For Kevin’s earlier life story, please click here and for Mina’s, please click here.

On 22nd August 1970, we were married in Cardiff at the very beautiful Temple of Peace. A month later we were there again for the wedding of Viv and Rita Bartlett.  Before our wedding Mina had been pioneering in Newport and Kevin had been in Bangor for two years. We started having regular firesides which went on for two years until we left Bangor. On 8th October 1970, Richard St. Barbe Baker came to Bangor to address a public meeting. He did not arrive as scheduled as he had got into a deep conversation with a Russian professor on his trip from Aberystwyth and had missed his connection. In the morning he was photographed and interviewed for the local paper and talked about the harmony of religion and science. A report was published the following week. In the afternoon he visited the forestry department in the university and invited people to his meeting in the evening. The meeting was a great success and was followed by a fireside into the small hours. It was his 81st birthday which he celebrated in our flat. Mina had made dinner and a cake and he was so pleased to spend his birthday with us.

An interesting story unfolded around this visit. Prior to St. Barbe Baker’s visit, we had made an appointment with the professor of forestry to ask him if St. Barbe Baker could talk to his students. At that meeting, he was very dismissive saying that he completely disagreed with St. Barbe Baker’s philosophy and would not promote him. Richard St. Barbe Baker believed trees are the lungs of the world and should be grown to provide oxygen. The professor believed and taught that forests were a commercial crop and should be grown to be harvested. We left him a little disappointed but nevertheless got on with planning for St. Barbe Baker’s visit.  Sometime later Mina received a visitor at our tiny flat. A distinguished lady in a big car came to enquire if Mina could speak Farsi and could she help. Mina immediately agreed to help and we were invited to dinner the following Sunday. When we arrived we discovered it was the home of the professor who was a bit abashed when he remembered his dismissive attitude at the previous meeting. He had a PhD student from Iran who was quite senior in the government there and had been called back suddenly. His young Persian wife was left behind in Bangor with their baby daughter and she did not speak English. The family wanted Mina to befriend her and look after her until her husband returned. Her husband soon returned and we all became great friends spending many happy times together.

We often visited Dr. Miller and his wife in their little cottage in Anglesey. We would have prayers together and he would tell us fascinating stories from his life. Dr Miller donated his surgery in Liverpool to be a Bahá’í Centre, which it still is to this day. It was enlarged when his neighbour Pat Brackenridge (sister of Lou Turner) sold her house to the National Spiritual Assembly. Thus 3 and 5 Langdale Road, Liverpool. It became a much-used and loved Bahá’í Centre. Dr Miller used to leave pamphlets in his waiting room and it was how Pat first heard of the Faith. For many years it served as a centre for the growing institute process. We went several times to study Ruhi courses there and took part in teaching projects. In 2018 number 5 Langdale Road was sold by the National Spiritual Assembly and the institute process is now served by the property acquired in Bicester. Number three, Dr Miller’s surgery is still the Baha’i Centre.

Elizabeth Albrow moved into Menai Bridge which re-opened Anglesey as Dr Miller had returned to Liverpool.  Elizabeth became a great friend and support. She attended our firesides regularly and all the events we arranged and we enjoyed frequent meetings in her lovely home on Anglesey. A one-day school was held in Bangor in the autumn of 1970. On the eve of the school, a social gathering was held. Cyrus and Sally Rowshan and Gerald Lemonheigh arrived all the way from South Wales and a mini-bus full of friends from Liverpool led by George and Elsie Bowers also arrived. In the morning fifteen Bahá’ís squashed into our tiny flat to say the short prayer ‘The Remover of Difficulties’ 500 times as promised to Hand of the Cause John Robarts. At the one-day school, the first speaker was Ena Coulson on ‘Boils and Septic Spots!’  Ena had a very creative way of talking about the Faith. George Bowers talked in the afternoon. The day was supported by Bahá’ís from Liverpool, Kirkby, Ellesmere Port, Chester, Southport, Duffryn Ardudwy, and Pontypridd. Following the one-day school there were two declarations, Phillip Gregory and Jill Heron. John Netherwood had declared earlier. He was a friend and fellow student of Fu’ad Ta’eed in the Physics department at the university. Later he was to serve for many years at the World Centre in IT where he met his wife, Parvin. When they returned, they settled in the Wirral and currently live in Chester.

On 14th February 1971, Derwent Maude addressed a public meeting in the university. It was in the middle of a long postal strike. We had printed eight hundred invitations and delivered them ourselves by hand in Bangor and Menai Bridge. It was a lot of walking. Because of the strike people seemed quite pleased to be getting something through their letter boxes. There were some interesting conversations with people who were out on their driveways at the time. Also, an extra-large advertisement was placed in the newspaper. Only two people came as a result of this publicity. However, one of them, Susan Ensor from Menai Bridge, later became a Bahá’í. Following the meeting Susan came regularly to the firesides in our flat. Sometime later there was a meeting in Shrewsbury and Susan was interested in going along. She asked Kevin to drive her mini and all through Snowdonia it was torrential rain and a terrifying drive. We said lots of ‘Removers of Difficulties’!  After the meeting, Susan declared and she remained a faithful stalwart of the community, including serving on its Assembly, into her nineties when she passed away.

At one of our public meetings, a couple called Mr. and Mrs. Singer attended. They said that whenever they saw a Bahá’í meeting they attended to say hello. The reason was that Mrs. Singer, before she was married, had seen a meeting advertised in Northampton in the 1940s and had wanted to go but was too shy. She asked a friend to go with her for support. The friend was Betty Reed. Later she married Mr. Singer, who was Jewish and had escaped the Nazis and come to Northampton to study agriculture. We became very close friends and visited them often. Eventually, Betty Reed came to visit Bangor and we got them together. Betty Reed had been the National Spiritual Assembly’s secretary for many years until appointed a Continental Counsellor. She was always especially interested in and encouraging of youth so we both knew her well even before we met.

In March Geoff and Ena Coulson attended a packed fireside. Geoff and Ena were great supporters of Bangor even though they lived about fifty miles away. Geoff was the chef at College Harlech which hosted many Bahá’í summer schools and is, in fact, where we met in 1969 and returned to just after our wedding in 1970. On 20th.  March 1971 Dan and Dino, travel teachers from the US, came to stay with us and spent Naw-Rúz with the community.  In August 1971 the Welsh National Eisteddfod was held near Bangor, in the grounds of Penrhys Castle. Derwent and Roderic Maude erected the display. On the Sunday Ena Coulson and Connie Grant joined Bangor Bahá’ís to man the stand. That day was also the 19 Day Feast and as well as Connie and Ena, Janine Tonhoffer from Luxembourg joined local Bahá’ís at our flat. Throughout the week, help was given by Fred Tonhoffer, Margaret Grant, Elizabeth Albrow, Susan Ensor, George and Elsie Bowers, T.R. Williams, and Mina’s brother Cyrus Rowshan.  T.R. Williams was a newly declared retired headmaster. Cyrus had brought him up all the way from South Wales to help with the Eisteddfod. The Welsh language pamphlets were very popular. A young girl who had just declared in Canada was surprised to see Bahá’ís in the Eisteddfod. An American lady, whose son was a Bahá’í, visited the stand and Michael and Kristy Hill from America came every day and became great friends. A weekend school was held on 21st and 22nd August 1971.

Mina and Kevin – August 1971

The Welsh National Eisteddfod  Penrhys Castle Bangor

In September 1971 Fuad Ta’eed returned to Bangor from Sierra Leone to continue his studies. In the house opposite our flat there were three female students, Jill Heron who had declared, and her two friends Gill Garnett and Linda Maudsley. Gill and Linda later declared. As they were neighbours they were frequent visitors and we visited them. On 13th. November 1971 the wedding took place of Edward Warren and Gwynneth Part. Edward was a Bahá’í living in Bedford and Gwynneth lived in Llanfairfechan. We arranged their wedding and Mina officiated at the wedding which was held in the university. Terry Noon declared while living in Llanrug moved into Bangor and became a member of the first Local Spiritual Assembly.  The commemoration of the anniversary of the fiftieth year of the passing of Abdu’l-Bahá took place over the weekend of 26th and 27th November with a fireside at Jill Heron’s flat and a devotional at Terry Noon’s house in Llanrug.

On January 2nd, 1972, our son Payam was born at St David’s Hospital. He was the first Bahá’í baby born in Bangor. At the time there was a national coal strike and it was a cold winter in Bangor. We managed to get some coal as the doctor organised it for us. The coal merchants were required to deliver to special cases!  Having Payam made no difference to the quantity of Bahá’í firesides and events. From his first days, Payam attended everything and got a lot of fuss made of him from all the young students.

After four more declarations, there were now ten Bahá’ís in the university. The declarations were Sue Bates, Gill Garnett, Linda Maudsley, and Ian Eckersley. Mehri Mahboubian moved into Bangor from Iran and was able to find accommodation. She was a great help in organising activities and was a member of the first Assembly.

On 12th February Derwent Maude gave a talk at the university. It was well attended and there was a lively discussion. It was cut short as, due to a national strike, there were routine power cuts and the power went off at nine o’clock. The last week of February was a ‘happening’.  Dave and Dave came from Manchester, Jim and Gordon from Kirkby, and Sally and Cyrus Rowshan came from South Wales. The film projector did not work so the two Daves provided some music. The power cut occurred at nine o’clock so there was a candlelit fireside at Sue Bates’ flat. The next day was a one-day school with talks given by Dr.  Ta’eed, Mike Maginsky, and William Lee (a long-term pioneer to Botswana with his wife Christine). Music was provided by Ananda from Chester. Ananda stayed for a further day to help with the teaching work. Two American travel teachers, Tammy and Beth, visited and stayed with us. It was a tough time as the power cuts were due to a national coal strike which lasted quite some time. It was difficult having a young baby in a North Wales winter with no coal.

At Ridván 1972 the first Spiritual Assembly of Bangor was formed. The oldest person on the Assembly was twenty-five. Phil and John and ourselves decided to make the trip to the first-ever National Convention of the Republic of Ireland. It was a short trip across the sea from Holyhead to Dublin but not easy with a three-month-old baby. It was an amazing convention and we stayed with the Wortley family in Dun Laoghaire.

In June 1972 Kevin graduated from Bangor University and we moved to Northamptonshire. Sometime after we left Bangor, Gill Garnett married Fuad Ta’eed and they spent many years as pioneers in Papua New Guinea. They have four children and four grandchildren and they now live in Tasmania. The Povey and Behi families moved into Bangor after we left.

We moved to Daventry in June 1972 where Kevin had a job. A house came with the job. There were no Bahá’ís in Daventry so we immediately joined the activities in Northampton, which was, as a Baha’i-occupied town, held together by Monir Sahari and his wife who had pioneered there from service in Haifa. We helped them with their activities and made frequent trips to Bedford which had Malcolm and Parvin Lee, Norman and Doreen Bailey, and Sue and Sylvia Benatar. We also visited the Cardells for their legendary picnics on their farm in Great Paxton.

In 1973 we went to Shiraz to visit Mina’s family. Payam had just started to walk and went to the House of the Báb with his grandfather. We were able to make three trips there during our stay and visit many places significant to the Faith.  

After a year we moved into Northampton, as did Mansur Shah, Robert Kinghorn (who pioneered to Finland where he lived with his wife, and family until his passing) and Steven Robbins, and thus, Northampton, one of the oldest Spiritually Assemblies in the country, first having been formed in 1944, was re-established. The Bahá’í Faith came to Northampton in 1938 through David Hofman, whose parents lived nearby. David had become a Bahá’í in Canada in 1935.  After David, the Bahá’í community included Betty Reed who declared there in the late forties, Alma Gregory who pioneered there with her young daughter Lois (now Lambert, with her husband, David, long-term pioneers in China and Mongolia and more recently Macedonia), Claire Gung, the ‘mother’ of Africa, Una Coward, Sydney Barrett, Eric Manton, who pioneered to and passed away in Zambia, and although he did not live in the town but worked at the hospital, Dr. John Mitchell, Knight of Bahá’u’lláh for Malta, and Shomais Ala’i who trained as a nurse there and who from Northampton married Dr. Abbas Afnan. Thus the town had a very illustrious Bahá’í history. A Bahá’í from those days still living in Northampton was Etheldreda Nutt who told us many fascinating stories of the early days including baby-sitting Jyoti Munsiff and Lois Gregory when their mothers went travel-teaching. She lived to be just short of 100.

One of our most successful events was a weekend school we organised on Education addressed by Eric Blumenthal who was a Counsellor at the time. It took place in what was then Nene College and is now Northampton University. It was very well attended and people still talk about it.

In 1974 our daughter Fiona was born in Northampton. After Robert and Steven left, Mike Cooper moved into Northampton and there were several declarations. One was a work colleague of Mike’s, Anthony Knowles. Anthony was in his fifties and had investigated many churches and when we met him was seriously studying Islam. His wife was a devout Roman Catholic and desperately wanted Anthony to be one. Within a short time, Anthony declared and set about making a very serious study of the Bahá’í Writings. At the same time he became ill and within a few months passed away with cancer. We then had the difficult job of approaching his wife about his having a Bahá’í burial. She reluctantly agreed, acknowledging that it would have been Anthony’s wish, and thus we were able to hold a beautiful Bahá’í funeral for him. Mike then pioneered to Iceland and now lives in Ipswich. Monirih Mali moved to Northampton as a doctor at the hospital and served for many years on the Local Assembly before moving to Stoke on Trent. Martin Cortazzi moved in for his studies and thus he and Minou (Mina’s sister) and the children were there.

The declaration of Joyce Goodman was very interesting. She belonged to an animal welfare group that decided to reach out to religions to hear what they had to say about animal welfare. Naturally, we were delighted to attend and present Bahá’í Writings relevant to their meeting. As it turned out they received some dismissive letters from groups ‘refusing to attend’ but a handful of religious representatives attended. The organisers were very excited because a vicar had agreed to attend. As it turned out he was very late and had nothing to say. Joyce really liked the Bahá’í concepts and started to attend firesides and very soon declared.  

We continued to have regular firesides, Feasts and Holy Days and in 1978 Northampton’s goal town was Kettering. As there was a more than adequate number of Bahá’ís in Northampton we decided to pioneer to Kettering. We had been going there every week for a year to hold firesides in the Manor House. We had advertised them in various ways including sending an invitation directly to the 6th form common rooms at both the boys’ school and girls’ school. As a result, Russell Attwood attended all year and brought a steady stream of his friends from the school to the firesides.

On the night we moved into our Kettering house, Russell visited and declared. He then went off to university in Leeds, later married Terri in Kettering and they pioneered to Zimbabwe. Six years later they returned to their roots in Kettering. One unusual event while in Kettering was having our books burnt. We had lent some books to a contact who had shown them to her Church of England vicar who promptly burnt them as evil. We consulted with Philip Hainsworth, a member of the National Spiritual Assembly, who advised us to summon the vicar to our house to explain his actions and apologise. He came with a colleague for support and we had a lively discussion. We pointed out that his superior, the Bishop of Peterborough, had for years welcomed Bahá’ís, including ourselves, to take part in an annual interfaith service. His answer was, ‘Yes and he’s wrong and we have written to tell him he is wrong!’

After achieving assembly status in Kettering and continuing to hold regular firesides, Feasts and Holy days we moved to Brixworth, which at that time was in Daventry District and thus a goal of Northampton.

When we moved to Brixworth, Mina joined the National Housewives Register. It was a great way to make friends and eventually led to an article about Tahireh being published in their national magazine.  Mina became a member of Two Shires Area Teaching Committee. The cluster is Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire. We had always supported meetings and events in Northampton, Wellingborough, Kettering and Bedford. We made frequent visits to Banu and Rustam Sabet when they pioneered to Corby from Scotland and supported them in their work. Rustam donated many books to the library.

An interesting aspect of our time in Brixworth was the emergence of Thomas Breakwell Schools. Ours was in Shepshed, Leicestershire, and each week a very large group of us from Northampton, Brixworth and Kettering made the long trip there in a minibus that belonged to the National Teaching Committee. The school ran for many years until the National Spiritual Assembly changed the policy on children’s classes. We were glad of its impact on our children, and the friendships they forged then are still strong many years later. In Brixworth we constantly approached civic dignitaries and when asked to contact MPs about the plight of the Bahá’ís in Iran, our MP Roger Freeman called for an early day motion and was the first MP to address the House of Commons on the Bahá’í Faith and its persecution in Iran at that time. We were invited to listen in the public gallery and it was quite a moving event.

Our first declarations in Brixworth were Marny and Dick Barton. They had lived in Findhorn and had heard Richard St. Barbe Baker speak there. They had opened a small garden centre and on our way to the Feast we called in to buy a plant for the host. We had a very long conversation about the Faith and were quite late for the Feast. As a result, Marny started attending firesides and she and Dick became Bahá’ís. Their Bahá’í wedding took place in our house with about forty guests. While Rob Weinberg was living in Brixworth we decided to leaflet every house in the village (about 5,000 residents). We designed our own leaflet which asked the good people of Brixworth what kind of community they would like to have in the year 2000 which was then about twelve years away.

Over the years several people moved into the area including Pourie Habibi and her daughter Sherie and her daughters, Paul and Jila Bellamy with their children, Sasan and Carole Dehghani and their sons, and David James who had recently declared. Thus, Daventry District had a spiritual assembly for many years until the boundaries were changed. For one year Brixworth managed to have an assembly after Alfred Sharpe moved in.

In November 1989 the Berlin Wall came down and legions of Bahá’ís started visiting Communist Bloc countries. In the summer following, the four of us drove to Warsaw for a youth conference. It was an epic drive and we took in Krakow as well. On the way back we visited the Bahá’í House of Worship in Frankfurt. We arrived very early before it was open and the custodians gave us the keys and we had it to ourselves. They then invited us to breakfast and wonderful conversation. Our second visit was to Romania where Payam was spending part of his year of service. On arriving we transferred by train to Curtea de Argus to a youth conference. We were delighted to find that our old friend Ted Cardell was there. Later Payam went to live with Ted in Constanta and found it a most inspiring and uplifting experience. Next to the youth conference venue was the local monastery and in a small chapel was the very humble grave of Queen Marie and it was wonderful to say some prayers there. Initially, Payam was living in Galati. At the Feast the new local Bahá’ís, mostly men from the steelworks, were planning the Ridván meeting and were debating intently. The translator explained they were discussing Baha’u’llah’s favourite flowers as they would like to get them for the meeting. They also recommended that we see nicer parts of Romania before we returned home. They advised us to go to Sinaia and Brasov. From the cable car in Sinaia, there was a panoramic view of the Controceni Palace where Martha Root first met Queen Marie. In Brasov we stayed with youth from Central America.

In November 1992 we all attended the Bahá’í World Congress in New York along with 32,000 Bahá’ís from around the world. Payam had just started university and Fiona was in her final ‘A’ level year. It is impossible to explain how much we all got out of it, at times moved to tears by the magnificence of everything. Quite a lot of youth had travelled from the UK which was very impressive. Mina was able to meet family members, both close and distant, from around the world and for Payam and Fiona it was a chance to meet so many relatives they had never seen before. We were more than delighted to see Gill Ta’eed who had declared in Bangor twenty years earlier. She was surrounded by a group from Papua New Guinea where she and Fu’ad were long-term pioneers.

Inspired by the Tranquillity Zone, first at summer schools and later in Swindon, we set up a regular devotional in the village hall and it ran for many years. When Mina became a chaplain at Northampton University she held devotionals there too.

We were blessed by having David Hofman, Betty Reed, Charles and Yvonne Macdonald and Abbas Afnan as guests staying with us, all of whom we knew well having met them on many occasions, especially when we were both youth. We took Betty Reed to Wellingborough to meet a cousin as it was her home area and David Hofman gave a magnificent talk in the Town Hall in Northampton, particularly about how Handel’s Messiah can be understood to ultimately be about Bahá’u’lláh. He was also an honoured guest at a celebration at the Royal Theatre centenary where he had been male lead in the repertory company in the late thirties. He was interviewed on the radio and featured in the newspaper. Charles, too, gave a wonderful fireside on Christian subjects and the Faith. Abbas was delighted to see us again as he had been a pupil in the Bahá’í children’s classes in Shiraz that Mina’s father had supervised and had lived in Burnley where Kevin had declared during his time there in the early sixties.

An exciting chain of events followed a musical concert in 1998 organised for the centenary of the Bahá’í faith coming to the UK. The concert was a great success in a packed town hall and we raised £2,000 for charity. One participant at the concert with his world music group from the county music school was Richard Leigh. He had already befriended the Smith family, Geoff and Michaela, in Cornwall. After the concert, he offered to run our choir for us which had run throughout the nineties but had lapsed. The choir eventually sang in the Millennium Dome. Richard also started composing choral music for the Hidden Words even before he declared. To date, he has produced several CDs, ‘Myriads’, which is nine Hidden Words, ‘Mystic Bird’, which is Mina chanting and singing mainly in Persian and Arabic, ‘Breathe, which is a compilation, and ‘Seed’, which is prayers and writings. All four CDs include Mina chanting or singing. ‘Myriads’ was only publicly performed once, which was in Brixworth Church, a large Saxon building dating from the 7th century. It was packed out and the soprano stood in the pulpit, singing the words and the name of Bahá’u’lláh. A later project was a film and music presentation based on the invocations of the many religions. It was called ‘Rivers’. Richard’s wife, Lou, had travelled the length of the country to film people at worship. It was performed at the prestigious St John’s Smith Square, the second place where ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spoke when He first visited the UK. 

Sarah and Helmut Scharpf, Richard’s sister and brother-in-law, live in Ottobeuren in southern Germany. Helmut had carried out all the recording for Richard’s Bahá’í music, visiting the UK on each occasion. He ran a youth choir in Ottobeuren and he wanted Richard and Mina to perform several Hidden Words in an anniversary celebration of his choir. We set off after work on a Friday to drive there. Alfred Sharpe and a musician colleague of Richard’s decided to join us so we were five in the car. We had tried to contact Bahá’ís in Memmingen and Ulm but had not had a reply. The concert was in the basilica which was enormous, ornate, and packed out. The first few rows were mostly clergy and dignitaries. The concert went well and when it got to the Hidden Words Helmut gave an introduction explaining that these were the words of Bahá’u’lláh. He talked a little of who Bahá’u’lláh was and His main teachings. At the interval, an excited group came up to us and announced they were the Bahá’ís of Ulm and Memmingen and had never experienced such a detailed proclamation of the Faith in a setting that was so conservative and catholic. They were beyond amazed when Helmut began his explanation of the Hidden Words and their origins. The next day we were invited to a Memmingen women’s interfaith event where Richard and Mina provided the music and were rapturously received.

In 1999 and 2001 we had the bounty and blessings of the marriages of Payam and Fiona. Payam married Gohar Khosravi in her home town, Belfast. Now many years later, close to their silver wedding anniversary, they are settled in Edinburgh. At the time of writing their lovely daughter Laila is studying for her GCSEs. Their neighbourhood is very busy with Bahá’í activities of every description. Fiona married Peter Young. They have spent most of their married life in Gibraltar, and are currently settled in Portugal. Like Laila, their children, Dylan and Shadi are studying for ‘A’ levels and GCSEs. Since Fiona and their family moved to Portugal, we have had the opportunity to meet Bahá’ís and her friends there, and close by in Portimao, there is a magnificent Bahá’í Centre and a delightful community.

Another remarkable story of declaration concerned David Brooker. The phone rang in Brixworth one day and the caller said he wanted to know about the Bahá’í Faith. At the time David was going through a very difficult time in his life. He became an ardent participant in our firesides and Bahá’í events and soon declared. He decided he would study Teaching English as a Second Language and on completing the course pioneered to Prague. It was difficult in those days to keep in touch and so we were not aware of his life there. Much later we were contacted by the Czech Bahá’ís who informed us that sadly he had passed away and could we write something about how he declared, for his memorial, which we did. Sometime later we received the reports with photographs of his time there and the eulogies for his memorial and it was uplifting to see how much work he had done for the Faith and how much the Bahá’ís there loved him. He had become very involved in activities both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and in translating too. At the northern summer school this year (2023) we met a young man from the Czech Republic. We said, you may be too young but did you know David Brooker? His face lit up and he said “David was one of my mother’s best friends and they worked on translations together”.

From 2012 to 2013 we lived in Gibraltar as Fiona and their family were settled there. It was wonderful to be part of its Bahá’í community and take part in the Assembly, study circles, Junior Youth class, interfaith and many other activities including the Feasts and Holy Days. Fiona and Mina sang in the packed and prestigious Queen’s Diamond Jubilee interfaith concert. We also had a chance to get to know many Bahá’ís in Spain.

On returning from Gibraltar we decided to leave Brixworth and move to Leicester where Mina’s sister, Minou, lived and it is one of the country’s most multicultural cities with over 50% of the population of nearly 400,000 originating from another country. One university study discovered that in one road there were businesses owned by 27 different nationalities, possibly the most diverse street in the country. Remarkably, after looking at many houses, we chose one that we felt had a good feeling and ticked all the boxes for Bahá’í meetings which was a priority. When we announced to the Leicester Bahá’ís we were going to buy a house in Laureston Drive they were amazed because they had all been going to that particular house for Feasts, Assembly meetings, firesides and holy days etc. for a couple of decades because the first owners were Aramesh and Diane Mahbouby and we hadn’t known that. Our first priority in Leicester was to meet people and we joined the U3A, especially its walking group, where we made many new friends, some of whom attended and still attend meetings and one of whom completed up to Ruhi Book 4. Leicester Bahá’ís had for long been involved in interfaith at several levels and we joined in. One highlight was that Mina got to have lunch with the Queen in the precincts of the Cathedral. We continue to find Leicester a great place to meet people and make friends from very varied backgrounds and since the emphasis has been on neighbourhoods, the area where we live has proven particularly prolific for meeting people and making friends, and many of our activities are currently neighbourhood meetings.

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Mina and Kevin Beint    

Leicester, November 2023

Mina and Kevin Beint 2023