To the members of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States and Canada.
Fellow-laborers in the Vineyard of God:
Various happenings of recent months, highly disquieting in their suddenness, their complexity and consequences, have time and again, to my regret, compelled me to defer correspondence with you, my highly valued co-workers, who are destined to share no small a part of the burden that now weighs so heavily upon me. The prolonged and delicate negotiations arising out of the critical situation of Baha'u'llah's house in Baghdad; the shameful recrudescence of unrestrained barbarism in stricken Persia; the unexpected reverse recently sustained in our legal transactions for the deliverance of Baha'u'llah's mansion at Bahji from the hands of the enemy; the unprecedented increase in the volume of work resulting from the rise and expansion of the Movement in various parts of the world -- these and other issues, no less pressing in their demand upon my time and energy, have gradually affected my health and impaired the efficiency required in the discharge of my arduous duties. But, though body and mind be sorely strained by cares and perplexities which a Movement such as ours just emerging from obscurity must needs encounter, yet the spirit continues to draw fresh inspiration from the manner in which the chosen deliverers of the Faith in the Western world, and particularly in the American continent, are proving themselves increasingly worthy of such a stupendous yet so noble a task (106:7)

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