Thou art coming, O, my King!
In Thy beauty all-resplendent,
In Thy glory all-transcendent;
Well may we rejoice and sing!
Coming! in the opening east,
Herald brightness slowly swells!
Coming! O, my glorious Priest,
Hear we not Thy golden bells?
The death of their two daughters was a punishing blow to Sam and Amy. Their beautiful girls were gone. The two girls were buried in the same grave and on the headstone were inscribed the words, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive riches.”
Following the deaths of Katharine and Ruth, Sam found it difficult to continue his work without the sound of the girls’ laughter in the air. Sometimes he was overcome with deep sadness. At other times their memory spurred him on to work even harder to save the lives of the other young children who came to the hospital for treatment.
In March 1905, eight months after the deaths of Ruth and Katharine, Sam and Amy and their two surviving children, Bessie and Raymund, set off for furlough. As they sailed back to the United States, Sam realized that more than six years had passed since their previous furlough. So much had happened in that time. The Arabian Mission had grown, with sixteen missionaries now serving at three mission station and plans in the works to open a new mission station in Kuwait. Not only that, the Mason Memorial Hospital was now open and ministering to the medical needs of the residents of Bahrain and beyond.
All this success had come at a cost, and for the Zwemers that cost had been the deaths of Ruth and Katharine. But even after that tragedy, God had been faithful, and Amy was pregnant once again. Another child would be born while they were on furlough. Then there was the upcoming Cairo Conference the following year. Sam was certain this would be a turning point in outreach and missionary work among Muslim people.
When they reached the United States, Sam and Amy headed to Michigan to stay with Sam’s father and sister. Several weeks after arriving home, Sam got word in Michigan that Dr. Marion Thoms had died on April 25, 1905. She and her husband had been running the hospital in Bahrain. Marion’s death deeply saddened both Sam and Amy. During the years they had worked together in Bahrain, the Thomses had become good friends as well as faithful coworkers. Sam and Amy wrote a tribute to Marion which was published in the Arabian Mission newsletter.
She was not merely a missionary’s wife, but herself a heroic and strong and self-denying missionary. Her triumphant deathbed showed that her thoughts even then were not only for her own, but for dark Arabia. Among her last words was the message: ‘Have them send more missionaries for the work and to take the place of those [who] fall by the way.’ Everyone who knew Mrs. Thoms will remember her thorough conscientiousness and her heroic devotion. She was often ready at the call of duty and often, alas, worked above her strength for her Arabian sisters. They knew it, and loved her. Her skill and patience as a physician, her faithfulness in language study, her self-effacement and humility, her power in prayer for others, and her cheerfulness—they all come up before us as we read of her death.
The good news was that another doctor, Arthur Bennett, along with his wife, was now stationed at the hospital in Bahrain. He was able to assist Sharon Thoms as he carried on the medical care at the hospital.
Sam and Amy also received more good news from Arabia. On September 22, 1905, Jim Cantine and Elizabeth DePree were married in Landour, India. Following the couple’s return to Arabia, Elizabeth moved from Bahrain to Muscat, where Jim was still overseeing the mission station and running the Freed Slaves School.
Amy gave birth to another child in Michigan, a daughter whom she and Sam named Amy Ruth Zwemer, after her mother and deceased sister.
Throughout 1905 Sam kept busy traveling and speaking in churches around the United States. He was seeking to raise money to support the ongoing work of the Arabian Mission and challenging people with the need for more missionaries to win Muslims to Christ. While he was doing all this, Sam organized the Cairo Conference for the following year. He was arranging for a number of prominent missionaries to write papers on various issues related to mission work among Muslims. The papers would then be presented at the conference. Sam had almost completed The Moslem Doctrine of God, still hoping it would be published by the time the conference started.
In March 1906, a year after going on furlough to the United States, Sam set out for Egypt and the Cairo Conference. The conference was held in a large, stately house in the center of Cairo. At the opening of the conference, sixty-two delegates were representing twenty-nine different mission societies. Another sixty official visitors were present. The conference opened on April 4 with an address by Dr. Henry Jessup, who had encouraged and given Sam sound advice when he first arrived in Beirut sixteen years before. Later in the day Sam presented a paper to the conference entitled Statistical Surveys of the Mohammedan World. As chairman of the Cairo Conference, Sam was also kept busy chairing meetings over the next several days. At these meetings, missionaries working in Muslim communities in Africa, India, Arabia, Southeast Asia, and even Bulgaria presented their prepared papers on a range of topics related to missionary work among Muslims.
By the time the conference came to a close on Monday, April 9, the delegates all agreed that their time together had been valuable, so much so that they voted to convene another meeting in five years in Lucknow, India.
At the end of the Cairo Conference, Sam headed back to the United States delighted and excited. He was delighted that all the organizing had come together to create a well-run and helpful conference, and he was excited about the impact the conference would have on future missionary work among Muslims.
Chapter 16
A Wider Ministry
Back with Amy and his family in the United States, Sam began writing another book, this one to be called Islam, A Challenge to Faith. The book would summarize all Sam had learned during the Cairo Conference. As he wrote, Sam was driven by the vision of hundreds of young Christians reading the book and setting out as missionaries to Muslims.
