One of my last journeys with Yousef Rahhal was to Aleppo, Syria, in the winter of 1937. Before he returned to the United States, we also traveled to Palestine. There we visited the cities of Haifa and Jerusalem, as well as villages in the country. One of our contacts was with Ibrahim Shehadi, with whom I had earlier become acquainted through correspondence. Ibrahim had progressed in Bible knowledge to the point that during our visit, he began sharing with us in the house-to-house ministry.​—Acts 20:20.

I was also eager to meet Professor Khalil Kobrossi, a staunch Catholic who had been studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses through correspondence. How had he obtained the address of the Witnesses in Lebanon? Well, at a store in Haifa, the shopkeeper had wrapped some of Khalil’s groceries in paper torn from one of the publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses. That paper had our address on it. We had a fine visit together, and later, in 1939, he came to Tripoli to be baptized.

By the time Brother Lagakos died in 1943, the Witnesses had carried spiritual light to most of the cities and villages of Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. At times, about 30 of us started out by car or bus as early as 3:00 a.m. in order to reach remote areas.

In the 1940’s, Ibrahim Atiyeh translated The Watchtower into Arabic. Afterward, I would make four handwritten copies of the magazine and send them to Witnesses in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt.