While Sam labored away in Bahrain, Jim worked in Muscat and oversaw the Freed Slaves School. George went to Basrah to acclimatize to life in Arabia and to learn the language. George was soon joined by the Thomses when they arrived from the United States.
Following his time in Basrah, George went to Muscat to work with Jim. Sadly, within ten months of arriving in Arabia, George fell ill. Jim sent him to convalesce a few miles up the coast in Birka, where the heat was not so intense. On June 28, 1899, George wrote from Birka to say that he was feeling better. Within hours of writing and sending the letter, he suffered severe heatstroke and died. His body was wrapped in an old sail and returned to the dock at Muscat, where Jim was asked to claim it. George was buried next to the grave of Thomas Valpy French in Cemetery Cove at Muscat.
When news of George’s death reached him in Bahrain, Sam was stunned. He wondered what it could mean. His brother Peter and George Stone, the two youngest and physically strongest of the members of the Arabian Mission, had fallen ill and died within nine months of each other. Sam wrote another missionary newsletter home, addressing the deaths.
If the death of two American missionaries for Muscat does not awaken men to the needs of dark Eastern Arabia, what will? Being dead, our brothers will speak. You know what their message would be if they spoke it from your pulpit or in your parlor. It would be a message like that of [Johann Ludwig] Krapf [a German missionary, explorer, and linguist] from East Africa: “Our God bids us first build a cemetery before we build a church or dwelling house, showing that the resurrection of East Africa must be effected by our own destruction. Our sanguine expectations and hopes of immediate success may be laid in the grave like Lazarus, yet they shall have a resurrection and our eyes shall see the glory of the Lord at last.”
Despite the setback from the deaths, the missionaries had some breakthroughs. On Saturday, June 30, 1899, the first baptisms took place in Bahrain. Lydia and her three children, Nejma, Razouki, and Mejid, had fled to Bahrain from Baghdad to escape being forcibly kept in the Muslim religion. The Turkish authorities there had threatened to force Lydia to marry a Muslim and put her children into a Turkish government school. Amazingly, Lydia and her children were able to sneak out of Baghdad, make their way to Bahrain and the mission station, and receive more instruction in the Christian faith. Lydia and her children professed their desire to be baptized. The Sunday afternoon following the baptism, Lydia met with Sam and Amy and about twelve other people for a church service, where she received her first communion.
Also in 1899, in Bahrain, Amy gave birth to another daughter. She and Sam named the new baby Nellie Elizabeth Zwemer, though everyone called her Bessie.
At the beginning of December 1899, the Reverend Harry J. Wiersum arrived from the United States to serve with the mission. Like most new recruits, he went to Basrah to acclimatize to the Arabian living conditions. He began learning the language, which he noted in a letter to Sam as “a most difficult and perplexing language.”
Sam tried hard to keep his friends and supporters at home informed about what he was up to, but it was hard to describe just how different life was in Bahrain. On the evening of December 7, 1899, he sat down to write a New Year’s newsletter home. Sam spent much of the letter describing what a normal day was like for him in Bahrain.
Today it was a bright, cool day of our mild winter. At this season the weather does not hinder mission work nor melt enthusiasm. We rose at about six o’clock, and while Mrs. Zwemer was dressing the children, I read to her from John’s Epistle. Our reading was interrupted by an early caller, a Banian (Hindu) merchant, who came to purchase a map of Bahrain and an atlas he could not find at the bookshop the day before. He remained for some time and took other books with him, but as some of them were on Christianity, he politely returned them afterward. Our breakfast was next in order, and then the household, including our colporteurs, met in the study for morning prayer. We read Psalm 31 by turns and, after brief comments, Jusef [a colporteur] led in prayer. Already a dozen or more patients were at the doorway waiting for the dispensary to open.
Sam went on to describe how after their morning prayer time Jusef was sent with books to the weekly bazaar held on Thursdays at Suk-el-Khamis, about two miles away. Sam and a helper, Gibrail, tended to the patients awaiting medical care. Sam described treating patients with fever, ulcers, eye infections, and dysentery. Amy came later in the morning to tend to Muslim women and children.
Between treating patients, Sam and Gibrail managed to sell eight copies of the Gospel of John. Sam even noted what he ate for lunch—mutton, eggplant, rice, native bread, and pudding. Following afternoon prayers, Sam tended to more patients while Amy went out on an afternoon excursion. She took bundles of infant clothes made by Reformed Church women in the United States and distributed them to needy children. Along the way, Amy was invited into a house where she spoke with ten women about the Third Commandment—not taking the Lord’s name in vain—and answered all sorts of questions the women asked about the Christian way of living and worship.
After seeing patients and tending to a few other small matters, Sam managed to get a little time to read before eating dinner and putting the children to bed. But his day was not yet done. In the evening he delivered a talk in English and Arabic to a number of local merchants about his travels, illustrating the talk with magic lantern slides projected onto a white sheet hung for the purpose. In everything Sam did, he sought to give a practical demonstration of God’s love and compassion for people and to search out those moments of private conversation where he could share the gospel directly. Sam finished his rendition of the day’s activities by writing, “The day is done. Such is a glimpse of our daily round and common task.”
