Under the Banana Tree

There is a situation which we sometimes have in Bahá’í communities where the wife is a Bahá’í and her husband is not, or vice versa. Would any of you be interested in knowing about a technique for overcoming this very sad situation?

In Africa, I met a young African, a beautiful soul who was a very active Bahá’í but his wife was not only not a Bahá’í, she was very antagonistic to the Faith. One time he gave an address at a Bahá’í conference. I listened and was surprised to hear him speak very lovingly of his wife. After the meeting I asked him, "George, is your wife a Bahá’í?" "Yes," he said, "she is." I said, "That is wonderful. How did you bring her into the Faith?" He said, "Oh, it was one of those natural kinds of things. She got to the point where she loved to be with the Bahá’ís." He said, "You know, I do a lot of teaching; four or five evenings a week we have meetings, and of course when my wife was so opposed to the Faith, I couldn't have her there, could I? The difficulty was that our house is so small. There is only one room. During those meetings, there was no place for her to go. We have no neighbours. So she would go out to the back and sit or stand under the banana tree." "Well," he said, "she became a Bahá’í during the last rainy season!"

Source: John Robarts, “The Value of Prayer”, a talk given at the Bahá’í House of Worship, Wilmette, 20 March 1974, published in Bahá’í News, June 1974 (transcript at bahaitalks.blogspot.com).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: becoming-bahai).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/becoming-bahai