It is an interesting sight to see the Thursday afternoon Women's meeting
in the house of Mrs. Calhoun in Abeih, and to know that a large part of
that company of bright, intelligent and tidily dressed young native
women, who listen so intently to the Bible lesson, and join so heartily
in singing the sweet songs of Zion, were trained up either in her own
family, or under her own especial influence. By means of her own example
in the training of her children, she has taught the women of Abeih, and
through them multitudes of women in other villages, the true Christian
modes of family government and discipline, and introduced to their
notice and practice many of those little conveniences and habits in the
training of children, whose influence will be felt for many
generations.
When Mr. and Mrs. Bird removed to Deir el Komr in 1855, they not only
opened a large school for the education of girls, with Sada Haleby, one
of Dr. De Forest's pupils, as teacher, but received into their own
family three young girls, named Luciya, Sikkar and Zihry, all of whom
entered upon spheres of usefulness. Zihry became a teacher, in Deir el
Komr, and has continued to teach until the present time. She was at one
time connected with the Beirut Female Seminary, and is now teaching in
the Institution of Mrs. Shrimpton, under the auspices of the British
Syrian Schools.
Luciya taught in Deir el Komr until the school was overwhelmed in the
fires and blood of the Massacre year, 1860.
In 1862 she taught in the Sidon School, and afterwards married the Rev.
Sulleba Jerwan, the first native pastor in Hums. In that great city, and
amid the growing interest of the young Protestant community, she found a
wide and attractive field of labor. She was a young woman of great
gentleness and delicacy of nature, and of strong religious feeling, and
entered upon the work of laboring among the women and girls of Hums,
with exemplary zeal and discretion. She became greatly beloved, and her
Godly example and gentle spirit will never be forgotten.
But at length her labors were abruptly cut short. Consumption, a disease
little known in Syria, but which afterwards cut down her brother and
only sister Sikkar, fastened upon her, and she was obliged, in great
suffering, to leave the raw and windy climate of Hums, for the milder
air of Beirut. Her two brothers being in the employ of Miss Whately in
Cairo, she went, on their invitation, to Egypt, where after a painful
illness, she fell asleep in Jesus. Amid all her sufferings, she
maintained that same gentle and lovely temper of mind, which made her so
greatly beloved by all who knew her.
She has rested from her labors, and her works do follow her. Not long
after her sister Sikkar, who had also been trained in Mrs. Bird's
family, died in her native village Ain Zehalteh.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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