March 21, 2016

To the American Bahá'í community

Dearly loved Friends,

   Following on our message for the Feast of Bahá, we wish to share with you the

wonderful news, received on Naw-Rúz, of the establishment of several additional

programs of growth in this country, for a current total of exactly 600. As you know, the

goal of the current Five Year Plan was to establish programs of growth in at least 600

clusters. Efforts to establish programs of growth are well underway in a number of

additional clusters, so the total may rise still further in the weeks before the launching

of the new Plan at Ridván. The current number marks a signal victory, laying a strong

foundation for the “herculean” tasks of the coming five years.

   We also wish to offer a correction to that same Feast message, wherein we

inadvertently left out the fact that among the diverse gathering present at the national

institutional meeting in Pensacola were several American Indian believers. We

sincerely apologize for this; indeed, there are promising developments taking place in

this highly significant population in several clusters, which we hope to report on more

fully in due course.

   We are deeply grateful for the confirmations bestowed on this community by the

Blessed Beauty and for the services of thousands of souls whose determination,

enterprise, and often sacrificial efforts have brought us to this stage. Surely this

achievement counts among the most notable ever seen on the American home front

and augurs well for unprecedented victories still to come.

With loving Bahá'í greetings,

NATIONAL SPIRITUAL ASSEMBLY OF

THE BAHÁ'ÍS OF THE UNITED STATES

Kenneth E. Bowers

Secretary