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NEGLECTED ARABIA
13
Kuwait and the Tercentenary
Rev. Edwin E. Calverley, Ph.D.
T HE three hundred years of the Reformed Church in America
speak hope to the sixteen-year-old Mission station in Kuwait.
From the first the Church has maintained and grown in America
and from the first the Mission has increased its work and its in
fluence in Kuwait. The process will continue in both places through the
coming years. This paper is to indicate some of the expected advances
in Kuwait.
; There is now no church in Kuwait. Our services are held in the
home of one of the missionaries. On Sunday mornings the room is
crowded, and the worship is perforce informal and without comfort.
Only a few of our Arab and Persian friends may we invite to worship
| wj[h us and when women patients staying in the hospital come, the only
i
i V
UK. CALVERLEY PREACHING AT THE SCNDAY AFTERNOON SERVICE FOR
MOSLEMS
place for them is in the hall or behind a screen in a corner of the room.
Our first need is a church building where wc may conduct our public
•orship of God with the dignity and reverence that the full order of
icrvicc in our liturgy makes possible. Such a building will enable us not
uily to perform our worship in surroundings most helpful to ourselves
Urt will give us the opportunity we desire to invite any^Moslem friends,
patients or passersby to observe and share in a service of worship in
I place set apart for prayer. Christianity in Kuwait will receive in
creased respect from the Moslems when a church gives its testimony to
Christ among the half hundred mosques of the town.
Uut our church building will provide not only a place for the formal
lad orderly worship to which the Moslem is accustomed and which he
"A