The First Western Pilgrims to 'Akká

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, chapter XV, which records the first pilgrimage of Western believers to 'Akká. Words in quotation marks are quoted from that chapter.*

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By 1898 Phoebe Hearst, the well-known philanthropist and wife of Senator George F. Hearst, had been drawn to the Faith by Lua Getsinger during a visit to California. She decided to visit 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then still a prisoner in 'Akká, and invited several believers, among them Dr. and Mrs. Getsinger, to join her. She made the arrangements for the journey. In Paris others joined the party: May Ellis Bolles, whom Mrs. Getsinger had taught; Mrs. Hearst's nieces Miss Pearson and Ann Apperson; and Mrs. Thornburgh and her daughter, Mrs. Thornburgh-Cropper. More were added in Egypt.

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Fifteen pilgrims arrived "in three successive parties." The first, which included Dr. and Mrs. Getsinger, reached 'Akká on 10 December 1898. 'Abdu'l-Bahá received them and Himself conducted them into the innermost chamber of the Tomb of Bahá'u'lláh. Their stay was brief.

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May Bolles later wrote of her first meeting with Him: "I can remember neither joy nor pain, nor anything that I can name. I had been carried suddenly to too great a height, my soul had come in contact with the Divine Spirit, and this force, so pure, so holy, so mighty, had overwhelmed me." Of the last meeting her party had with Him, she wrote: "In the might and majesty of His presence our fear was turned to perfect faith, our weakness into strength, our sorrow into hope, and ourselves forgotten in our love for Him."

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Mrs. Hearst wrote in a letter: "Those three days were the most memorable days of my life."

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Mrs. Hearst's butler, Robert Turner, an African American, was also deeply moved by 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Shoghi Effendi calls him "the first member of his race to embrace the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh in the West," and records that his faith did not weaken even when Mrs. Hearst later drew away from the Cause.

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The pilgrims returned, some to France and some to the United States, and began to teach. On her return to Paris, May Bolles established, at 'Abdu'l-Bahá's instruction, the first Bahá'í center on the European continent. In 1902, married to a Canadian, she moved to Montreal and laid the foundations of the Faith in Canada. In London Mrs. Thornburgh-Cropper began activities that helped the first English believers build a community there.

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Shoghi Effendi writes that the arrival of these pilgrims, and all that passed between them and 'Abdu'l-Bahá, "marked the opening of a new epoch in the development of the Faith in the West, an epoch whose significance the acts subsequently performed by some of these same pilgrims and their fellow-disciples have amply demonstrated."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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