We were from time to time encouraged by tokens of a work of God's Spirit
in their hearts. Melita Carabet was the first to indulge a hope in
Christ, and united with the Church in Abeih. Salome united in Beirut;
Hanne in Hasbeiya, where her brother, Rev. John Wortabet, was pastor.
Sada was received by Mr. Calhoun at Abeih, soon after Mr. Whiting's
death, and Rufka in later years united with the United Presbyterian
Church in Alexandria, Egypt. I have ever thought these girls were under
great obligations to the American Churches and the American Mission, who
for so many years supported and instructed them, and I have ever tried
to impress upon them a sense of their obligation to impart to others of
their countrywomen what they had received. I believe as early as 1836,
they began assisting me in the Moslem school for girls in Jerusalem, in
which they continued to assist Miss Tilden until the school was given
up.
Soon after our removal to Abeih, October, 1844, we established a
day-school for girls in the village on the Mission premises, of which
Salome and Hanne had the entire charge under my superintendence. When
the Station at Mosul was established, Salome was appointed by the
Mission to assist Mrs. Williams in her work among the women, in which
work she continued until her marriage with Rev. John Wortabet. Melita
was afterwards appointed by the Mission to the Aleppo Station to assist
Mrs. Eddy and Mrs. Ford in the work, and so they were employed at
various stations in the work of teaching, until I left the Mission. I
have kept up a continual correspondence with them, and have learned from
others to my joy, that they were doing the work for which I had trained
them."
The above deeply interesting letter from Mrs. Whiting is enough in
itself to show what an amount of patient Christian labor was expended
through a course of many years, in the education of the five young
Syrian maidens who were entrusted in the providence of God to her care.
I have been personally acquainted with four of them for seventeen years,
and can testify, as can many others, of the good use they have made of
their high opportunities. The amount of good they have accomplished as
teachers, in Abeih, Jerusalem, Deir el Komr, Hasbeiya, Tripoli, Aleppo,
Mosul, Alexandria, Cairo, Melbourne, (Australia,) and in the Mission
Female Seminary and the Prussian Deaconesses' Institute in Beirut, will
never be known until all things are revealed. I have received letters
from several of them, which I will give in their own language, as they
are written in English. The first is from Salome, now the wife of the
Rev. Prof. John Wortabet, M.D., of the Syrian Protestant College in
Beirut.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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