The Baháʼí Faith in the Marshall Islands begins after 1916 with a mention by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, then head of the religion, that Baháʼís should take the religion there. The first Baháʼí to pioneer there arrived in August 1954 however she could only stay until March 1955. Nevertheless, with successive pioneers and converts the first Baháʼí Local Spiritual Assembly in 1967 in Majuro. The community continued to grow and in 1977 elected its first National Spiritual Assembly. Before 1992 the Baháʼís began to operate state schools under contract with the government. Middle estimates of the Baháʼí population are just over 1,000, or 1.50% in 2000. Early days ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the Divine Plan ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, head of the Bahá’í Faith from 1892 to 1921, mentioned the Marshall Islands among the places Baháʼís should take the religion to. He wrote a series of letters, or Tablets, to the followers of the religion in the United States in 1916–1917; these letters were compiled together in the book titled Tablets of the Divine Plan. The seventh of the Tablets mentioned taking the Baháʼí Faith to the Marshall Islands and was written on 11 April 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 into English, and published in Star of the West magazine on 12 December 1919. (Tablet 7) "A party speaking their languages, severed, holy, sanctified and filled with the love of God, must turn their faces to and travel through the three great island groups of the Pacific Ocean — Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia, and the islands attached to these groups, such as New Guinea, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, Philippine Islands, Solomon Islands, Fiji Islands, New Hebrides, Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, Bismarck Archipelago, Ceram, Celebes, Friendly Islands, Samoa Islands, Society Islands, Caroline Islands, Low Archipelago, Marquesas, Hawaiian Islands, Gilbert Islands, Moluccas, Marshall Islands, Timor and the other islands. With hearts overflowing with the love of God, with tongues commemorating the mention of God, with eyes turned to the Kingdom of God, they must deliver the glad tidings of the manifestation of the Lord of Hosts to all the people. Know ye of a certainty that whatever gathering ye enter, the waves of the Holy Spirit are surging over it, and the heavenly grace of the Blessed Beauty encompasseth that gathering." Beginnings Marcia Steward (later de