Far from stagnating or declining in number or in influence it has in recent years displayed a vitality which can well excite the admiration and envy of them all, and has demonstrated, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a fidelity to the principles of our Faith, whether a spiritual or administrative, and a capacity for service which all may well emulate. Though all the goals, in the virgin areas of the globe, assigned to the elected national representatives of these two communities have not as yet been attained, owing solely to circumstances beyond their control, yet the spirit evinced by the pioneers belonging to these communities, who have so gloriously initiated this major task, constituting the foremost objective of the opening phase of this Ten-Year Crusade, has been such as to amply compensate for the inability of their national elected representatives to consummate, ere the close of the first year of the Ten-Year Plan, this initial enterprise marking the inauguration of their Mission in foreign fields. Particularly gratifying and indeed inspiring has been the response of the members of your assembly to the Call for pioneers—a response that has surpassed that of any other National Body throughout the Bahá’í World. The selection and subsequent purchase of the site of the first Ma_sh_riqu’l-A_dh_kár in the Antipodes in the outskirts of a city—the first to receive the light of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh in Australasia, and destined to play a predominant role in the evolution of the Administrative Order of His Faith in that vast area—is an achievement which I heartily welcome and for which I feel deeply grateful. This remarkable accomplishment will, in conjunction with the establishment a decade ago of the National Hazíratu’l-Quds in that same city, accelerate the progress, and immensely reinforce the foundations, of the administrative institutions inaugurated on the morrow of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ascension, and which are destined to yield their fairest fruit in the Golden Age of the Bahá’í Dispensation.