The two girls stayed with Norina and Elizabeth for four years. Rabia Martin had also been invited to stay with them.

Ada "Rabia" Martin, 70, had been initiated into Sufism by Inayat Khan in 1911 and was later made head or Murshida of Sufism in America. She met Norina and Elizabeth in San Francisco in 1942, when they had gone to California to investigate sites for Baba's proposed American center. After listening to their descriptions of their Master at one of Norina's public talks, Rabia became convinced that Meher Baba was an extraordinary spiritual figure. She was profoundly affected by her internal experience of the Master and offered her Sufi retreat center in Fairfax near San Francisco for Baba's use. Elizabeth wrote Baba in India: "Rabia's offer seemed to come from the heart and we all agree that she is the most advanced and understanding soul we met in California."

Over the next three years, Rabia Martin studied Baba's writings intensely and began a correspondence with him. She also grew closer to Norina and Elizabeth through repeated visits to New York City where their descriptions of life with Baba and his philosophy rapidly formed within her a central pillar of conviction of the importance of Baba as the key spiritual figure of our age. In April 1945, Norina and Elizabeth invited her to come and live with them. She joined them in New York and then Myrtle Beach until July. Rabia's inner experiences during those months confirmed her intuitive understanding that Baba was the living embodiment of Sufism and the divine incarnation of God — the Rasool or Avatar.

In May 1945, at Myrtle Beach, Rabia asked Baba by letter to accept herself as his student, and then on his acceptance, wrote further to ask him to take the responsibility for the spiritual guidance of the Sufi Order, which he accepted.

After receiving Baba's reply, in the autumn of 1945, Rabia Martin announced to her Sufi students that Meher Baba's life, work and message were the essence of Sufism as it was to be lived now and in the future; her work was now dedicated to Baba, and that if they wished to remain in her Sufi group, their spiritual allegiance would need to be to him.

After some explanation of her carefully nurtured relationship to Elizabeth and Norina, Rabia informed her students that in several days' time the two women would be visiting her along with a third devotee from Seattle, Mildred Kyle. She then announced that a major meeting would be held at the Fairfax Sufi school property, at which her guests would address her Sufi Initiates, giving them the benefit of their close knowledge of and relationship with Meher Baba.