The Guardian's Gift to Corinne True

Hand of the Cause Leroy Ioas, who served beside Shoghi Effendi in Haifa, told this story in a talk given in Johannesburg in 1958.

There was a pilgrim from the United States, a Mrs. True, the American Bahá’ís who are here, of course, remember her very well. One of the early of the Cause and one of the great workers for the Bahá’í temple, and one of the great pillars of the Cause, and she is now a Hand of the Cause. She [visits] the Guardian; she’s ninety-five years old, and of course the Guardian was very pleased that she had come at that age. And they talked about the early days of the Cause, and what the Master had said, what she had done for the Master, and so on. One evening he came over and said, “Now, Mrs. True, I have a gift for you tonight.” She was quite excited, of course. Being elderly, and a little bit non-plussed as to what to do, he reached down and took it out of his coat pocket and said, “This is a purse which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá used, and I know you’ll treasure it and because it’s from him.” And she thanked him, and was quite excited about it. And he said, why don’t you open it and see what’s in it? So she started to open it and fumbling around and he said, “Let me open it for you.” She’s looking in and says, now what’s there? “It’s a gold piece,” she said. So he says, “Now just take it out and look at it.” So she took it out and looked at it. And he said, “Now, what’s the date of it, Mrs. True?” She looked at it and said, “1906.” He said, “That’s the date of your first visit to the Holy Land to visit ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. And this was a gold coin, which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had.” Well, now, think of that tenderness. With all of the weight that he had on his shoulders, with all of the problems that he had to meet, that he would think of those things, that he would think of this purse, that he would think of that gold piece, and he would think of her first visit in 1906.

Source: Leroy Ioas, “In the Days of the Guardian,” a talk given in Johannesburg, South Africa, 31 October 1958 (transcript at bahai-library.com). Other accounts date Corinne True’s first pilgrimage to ‘Akká to 1907 (Honnold, Glimpses of Early Bahá’í Pilgrimages).

Collected from bahaistories.com (Subject: gifts).

Various. *bahaistories.com archive*. https://bahaistories.com/subject/gifts