The placing, with care and promptitude, of the successive contracts, designed to ensure the uninterrupted progress of the interior ornamentation of the Temple, at a time when the international situation is fraught with so many complications and perils; the acceleration of the twofold process designed to preserve the status of the present assemblies throughout the states of the Union and multiply their number; the constant broadening of the bases on which the projected Latin American national assemblies are to be securely founded; the steady expansion of the work initiated to give wider publicity to the Faith in the North American continent and in circles associated with the United Nations; and, last but not least, the constitution of firmly established assemblies in each of the remaining goal countries in Europe and the simultaneous initiation, in the countries already provided with such assemblies, of measures aiming at the formation of several nuclei calculated to reinforce the structural basis of an infant Administrative Order—these stand out as the primary and inescapable duties which the members of your Assembly—the mainspring of the multitudinous activities carried on in your homeland, in the Latin American field, and on the European front—must in this third year of the Second Seven Year Plan, befittingly discharge. That the launching of one of these fundamental activities to be conducted by your Assembly during the present year—the commencement of the interior ornamentation of the Mother Temple of the West—should have so closely synchronized with the placing of the first two contracts for the completion of the Sepulcher of the Báb, as contemplated by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, is indeed a phenomenon of singular significance. This conjunction of two events of historic importance, linking, in a peculiar degree, the most sacred House of Worship in the American continent with the most hallowed Shrine on the slopes of Mount Carmel, brings vividly to mind the no less remarkable coincidence marking the simultaneous holding, on a Naw-Rúz Day, of the first convention of the American Bahá’í Community and the entombment by the Center of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant of the remains of the Báb in the newly constructed vault of His Shrine.(1) The simultaneous arrival of those remains in the fortress city of Akká and of the first pilgrims from the continent of America;(2) the subsequent association of the founder of the American Bahá’í Community with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the laying of the cornerstone of the Báb’s Mausoleum on Mount Carmel; the holding of the Centenary of His Declaration beneath the dome of the recently constructed Ma_sh_riqu’l-A_dh_kár at Wilmette, on which solemn occasion His blessed portrait was unveiled, on western soil, to the eyes of His followers; and the unique distinction now conferred on a member(3) of the North American Bahá’í Community of designing the dome, envisaged by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as the final and essential embellishment of the Báb’s