April 15. On this date in 1924, Hadi Afsahi was born in Tehran, Iran. A notable Iranian Bahá’í, he pioneered to Sweden, where he served on the inaugural National Spiritual Assembly and later as an Auxiliary Board member for the Continental Board of Counsellors for Europe.

 

April 15. On this date in 1924, Hadi Afsahi was born in Tehran, Iran. A notable Iranian Bahá’í, he pioneered to Sweden, where he served on the inaugural National Spiritual Assembly and later as an Auxiliary Board member for the Continental Board of Counsellors for Europe.

A fourth generation Bahá’í, Hadi Afsahi was born on April 15, 1924 in Tehran, Iran, and received his early education at the Bahá’í Tarbíyat School in that city. After earning a degree in civil engineering from the University of Tehran he worked with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company from 1947 to 1959 and pioneered to two different localities within the country. Mr. Afsahi was a member of the first Local Spiritual Assemblies in the Iranian cities of Masjid-i-Sulayman and Gachsaran. He married Mehri Golmohammadi in 1953, and the couple had two children, May and Aram. In January 1960, Mr. Afsahi left Iran for Sweden, settling in Uppsala, a pioneer goal city, to be joined several months later by his family. In Sweden, he served as a member of the first Local Spiritual Assembly in Uppsala and was also a member of the country's National Teaching Committee from 1960 to 1967. Elected as a member of the first National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Sweden, he served on that body from 1962 until 1968, when he was appointed as a member of the Auxiliary Board of the Continental Board of Counsellors for Europe, in which capacity he served until 1993.

Mr. Afsahi made many trips throughout Sweden and internationally to teach the Bahá’í Faith. Within Sweden, he was active in teaching minority groups such as the Roma people and the native Sámi people of Lapland. During his years in Sweden Mr. Afsahi worked as a high school teacher of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, until his retirement in 1989. He was also involved with the United Nations Association and the National Sámi Organization.

Hadi Afsahi died on April 28, 2003. In its message after his passing, the Universal House of Justice wrote of his "long-serving and steadfast devotion, his warm and radiant spirit, and his indefatigable dedication to the teaching work," which it "recalled with deep gratitude".