After Persia; Iran and Iraq

Following the murder of Bachimont, the female staff of LOMS retreated to Tabriz, a major city to the north. It was not until 1924 that work resumed in Mahabad, under the direction of Dr. Herman Schalk of Danzig, Germany. The hospital flourished.

In 1925, Miss Martha Dahl joined Mr and Mrs Schalk, Miss Gudhart, Miss Fossum and Miss Schonhood.

A new epoch began for LOMS with the arrival of Rev. and Mrs. Henry Mueller on April 17, 1929.

Mueller, like his predecessors, was a gifted linguist who loved the Kurdish people. His letters reveal his pleasure in discussing matters of faith with his neighbors:

"Last winter and spring we were very largely confined to activities in the city, consisting of personal visiting among the merchants in the bazaar and with their friends in their houses at night. In turn I had more callers and visitors last winter than ever before.

It is so much more interesting now and fascinating to know the great satisfaction in being able to sit with these mountain people, to converse quietly and confidentially, to know them heart to heart, and not as the outside world loves to brand them as a cruel and fierce people.

Some perhaps are such, but is vastly more general to find in all that universal craving, the hunger that centuries of religion have failed to still, for that comforting message of restless souls which only the good news can give...

They are drawn by the wonderful parables so numerous in our Bible. It's the message, the good news, that ever elicits attention.

Those itinerant villagers fully grasped what many of the most learned teachers of religion cannot understand. 'Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.' St. Paul says: 'The natural man receiveeth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him.' St. James asks: 'Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, etc.?' Jesus quotes from Isaiah: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.'

In 1935 the Persian government established a military zone that included Soujboulak. They asked all foreigners to leave the area. Looking the situation over carefully, the mission’s leaders decided to cross the line into Iraq, settling at Arbil, 125 miles west of Mosul in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The mission maintained its base in Arbil until 1959, when the Iraq government ordered all foreigners out of Kurdistan.

In the same year, Dr. and Mrs. Richard Gardiner began exploring Iran to identify a suitable location for a hospital. This was fulfilled in 1962 with the purchase of property in Gorveh.

The Gardiners maintained the work at Gorveh until 1979, when the Iranian Revolution forced its closure.

From 1980 until 1989, LOMS assisted work in Bangledesh pending reopening of the Kurdish field in 1991 during the First Persian Gulf War.