Arohanui: Letters from Shoghi Effendi to New Zealand | Page 4

in loving greetings and heartfelt prayers for your welfare. We hope you will have a fine time in England and return to New Zealand refreshed and reinvigorated physically and spiritually to take up your work for the Kingdom there with new enthusiasm and devotion. We pray that you may always be guided and strengthened by the Divine Confirmations.
With love also to Effie Baker and all the other friends,
Your brother in the service of the Beloved, J. E. Esslemont
[From the Guardian:]
My precious Bahá'í sister:--
I wish to assure you personally of my appreciation of your devotion to the Cause, and your earnest efforts to promote it as well as my fervent prayers for your spiritual advancement, success and happiness. I will always remember you most tenderly in my hours of visit at the three holy Shrines and beseech for you and the New Zealand friends the blessings of our loving and almighty Master.
You true brother, Shoghi

(4) May 21st, 1925
Alláh-u-abhá
Dear Bahá'í Brother,
Shoghi Effendi has asked me to reply to your kind letter of 11th April. He is delighted to hear that you propose starting a Bahá'í Magazine for Australia and New Zealand and suggests as a suitable title "The Herald of the South". Every 19 days a letter will be sent from Haifa to Mr and Mrs Hyde Dunn giving the news of the Cause. Owing to the restricted facilities for multiplying copies which are at present available here, I fear it will not be possible to send another copy to you, but doubtless you can arrange with Mr and Mrs Hyde Dunn to have their copy passed on to you for the magazine. We are glad to hear that notwithstanding the absence of the Blundells and Margaret Stevenson, the friends in New Zealand are remaining united and active. We hope that when the pilgrims return the faith and enthusiasm of the believers will be greatly deepened and strengthened and that many new believers may be attracted. I had a long letter from Effie Baker yesterday. She is very devoted and whole-hearted and will be a valuable worker for the Cause, I think, and a great help to Father and Mother Dunn. When she wrote, Margaret Stevenson had gone to Scotland and Mrs and Miss Blundell were in Bournemouth. Effie Baker hopes to make a return visit to Haifa on her way back to Australia.
Shoghi Effendi assures you of his prayers on behalf of your mother, yourself and all the Australasian friends and his hopes that the proposed Magazine may greatly help the spread of the Glad Tidings in Australia and New Zealand.
With warmest greetings and best wishes,
Yours sincerely in the Master's service, J. E. Esslemont
[From the Guardian:]
My dear fellow-worker:
Your charming letter truly gladdened my heart. I will follow the development of your magazine with keen interest and assure you of my desire to help and promote its interests to the fullest possible extent. I am enclosing the photographs of the shrine and gardens recently laid out in the close neighbourhood of the Shrines of the Báb and 'Abdu'l-Bahá. I assure you of my love, appreciation and fervent prayers.
Yours, Shoghi

(5) May 28th, 1925
Alláh-u-abhá.
Dear Bahá'í Sister,
Shoghi Effendi asks me to thank you on his behalf for your letter of 14th May. He received the letter of Mrs. Amy Thornton all right. I remember answering it for him some weeks ago, so you can set your mind at rest on that score.
The recovery of your Bahá'í ring and stones was very remarkable. It reminds me of a somewhat similar occurrence in Bournemouth. One of our Bahá'í friends had her Bahá'í ring stolen, and nothing was heard or seen of it for some months. Mr King, another of our group, has an antique shop in Bournemouth and one day his partner (a non-Bahá'í) bought a ring from a man who said it was his wife's, but as they had become very badly off she wanted to sell it. When Mr King saw the ring he recognized it as a Bahá'í ring and knowing that this friend had lost her ring, he sent it to me. It turned out to be her ring and she was delighted to recover it. The curious thing is that out of the dozens of jewellers and antique shops in Bournemouth to which the ring might have been taken for sale, it should be taken to the one where there was a Bahá'í who recognized it.
I hope that before you leave Scotland you may be able to go to Aberdeen and see my home people. They would be delighted to see you. My father's address is Fairford, Cults, (about 3 miles from Aberdeen, by car or train). He is 86 years of age and rather frail. My sister looks after him. My two married brothers are Peter Esslemont, 21, Louisville Avenue (Business: