By Mehrdad Badiian Eghrari
My beloved dad was jailed in Turkey for teaching the Bahá'i Faith, he was eventually freed with the condition that he would leave the country, which he did, and eventually the government after years of court trials recognized the Bahá'i Faith as an independent religion, and not a sect of Islam. My father also suffered 2 years in Iranian prisons, jailed for being an outspoken Bahá'i, just after the Islamic revolution. He eventually was able to escape the country and join me and my family in Spain, where I had pioneered to 9 years before the revolution. Dad lived in Spain and quickly learned the language, now he continued teaching his beloved Faith in Spanish. Some years later we left Spain to again pioneer to Paraguay. Eventually I left Paraguay for USA, leaving my old man behind, for he would not come with me. My father spoke very good German - among other languages - so he lived in a retirement home full of elderly Germans in San Lorenzo outside of the capital Asuncion. Every day he would go to the park, sit next to Paraguayans on a bench, he would hand them a Bahá'i pamphlet and ask them kindly to read it to him, and explain what the pamphlet said. This practice caused hundreds to accept and embrace the Cause of God. Years later when my darling wife and I went to visit him so many greeted us with a loud and clear Alláh'u'Abhá, and told us that señor Shokrollah Badiian had been their Bahá'i Teacher.
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