During 1901, with the building of the hospital continuing, Sam took on a new challenge—writing another book, this time a biography of Raymund Lull, who was considered to be the first missionary to Muslims. Raymund was born in 1235 in the city of Palma on the island of Majorca. He came from a wealthy and distinguished family and was a brilliant man in his time. As a result, he became a courtier to King James II of Aragon and was also the court poet. Although he was married and had several young children, Raymund tried to woo the wife of another court official. But while composing a suggestive poem to this woman, he had a vision of Christ hanging on the cross and looking at him with shame. As a result of this experience, at the age of twenty-eight, Raymund fell under conviction of his sin and became a vibrant Christian.
Following his conversion, Raymund felt a burden to reach Muslims with the gospel. He spent nine years studying the Arabic language and Muslim culture, philosophy, and religion. After mastering the Muslim language and culture, he challenged others to go as missionaries to Muslims. When no one took up the challenge, he decided to go himself. He traveled several times to Tunisia in North Africa, where he openly debated Muslim scholars, a number of whom eventually professed faith in Jesus Christ. His actions did not go unnoticed. On his third trip to North Africa at age eighty-two, Raymund was stoned by a crowd of angry Muslims in the city of Bougie. A Genoese merchant took the injured Raymund back to Palma, where he died the following year.
As he studied Raymund Lull’s story, Sam found the man inspiring. As he began to write the biography, in the preface he noted:
There is no more heroic figure in the history of Christendom than that of Raymund Lull, the first and perhaps the greatest missionary to Mohammedans. No complete biography of Lull exists in the English language; and…. we should rescue the memory of [this] pioneer from oblivion…. His self-sacrificing love never faileth and its memory cannot perish. His biography emphasizes his own motto: “He who lives by the Life cannot die.” It is this part of Lull’s life that has a message for us today and calls us to win back the Mohammedan world to Christ.
While Sam studied and wrote the biography of Raymund Lull, he kept busy supervising the building of the hospital. Despite his many responsibilities, Sam made good progress on the biography and completed it in early 1902. It was a happy day on the morning of March 30, 1902, when Sam wrapped up the manuscript and mailed it to his publisher in England. It was an even happier day for him that afternoon when Amy gave birth to another child, this time a son. In honor of the just-completed biography, Sam and Amy named their new son Raymund Lull Zwemer. They prayed that he would be a great missionary in Arabia, just like his namesake. Now the Zwemers had four children: Katharine, Bessie, Ruth, and Raymund.
Throughout 1902 work progressed on the building of the hospital. Since the new facility would need an adequate supply of fresh water, the workers dug a well on the property. However, the water they found was brackish and unusable. But the arrival of a windmill from a church in Waupun, Wisconsin, changed the equation. They would be able to dig the well much deeper, find good water, and use the windmill to pump the water to the surface.
The windmill arrived in Bahrain in pieces, accompanied by two wrenches and a set of instructions on how to put it together. The tower of the windmill was assembled on its side on the ground. A wooden tank was put in place to hold the water after it was pumped to the surface. Everything was ready to hoist the windmill into place. That was when the trouble began. A crowd of several hundred people gathered to see the windmill being hoisted by a group of men using ropes and a pulley. But when the tower of the windmill got halfway up, it buckled and fell back to the ground, where it lay in a twisted heap. As he viewed the wrecked windmill, Sam cried from disappointment and despair. That night he wondered whether the hospital would ever be finished.
The next morning the SS Assyria, a steamer that regularly plied the Persian Gulf, stopped at Bahrain. Over the course of the many stops the steamer had made in Bahrain, Sam had become friends with the vessel’s engineer. Sam visited the man at the ship and told him about the wrecked windmill. The engineer laughed when he saw the twisted heap of metal. He told Sam that their mistake had been in putting too much strain on the tower as they hoisted it up. Before long a group of sailors arrived from the ship and set to work on the windmill. They brought a portable forge with them and began straightening the bent angle irons and strengthening the tower. Then, under the watchful eye of the ship’s engineer, they hoisted the windmill into place. Sam was thrilled, and before long the windmill was pumping water.
More blunders were made installing the water pipes, which carried water to the operating room washbasins and the women’s ward. The pipes leaked badly the first time water flowed through them. But the problem was soon discovered, and the pipes were refitted, this time with white lead in the joints. To Sam’s relief, there were no more leaks.
As December 1902 arrived, the new hospital building was nearing completion. Sam left Sharon Thoms in charge of overseeing the finishing touches to the building while he headed to India. Sam had been invited to attend the Fourth Decennial Indian Missionary Conference that was to be held in Madras from December 11 to December 18. He hoped that by the time he returned from the conference, everything would be in order with the new building. He was anxious to see the hospital dedicated and put to use ministering to the medical needs of the residents of Bahrain.
