Page 9 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

from chatting with the Scudders that Christmas in Kuwait

and from reading the papers and notes they loaned me was

enough to whet my appetite for more. Over the next few years

I interviewed as man}'- as I could of the missionaries still

working in the Gulf, visited the other two remaining mission

stations in Bahrain and Muscat and discussed the Mission’s his­

tory and prospects v/ith Mrs,, .Rose Uykerk, the Mission’s Secre­

tary in Bahrain.

There were two histories of the Mission in existence,

one a somewhat bland, hut useful compendium of information

compiled by two missionaries in the 1920’s (History of the

Arabian Mission by Rev. A.D. Mason and Rev. P.J. Barny, Hew

York: 1926), and the other a highly partisan, unpublished

manuscript written by another missionary in the 1950’s to
:
update the Mason and Barnv work (History of the Arabian Mis­
I

sion. 1926-1957 by Dorothy Yan Ess). But although there was i
<&- i
a lack of good analvrtical work on the Mission, there was a
i
wealth of archival material available in the form of mission­

aries’ letters and reports from the field, dating from 1889.

Upon ny return to the United States in 1974* I visited the i

Archives of the Reformed Church in America at the Hew Brunswick

Theological Seminary to studjr these reports and to look at the

memoirs that were now in print. The follow-
numerous missionarj^

ing study of Protestant missionary activitjr in the Arabian

Gulf from 1889 to 1973 is, therefore, a product of personal

experience, interviews, and archival research. It is presented

v