In Shoghi Effendi's inimitable style, this sentence, in a letter to the American InterContinental Teaching Conference, held in Chicago, IL, 1953, would change the the spiritual and social life of a continent in years to come: "Over one hundred and fifty thousand square meters of land have been dedicated to the Faith in the Antipodes, eighty thousand square meters in the Territory of Alaska, whilst the lands contributed in Latin America for a similar purpose approximate one-half of a million square meters, ninety thousand of which have been set aside near Santiago, Chile, for the first Mashriqu'l-Adhkar of South America. " Thus laying the foundation for the project on which the entire Bahá'í word is now embarked.