The Guardian's Ten Year Plan

*A retelling for children, based on **The Priceless Pearl** by Rúḥíyyih Khánum.*

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Shoghi Effendi was the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, the one who looked after the Bahá'ís everywhere and helped them know what to do. In the early 1950s he began to work out a new plan, bigger than anything the Bahá'ís had tried before.

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His wife, Rúḥíyyih Khánum, remembered one summer when he was very tired after a long winter's work. He had promised her that he would really rest while he took a health cure. The summer sun was shining and the shady paths were inviting, but Shoghi Effendi spent the daylight hours leaning over his map, filling in every detail with great care. She and his doctor asked him to stop, but he was wholly absorbed in his work. On that map he was marking the places in the world where the Faith was to be taken.

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The plan was announced in 1952, at the start of a special "Holy Year." That year marked one hundred years since Bahá'u'lláh, a prisoner in a dark dungeon in Ṭihrán called the Síyáh-Chál, first received His Mission. The plan would last ten years, from 1953 to 1963. It came to be called the Ten Year Crusade, or the World Crusade.

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The Guardian asked the Bahá'ís to carry the Faith to one hundred and thirty-one new countries and territories, places where no Bahá'í lived yet. He asked them to translate Bahá'í books into ninety-one new languages. He asked them to form many new National Spiritual Assemblies, until there were more than four times as many as before. Three new Houses of Worship were to be built as well.

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The plan began with four big gatherings in 1953, in Africa, America, Europe and Asia. More than 3,400 Bahá'ís came to them, from more than eighty countries. At the gathering in Chicago, well over a hundred people stood up and offered to leave home and settle in one of the new places.

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In the very first year, one hundred new countries and territories were opened to the Faith. Shoghi Effendi gave the Bahá'ís who first reached these places the title "Knight of Bahá'u'lláh."

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Shoghi Effendi passed away in 1957, before the Crusade was over, but Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes that its victories were a source of deep happiness to him. When he became Guardian, the Faith had reached 35 countries and territories. By the time he passed away, it had reached 254.

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["Launching the Ten Year Crusade in 1953"](/stories/pp-ten-year-crusade).*

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