As 1899 drew to a close, Sam completed work on his book on Arabia and sent the manuscript to a publisher in New York City. As the New Year rolled around, Sam kept busy with his mission work in Bahrain. He was thrilled when Arabia: The Cradle of Islam: Studies in the Geography, People and Politics of the Peninsula with an Account of Islam and Mission Work was published in the first half of the year and received many good reviews. Sam was even happier when, later in 1900, he received news from Dr. Alfred DeWitt Mason, a former treasurer of the Arabian Mission. Dr. DeWitt and his brother in Brooklyn, New York, were donating six thousand dollars from their father’s estate to build a hospital in Bahrain. For Sam it was a dream come true. Not only did he now have two doctors working alongside him in Bahrain (Sharon and Marion Thoms had moved to the island after their time in Basrah), but he also had the money to start moving ahead with the hospital he’d dreamed about for so long. Sam was glad to have the Thomses in Bahrain to assist Amy with the birth of her third healthy daughter, whom they named Ruth. Sam was delighted to be a father again.
As Sam moved ahead with the hospital, he soon discovered that it would be the start of two years of constant frustrations and negotiations. It had been difficult when Sam first came to Bahrain to find a landlord willing to rent a house to Christian missionaries. The same proved true in finding a suitable plot of land on which to build a hospital. Even though the local residents of Manamah acknowledged the value of medical care, no one was willing to sell the mission a plot of land. The rich were content with American doctors treating them in their own homes, and they did not see a need to give poor people medical attention. Sam visited Sheikh Isa bin Ali, the ruler of Bahrain, and asked him if he would sell the mission a plot of land he owned on the outskirts of Manamah. The sheikh received Sam warmly, but when Sam asked about the land, the sheikh’s advisers had all kinds of objections and reasons why such a sale could never take place.
Sam was frustrated and disappointed. Then he learned of another plot of land for sale. Sam quickly reached an agreement with the owner. He signed a bill of sale and paid a deposit of half the purchase price. He was elated as he made his way home to tell Amy and the Thomses of the purchase.
Sam’s elation was short-lived, however. Later that night Hassan Musherif, a Muslim friend of Sam’s, arrived at the mission house dressed in a disguise. He apologized for coming so late and explained that the disguise was so that no one would recognize him. “You have been deceived,” he told Sam. “You must take back the bill of sale for the land and get back your money.”
Sam was surprised by the unexpected turn of events.
“They have played a trick on you,” Hassan said. “The land you have been sold is the site of an old ruined mosque. Once you start building, the authorities will declare the property wag (sacred) and stop your work. You will lose everything.”
The next morning Sam went to talk to the owner of the plot. Without betraying Hassan’s confidence, he confronted the owner over the deceit and left with his deposit back and the bill of sale torn up. Sam was glad to have his money back, but he was no closer to securing land.
For the next month Sam and Amy and the other missionaries serving with them in Bahrain prayed and waited. Just when it seemed that they had reached a dead end in the search for a suitable hospital building site, Sam received some astonishing news. A trusted adviser to Sheikh Isa bin Ali had had a dream in which he saw Nebi Isa (Jesus). In the dream Jesus had told him to sell a parcel of land to the missionaries. As a result of the dream, the sheikh wanted to reopen negotiations with Sam. On August 16, 1901, an agreement was reached with the sheikh to purchase the land for four thousand rupees.
With the purchase of the land complete, plans were quickly drawn up for a two-story building surrounded on three sides by twelve-foot-wide verandas. The structure would be built of limestone that was brought to the building site from the shores of the island. Stonemasons were hired to set the stone, while carpenters made doors and windows from teak imported from Bombay, India. The hinges and locks for the doors and windows, along with all the paint and varnish used, were imported from London.
With Sharon and Marion Thoms treating the patients who flocked to the mission each day for medical care, Sam was now free to oversee the construction of the hospital. But he faced many challenges along the way. For one, in this part of Arabia it was customary for a blood sacrifice to be made at the four corners of the foundation to ward off accidents on the building site. Without such a sacrifice, the builders would not work on the building. The animals were slaughtered, as was customary, and Sam put on a large barbecue for the builders.
Work on the project during the blazing heat of summer was slow. When winter arrived and Sam hoped to gain speed on the project, cholera broke out on the island, causing more delays. Problems with the design of the staircases and the roof had to be solved before work could proceed again. Besides all this, the stonemasons and carpenters needed constant supervision. Sam learned that if left unsupervised, workers would stop, stand around, and talk and smoke. The workers also had to be continually coaxed to do quality work. Otherwise, they would take shortcuts and produce inferior work that often had to be redone, wasting time and materials.
Sam was so focused on the new hospital that he sometimes lost sight of what was going on at the other Arabian Mission stations. Additional volunteers had arrived from the United States to serve with the mission. As the hospital building was taking shape, Sam learned that one of the volunteers, Harry J. Wiersum, had died on August 3, 1901. Harry had been serving at the mission station in Basrah, where he had contracted smallpox. He was the third strong, young missionary recruit to die while serving with the mission in Arabia.
