Page 42 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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some local support for the schools, like the gift of a science

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laboratory in Basrah to the School of High Hope in 1927

some grateful Iraqi merchants, But the amount of local sup-

port was not sufficient to keep up the ambitious program that

had been launched in the 1920’s, The Kuwait and Bahrain
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boys' schools were closed in 1936, The Muscat day school

Qv and the girls’ schools in Kuwait and Baghdad could also no

longer be supported, By 1943 Rev, Gerrit J, Pennings sadly

relates that only the large boys' school in Basrah (the School

of High Hope) and two small girls’ schools in Basrah and
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Bahrain had survived the Depression, Hor was the decrease

in financial support a temporary problem that was to end with

the end of the Depression, Rather it was just a sign of a

growing malaise and indifference in the West to missionary

work that was to outlast the Depression and the War and con­

tinue on into the present day. Writing the annual mission

report in the Spring of 1955, Mrs, Ida P. Storm was to sum­

marize somewhat bitterly, "Thus ends the report of the Arabian

Mission, presenting a picture of magnificent opportunities

and challenging obstacles, and everywhere contacts lost be­

cause of lack of money, lack of staff, lack of facilities and
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equipment.

The Arabian Mission struggled on with increasingly

little financial support from America, feeling itself more

and more isolated from its home bases and yet still desperately

needed in the Gulf, Although its school enrollments had been

cut back from their high point in the mid-thirties, there