongings and the videotapes he had made of family events. The door had been locked, but there had been no forced entry. Whoever commited the burglary had a key. When the family contacted the police, the authorities refused to do an investigation, because there was no damage to the house. Such is the circumstances for Baha’i families in Iran. People can enter your home, and you can do nothing about it.

My son-in-law’s mother would get calls regularly from government representatives summoning her to come in to be questioned. Once when government representatives came to the home, she welcomed them with an offer of tea, and they concluded their visit immediately, an incident that invokes an old old story harking back to the time of the Bab when His followers were accused of putting something in the tea that made people become Babis. Apparently the authorities didn’t want to experience Baha’i hospitality that might cause their hearts to be touched. -gw

http://news.bahai.org/story/488

NEW YORK, 2 November 2006 (BWNS) — In an ominous move, Iran’s Ministry of Interior has ordered officials throughout the country to step up the surveillance of Iranian Baha’is focusing in particular on their community activities.

The Ministry has requested provincial officials to complete a detailed questionnaire about the circumstances and activities of local Baha’is, including their “financial status,” “social interactions,” and “association with foreign assemblies,” among other things.

The Ministry’s order came in a letter dated 19 August 2006 and addressed to provincial deputies of the Department of Politics and Security in Offices of the Governors’ General throughout Iran.

The 19 August letter, which was recently obtained by the Baha’i International Community, asks these deputies to order “relevant offices to cautiously and sensitively monitor and supervise” all Baha’i social activities.

The letter is the latest in a series of threatening documents that outline a secret national effort to identify and monitor Baha’is in Iran. …

Over the last two years, at least 129 Baha’is have been arrested, released on bail, and are now awaiting trial throughout the country. The bail demands have been high, in most cases requiring the Baha’is to hand over considerable sums of money, deeds to property, business or work licenses.

[To read the full text of the 19 August 2006 letter in an English translation, along with a link to the original letter in Persian, go to http://bahai.org/persecution/iran/19-08-06]