"Pointing her finger unto My head, she addressed all who are in heaven and all who are on earth, saying: 'By God! This is the Best-Beloved of the worlds, and yet ye comprehend not. This is the Beauty of God amongst you, and the power of His sovereignty within you, could ye but understand. This is the Mystery of God and His Treasure, the Cause of God and His glory unto all who are in the kingdoms of Revelation and of creation, if ye be of them that perceive.'"
- Baha'u'llah
Yesterday we took an afternoon trip to the beach after everyone had finished their morning business at the Baha'i Centre. I neglected to bring the appropriate change of clothes, so I decided to just walk in the water a bit along the shore. Hossein and May were trying to convince me to get in but I held fast and decided to just play in the sand with Mitra. She was making a mountain and decorating it with shells (while I was making a dam and attempting, unsuccessfully, to keep the waves back), so I decided to go down closer to the water to find some for her.
When I got close to the water, Hossein starts walking up beside me with a look in his eye. I knew immediately he was going to try to push me in, so I better positioned myself so he knew I knew what he was up to and he abandoned his attempt. After a few minutes, he motioned me over toward a spot a little deeper, where there was a bit of a drop-off in the water, saying there were a lot of shells there. I thought surely he wouldn't try the same thing again, but I was wrong. He shoved me this time and down I went! When I'd regained my footing, I rushed and tackled him. In the process, my glasses came off and went drifting off into the ocean!! I was blind! Luckily, Mitra came splashing down into the water (an amazing feat since she doesn't like the water) and found them while Hossein and I were blindly splashing around trying to get them before they were dragged away. With the strength of the waves that day, it was practically a miracle that Mitra found them. After a few groping attempts in the water, she just reached down and non-chalantly picked them up as if they had been in front of her the whole time.
After a bit of swimming around with Hossein, I drifted closer to the shore with May Saba. Mitra had decided to walk around a little in the waves since she was already soaking wet from rescuing my glasses. Even though I was in her debt, she made the mistake of splashing at me. I leapt and grabbed her leg "like a crocodile" (according to her) and dragged her into the water. Suffice it to say, we all had a nice day of playing around at the beach.
When we came back home, we'd invited our Auxiliary Board member and husband over for dinner, and they ended up bringing along another Auxiliary Board member and his wife as guests. Mitra cooked some wonderful kabob on the grill, and we had some leftovers from the big devotional meeting we'd had the night before. It was really nice to have some of the friends over, although we found out that one of the brothers of one of the ABMs was kidnapped in Pakistan! What a terrible ordeal! I can't imagine going through a family member being kidnapped, especially so far away in a place like Pakistan. They're completely uncertain what's happened to him, but they're hoping that the security police have just mistakenly taken him for questioning or something.
Today, Mitra and I went to a follow-up and evaluation meeting for International Day of Peace at the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sport. After the obligatory finger-pointing about things that went wrong, we were able to have an honest assessment of the event and begin planning for the future. Unfortunately, the President of Tanzania decided to set aside International Day of Peace as Tanzania Sports Day, so this year we were stuck with a chaotic last minute attempt of trying to merge the two events. This year, it's hoped that the head start will help. So far we've formed two working groups within the larger committee to handle the issues of sports-related activities and peace-related activities separately and set meetings for November for the working groups and December for the whole Committee. My only regret is that I won't be here to see it beyond its initial planning stages.
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