The seventh of the tablets mentioned taking the Baháʼí Faith to the Gilbert Islands and was written on April 11, 1916, but was delayed in being presented in the United States until 1919 — after the end of World War I and the Spanish flu.
These tablets were translated and presented by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab on April 4, 1919, and published in Star of the West magazine on December 12, 1919.
[2] About the first of June 1954,[9] former Roman Catholic seminarian and mission teacher Peter Kanere Koru quickly became the first convert on the island.
[4] Then there was the attempt of the Fernies to set up an English language school - and the fund-raising activities they organised in Tuarabu conflicted with the Tuarabu Catholics attempt to raise funds for their own purposes and embarrassingly unable to match donations with another nearby Catholic community.
[5] Indeed, a quarter ton of text books were sent from the Baháʼís of Panama to support the imminent school which was to be open to all natives irrespective of their religion.
Indeed, the Catholic mission worked to have the Fernies deported, and on several occasions used its journal to "warn" its members against examining this new religion.
[11] The new Baháʼí community which had formed essentially in one year continued to function[5] and for a time Shoghi Effendi requested no further pioneers go to the Gilbert Islands.
[14] In addition to Koru, other early converts included Taukoriri Eritai, who became a Baháʼí at the time the Fernies were on Abainag,[2] and Timeon Tamaroa who helped take the religion to the island of Beru.
[4] In earliest 1957 Shoghi Effendi allowed pioneers to consider the Gilbert Islands and Frances Heller from the United States was able to arrive on February 8, 1957.
[11] American Mabel Adelle Sneider was the next to arrive and she and Heller agreed the religion needed to be taken to the capital of the islands.
[11] Sneider lived there for 15 years helping to transfer the center of Baháʼí activities from the relatively remote island of Abaiang to the civic capital on Tarawa[4] - eventually Snieder was elected to the National Spiritual Assembly often serving as secretary or treasurer at one time or another.
[22] By the end of 1963 there were a wide range of communities across the Gilbert Islands with 14 assemblies, 19 groups, and 7 additional isolated Baháʼís.
[6] Yale University professor Charles Forman analyzed religious trends across the Pacific Islands and attributes the surprising growth of the Baháʼí Faith across Micronesia was partly due to a certain amount of response from some youths of wider experience and education as well as from some village folk among whom Baháʼís settled [3] In October 1966 Hand of the Cause Collis Featherstone attended the dedication of the main Baháʼí center of the islands inaugurated with a conference discussing the progress of the religion on the island.
[24] In May 1971 an international conference on the progress of the religion across the south pacific as held in Suva, Fiji to which Gilbert Island Baháʼís went.
[33] Second they helped during a cholera outbreak in September - the Baha'is relayed messages using the radio equipment on the Baháʼí-owned catamaran Erena-Roe which also ferried patients to the hospital and a Baháʼí served as secretary of the government's response committee created to manage the epidemic.
[37] Thanks to Peter King, a New Zealand Baháʼí pioneer on Tarawa, a center was raised on Christmas Island in 1981.
[40] By 1986 there is a Baháʼí on the Pacific Christmas Island which is closer to Honolulu than to the capital on Tarawa, 2000 miles to the west.
[42] The religion entered a new phase of activity when a message of the Universal House of Justice dated 20 October 1983 was released.
After coming to a reception at the national convention and noting the importance of religious unity and liberty in Kiribati,[46] the contributions to Kiribati society were noted by then president, Ieremia Tabai, and ministers of government in speeches when they then attended a 1986 peace conference at which over 1000 Baháʼís attended.
[47] The successes of the schools in Kiribati were discussed at the 100th Anniversary of the Baháʼí Faith in Hawaii at breakout workshops in 2001 which included participants from many countries.
[48] The Kiribati government supported the United Nations General Assembly vote on the "Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran" (A/56/583/Add.3 Draft Resolution) on 19 December 2001.
[50] At the 50th anniversary, 2004, celebrations of the Baháʼí Faith in Kiribati dignitaries attending included President Anote Tong and Madam Tong, Mr. Michael Fudakowski, representing the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháʼís of New Zealand and who lived for some 17 years in Kiribati with his wife, Robin White, now a member of the Continental Board of Counsellors in Australasia, and their family.