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The Bahá'í Faith in Tonga started after being set as a goal to introduce the religion in 1953, and Bahá'ís arrived in 1954. With conversions and pioneers the first Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly was elected in 1958. From 1959 the Bahá'ís of Tonga and their local institutions were members of a Regional Spiritual Assembly of the South Pacific.〔 By 1963 there were five local assemblies.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 The Bahá'í Faith: 1844-1963: Information Statistical and Comparative, Including the Achievements of the Ten Year International Bahá'í Teaching & Consolidation Plan 1953-1963 )〕 Less than forty years later, in 1996, the Bahá'ís of Tonga established their paramount Bahá'í school in the form of the Ocean of Light International School. Around 2004 there were 29 local spiritual assemblies〔 and about 5% of the national population were members of the Bahá'í Faith though the Tonga Broadcasting Commission maintained a policy that does not allow discussions by members of the Baha'i Faith of its founder, Bahá'u'lláh on its radio broadcasts. ==Early days== In 1953 the twelve existing Bahá'í National Spiritual Assemblies were asked by Shoghi Effendi, then head of the religion, to help spread the religion. The community of the United States was to attempt to bring the religion to Tonga.〔 In Tonga, the Bahá'í community grew much like it did in other Pacific communities — first the community emerged through the acts of both pioneers and converts and then grew by spreading through family and tribal groups or clan-structures.〔 Australian Stanley P. Bolton was the first Bahá'í to arrive in Tonga — he arrived on 25 January 1954.〔 American Dudley M. Blakely, nephew of Lua Getsinger, and wife Elsa also pioneered to Tonga on 12 July 1954. Each earned the title Knights of Bahá'u'lláh for their service to the religion. Blakely was a designer and worked as an adviser to the Tongan government contributing to a number of buildings and furnishings as well as stamps and coins for the government. In 1961 he had designed a five-stamp special issue set commemorating mail deliveries to the islands changing from the era of the fishing boat to airmail. In 1962 he designed a set of the first gold coins in Polynesia. He designed Tonga's first decimal coin set in 1965. By 1956 there were indigenous Bahá'í converts on the islands;〔 three individuals who converted to the religion were prominent in Tongan society: Mosese Hokafonu, Lisiata Mak, and Suliana Halaholo. Mosese Hokafonu, who lived on the island of Tongatapu, converted to the Bahá'í Faith in the early 1950s. For many years Hokafonu served on the Bahá'í Local Spiritual Assembly of Nuku'alofa and donated a significant portion of the land for the site of the national Bahá'í Center. Hokafonu joined Gina and Russell Garcia on board their boat ''the Dawnbreaker'' for an extensive trip which took them through the islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Hokafonu was the first Pacific Islander to undertake missionary trips of long duration — including Kiribati and Tuvalu; Niue; the Solomon Islands; New Guinea; the Marshall, Mariana and Caroline Islands; Nauru; Australia and New Zealand (especially among the Māori), Hawaii, Alaska and the continental United States. Baron Vaea, a Tongan noble and former Prime Minister, a relative of Hokafonu, conducted the funeral service which was attended by many hundreds of people.〔 Lisiata Maka, a legal adviser in Tonga's lower and supreme courts, became a Bahá'í in 1957 and was elected to the Regional National Assembly, and was later appointed to the Continental Board of Counsellors.〔 Suliana Halaholo was born in Tonga in 1950 and began attending a Bahá'í school's children's classes at the age of eight. Soon she was teaching classes and began being involved in administrative activities while she was still a youth. She was secretary of the youth committee of Tonga, and later of Fiji, and thanks to her academic achievements the government of Tonga gave her a scholarship to study dietetics at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, where she obtained her bachelor's degree. Halalholo devoted two of her vacations from schooling to translating into the Tongan language ''The Seven Valleys'' (one of Bahá'u'lláh's metaphysical works), and later the Tablet Words of Wisdom. Both translations were approved by the National Spiritual Assembly of Tonga.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bahá'í Faith in Tonga」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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