Dreams Come True

What happens when you contribute to the Funds? Usually something quite magical. See what happens from the perspective of someone serving in the Office of the Treasurer when your contributions are matched with people arising to serve and what is suddenly made possible.

I said to myself, Ayyam-i-Ha came early this year. There in my inbox that morning was what those of us privileged to serve the National Spiritual Assembly every day love to see—a friend from the community lovingly offering up an idea and service to the National Spiritual Assembly (I wish you could see how happy that makes the Assembly—it’s almost overpowering the love and joy that bubbles over).

Today it was a Fund Box. But not just any Fund Box, as great as that would have been. This was a response to the recent call from the Universal House of Justice to arise, as one global family, to build the House of Worship in Chile, the first Baha'i Temple in all of South America, that continent’s Mother Temple. And the person who created the Box was a friend named Bill.

Father of three amazing children, problem solver by nature, creative by necessity, like the way people

need to breathe, Bill is always looking for fun ways to engage people in the Baha'i community. And this

idea, to create a Chilean Temple Fund Box, was exactly what we were looking for. Every day we would ask ourselves, how do you bring people, young people especially since that’s who we work with, into the process of constructing a building half a world away that likely few of them will ever actually see in person? We’d just “introduced” Aviana the Penguin, the Children’s Correspondent from Chile, and this Fund Box fit perfectly with her. So we reworked the design a bit, then took pictures of Liang the Lion, another Fund educational character who helps us work with children, putting the Box together. We dropped the pictures in our entirely volunteer created activity booklet for kids, Liang’s Adventures, which has a readership of every registered Baha'i child in the US (about 2,000 kids—there’s more kids, they’re just not all registered), along with one Box for each of them, said some prayers, mailed them, and waited for the response.

The response was amazing. Kids and adults both loved the Boxes! People were using them at 19 Day Feasts, at fundraisers, and at home. Two year olds were contributing to the Temple effort. Communities were requesting more so we printed 3000 more boxes after our initial print run (after shopping around for the best price, we found a printer who could print at high quality but very inexpensively).

Then, two months ago, I got a call from a wonderful woman in Stamford, Connecticut named Catherine.

“Can you help me out?”, she enthusiastically said over the phone. “Sure, what do you need?” I quickly replied. “Well, the kids in our community are planning a fundraiser and we need any information and
resources you can send. And they’ll be here in about 30 minutes. What can you do for me?” No problem. Sent some pdf’s with information and updates about Chile and the international effort, directed them to the US Chile Temple website , and said we’re always here if you need anything else. Several weeks passed…

Catherine called again. “The kids want to give everyone that comes a present. Can you think of anything?” “Well,” I said, “we have some Chilean Temple Fund Boxes we could send.” Catherine ran with it. “Ooh, we could put something in them, a little present, and give them to everyone that comes!” “That sounds great! I’ll drop some in the mail today!” “Thanks! I’ll keep an eye out for them,” she said. Then, silence for several more weeks…

December 19, 8:30 am, I’m going through my email and see this: “Children Raise $5,000 at Chilean Temple Fundraiser”. I knew it was Catherine and her hard working kids. By every measure the fundraiser was a success. Perhaps more important than the money raised, the kids planned it all, with a little help from the adults, everyone had a great time, and the community drew that much closer together.

So now when people ask me, where does my money go after I contribute it, here’s one story I can tell them. That with your contribution, and the contribution of a good idea, both lovingly offered, you helped make the selfless dream of a group of kids in Connecticut to build a Temple, on the other side of the world, representing love, justice, and unity, a reality. And that sounds pretty great to me.