‘We said yes’: one Australian couple’s international pioneering experience 

For Fariba Heydari and her husband Manuel, the notion of leaving their home country to help strengthen the Baha’i Faith’s community-building endeavours wasn’t seen as an outrageous prospect, but a privilege. 

“After consulting as a family, we recognised what a privilege it was,” Fariba says. “We placed our trust in Baha’u’llah and said ‘yes.’” 

The couple’s international pioneering experience to Eastern Europe began at the start of 2024. Fariba sees her family as “extraordinarily fortunate”. While acknowledging the tests that have come alongside the move, including getting used to a new language, climate, and distance from loved ones, she says she has learned that “trust in God becomes indispensable”. 

Since their arrival, the couple has initiated community-building efforts from the ground up. As the only two Baha’is in their immediate neighbourhood, their initial efforts were focused on getting to know people and integrating themselves into the rhythm of the local community. 

The experience has been very demanding, Fariba says. “Learning to live in a new society is never simple.” 

“As with many meaningful paths in life, sacrifice is required and one’s faith is tested,” she says. 

Through the support of local Baha’is as well as the local and national institutions of the Baha’i Faith, the couple’s work has started to take root. Meeting neighbours, they have organised weekly sports activities, language spaces and monthly community gatherings. They are also in the process of training local youth to assist with spiritual educational programs including children’s classes and junior youth groups. 

Fariba says her neighbours have also now experienced their first devotional gathering. The hope is to strengthen these endeavours in the months to come. 

“Things remain foreign and unknown only until you take the leap; once you do, they become familiar—after all, aren’t we one?” Fariba says. 

“Through this process we have been enriched. Many people have now heard the words ‘Baha’i’ and ‘Baha’u’llah.’ We have received countless desserts, hugs, and smiles.” 

One of the major goals set by the international governing body of the Baha’i Faith, the Universal House of Justice, for the coming years is “to generate a flow of pioneers to places where help is needed, and also to provide support by other means. This flow of support is one more way in which the spirit of collaboration and mutual assistance, so essential for progress, manifests itself in systematic action.”¹ 

Fariba says everyone should “seize the opportunity”. 

“The confirmations have been unmistakable.”

1. The Universal House of Justice, Message to the Continental Boards of Counsellors, 30 December 2021[↩]