Although he longed to be back in Bahrain, Sam felt a pressing need to get out the message about Muslim evangelism and recruit more missionaries for the field. As it happened, he was presented with two opportunities to do just that. The first opportunity came when Dr. Fennel Turner, head of the Student Volunteer Movement in the United States, contacted Sam and offered him the position of traveling secretary. The position would entail his visiting college and university campuses and speaking at student conferences to educate, inspire, and recruit students to the mission field. The second opportunity came from the Reformed Church. The mission board wanted Sam to become Field Secretary for the Reformed Church Board of Foreign Missions.
Both offers were attractive to Sam. They both involved educating Christians about missions and would provide Sam ample opportunity to tell them about the needs of the Muslim world. Sam talked to Amy about the two offers and prayed earnestly about which one he should accept. Because he could not decide between the two, Sam, who was now forty years old, decided that he was still energetic enough to accept both positions. It would be hard work, he knew, but he was up for the challenge. An arrangement was worked out between the two organizations. The Reformed Church mission board agreed to continue paying Sam his missionary salary, and the Student Volunteer Movement would pay his traveling expenses.
In late 1907, the Zwemer moved from the Holland, Michigan, area to Mount Vernon, New York, to be near the headquarters of the two organizations Sam had agreed to work for. Shortly before they left, Amy gave birth to another daughter, whom they named Mary Moffatt Zwemer after the wife of David Livingstone, the famous missionary to Africa. Once they had settled into their new living quarters, Sam began his new job while Amy stayed home and tended to their four children—Bessie, age eight; Raymund, age five; Amy, age two; and newborn Mary.
The first places Sam visited as traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement were Yale University, Auburn University, and the University of Virginia. Sam then began systematically visiting other universities and seminaries on the East Coast. When he was advertised as the speaker at various rallies and lectures, Sam placed the letters FRGS (Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society) after his name. After his lectures, many of those who came to hear him speak said they had done so because of his affiliation with the Royal Geographic Society. Sam smiled when he heard this and thought back to his visit to Sana’a, Yemen, sixteen years before. After that visit, on the boat back to Aden, several British officials had encouraged Sam to apply for membership to the Royal Geographic Society. Sam was glad he had followed their advice.
From colleges and seminaries on the East Coast, Sam went on to visit campuses in Oklahoma and Colorado. He also traveled to Europe to attend the Baslow Student Conference in England. And of course, he also kept busy as Field Secretary for the Reformed Church Board of Foreign Missions, speaking about missions in Reformed churches all over the country.
Whenever he traveled, whether by train or by ship, Sam used the time to write. He was pleased when Islam, a Challenge to Faith was published in 1907. He followed the book with two more: The Unoccupied Mission Fields of Africa and Asia and The Moslem Christ, which traced the way Muslims and the Koran viewed Jesus. After these were published, he kept on writing.
On March 17, 1910, while still busily traveling the country and speaking at churches and on college campuses, Sam received word that his father had died at age eighty-seven. Sam and Amy and the children hurriedly made their way to Holland, Michigan, for his funeral, at which Sam spoke. As he stood in the Pilgrim’s Home Cemetery in Graafschap and watched his father’s coffin being lowered into the grave, Sam thought about his father’s great influence. Adriaan had instilled in him—as he had in all his children—a deep-rooted Christian faith that sustained and guided all that Sam did. For that legacy Sam was grateful.
In May 1910, Sam’s twin appointments with the Student Volunteer Movement and the Reformed Church Board of Foreign Missions came to an end. Sam thanked God for the opportunity he’d had to inspire thousands of young people to consider the call to missionary service. He was also thankful for those who had stepped forward to take up that call. One of them was William Borden at Yale University. William was a wealthy young man and heir to the Borden Dairy fortune. He declared his intention to Sam to work among the Muslims of China. Another was Paul Harrison, a medical student at Johns Hopkins University. Paul told Sam he wanted to serve on the most difficult mission field in the world. Once Sam described to him the challenges of Arabia, Paul volunteered to serve with the Arabian Mission.
In the fall of 1910, the Zwemer family headed back to Bahrain. By now their daughter Bessie was eleven and Raymund was nine. After much prayer, Sam and Amy made the painful decision to leave their two oldest children behind with friends in Chicago so that they could complete their education in the United States. On September 10, 1910, Sam and Amy and their two young daughters, Amy Ruth and Mary, sailed from New York City aboard the liner König Albert. They had been away from Bahrain for five years.
After a long voyage, the Zwemers arrived in Bahrain on October 24. It felt good to be back. When Sam had left for furlough in 1905, sixteen missionaries had been serving with the Arabian Mission. Now the mission had twenty-nine missionaries, and in every mission station throughout Arabia the ministry was growing. Sam was amazed at how the ministry in Bahrain had developed in his absence. The hospital was still as busy as ever treating patients. Two new mission houses that accommodated eight missionaries had been constructed. In addition, there was a new two-story building with a chapel upstairs and a school for children downstairs. Boys and girls were taught in separate classes, where they learned Arabic, English, mathematics, geography, and science. Trees and gardens dotted the property, providing welcome shade in the heat of the day. To Sam it was like a Christian oasis in the midst of a physically and spiritually dry and barren land.
