Missionary Assignments

The 16th class of Gilead was made up of 120 students from all parts of the world, including some who had suffered in Nazi concentration camps. Since our class was taught Spanish, we expected to be assigned to some Spanish-speaking country in South America. Imagine our surprise on graduation day to learn that Douglas was assigned to Japan and Anne and I to Syria. So we girls had to learn Arabic, and this remained true even when our assignment was changed to Lebanon. While waiting for our visas, we received Arabic lessons twice a week from George Shakashiri, the Watch Tower Society’s typesetter for the Arabic Watchtower.

How exciting it was to be going to a Bible land that we had studied about in class! Keith and Joyce Chew, Edna Stackhouse, Olive Turner, Doreen Warburton, and Doris Wood accompanied us there. What a happy missionary family we became! A local Witness visited our missionary home to assist us further with the language. During our daily instruction period, we would practice a brief presentation, after which we would go out and use it in our preaching work.

We spent our first couple of years in Tripoli, where there was an established congregation. Joyce, Edna, Olive, Doreen, Doris, Anne, and I assisted the wives and daughters of local Witnesses to share in meetings as well as in the public ministry. Up until then, our Christian brothers and sisters, following local custom, did not sit together at meetings, and rarely did these Christian sisters share in the ministry from house to house. We needed their assistance with the language in our public preaching, and we encouraged them to share in this work themselves.

Anne and I were next assigned to help the small group of Witnesses in the ancient city of Sidon. Not long afterward, we were asked to return to the capital, Beirut. Seeds of Bible truth had been sown among the Armenian-speaking community there, so we learned that language to help them.

Missionary family in Tripoli, Lebanon, 1951