Chapter 15
The Cost of Success
Sam arrived in Madras, on the southeastern coast of India, just in time for the start of the Fourth Decennial Indian Missionary Conference. The interdenominational conference was held once every ten years. About two hundred missionaries were attending from all over India and Burma, and since Sam served in Arabia, he was glad to be invited.
The conference reminded Sam of his days in the Student Volunteer Movement back in the United States, organizing and speaking at events in churches and on college and seminary campuses. Just as in those days, it seemed to Sam that everyone attending this conference had interesting and challenging stories to tell. In fact, the atmosphere of the conference energized him. After so many months of focusing on the building of the hospital in Bahrain, it felt good to be reminded of the larger, worldwide missionary challenge that faced the Christian church.
As Sam listened to missionaries from different denominations and missions speak, he realized that many of the struggles he and his team faced in Bahrain were similar to those faced by missionaries working among India’s Muslim population. There were the issues of ministering to women who were mostly hidden from view, the difficulty in sharing the gospel openly, and the passive and sometimes active opposition that developed in Muslim communities, making life difficult for missionaries.
As the conference progressed, Sam noticed something else. Although a fifth of the population of India was Muslim, missionary work among them did not feature largely on the conference agenda. When Sam asked other missionaries why this was, they told him that working among Muslims was discouraging and few people understood the particular problems Muslim evangelism presented. Their answer gave Sam an idea: Why not hold a missionary conference especially for those missionaries working among Muslims, regardless of the country they were in? Sam talked to several of the conference attendees about the idea and received an enthusiastic response from them. He set to work organizing a first-of-its-kind conference that would be invaluable to the many discouraged missionaries working among Muslim populations.
Energized and excited, Sam headed straight back to Bahrain after the conference in Madras. He was pleased when he arrived to find that the new hospital building was finished. For him, it was a beautiful sight to behold, and one for which he was very grateful.
In January 1903, the annual meeting of the Arabian Mission was held in Bahrain. This was a time when all the Arabian Mission missionaries serving at the various mission stations throughout the region gathered for fellowship, prayer, and strategizing. On Sunday, January 26, the missionaries attended the dedication service of the new Mason Memorial Hospital. During the service Sam gave an address, and then Jim offered a prayer of dedication for the new facility.
As Jim dedicated the hospital to God and to the people of Arabia, Sam fought back tears. After so many struggles and so many answers to prayer, the hospital—his dream, and the only hospital of its kind in Arabia—was complete and ready to receive its first patients. After the formal dedication, Sam joined in the singing of a new hymn written for the occasion. “Accept this building, gracious Lord, / No temple though it be; / We raise it for our suffering poor / And so, good Lord, for Thee.”
Soon the new hospital was filled with activity. Not only were more patients than ever coming for treatment, but new workers were arriving to help. Elizabeth DePree, a nurse and the first single woman recruit in the Arabian Mission, worked alongside Doctors Sharon and Marion Thoms, busily treating patients. James Moerdyk from Drenthe, Michigan, who had a gift for business administration, helped with hospital management. Later Jane Scardefield arrived to help with the mission’s outreach in Bahrain, particularly among the women and children.
With things at the new hospital running fairly smoothly, Sam turned his attention back to organizing the conference for missionaries working among Muslim populations. He corresponded with Dr. H. U. Weitbracht of the Church Missionary Society in Lahore, India, whom he had met at the conference in Madras. As the two corresponded, the outline of the new conference came into focus. It would be held in Cairo, Egypt, between April 4 and 9, 1906, and Sam would serve as the chairman of the organizing committee. A number of smaller committees were formed to oversee various aspects of the conference agenda and make sure that as many missionaries as possible were invited.
With the active planning under way for the Cairo Conference, as it was being called, Sam set out to write a book on the Muslim view of the character of God as seen through the Koran and Muslim tradition. He titled the book The Moslem Doctrine of God, which he hoped to have published in time for the conference in Cairo.
In late August 1903, as Sam was working out more details of the planned Cairo Conference, word reached him that his brother Fred had died following a short illness. The news seemed almost unbelievable. When Sam had last seen him, Fred was healthy and fit, and now he was dead. Sam wished he could be at the funeral, but he knew that was impossible. He prayed for Fred’s wife and children and wrote letters to comfort them in their loss.
More family deaths, ones that were much closer to home, were to follow. In June 1904 as Sam managed the work of the mission in Bahrain, worked on planning the Cairo Conference, and wrote chapter after chapter of his new book, a typhoid epidemic swept through the island. Many of the residents of Bahrain died as a result, but the Zwemer family remained healthy. But just when the danger from the epidemic seemed to have passed, two of Sam’s daughters, seven-year-old Katharine and four-year-old Ruth, fell ill with a fever. Despite the best medical care the hospital could offer, it was not enough. On July 7, 1904, Ruth died. A week later Katharine also died. Before her death, Katharine had asked her parents to sing her favorite hymn, “Thou Art Coming, O My Savior,” for her. Together Sam and Amy sang:
Thou art coming, O, my Saviour!
