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Chapter 5
AT
ZION ORPHANAGE
One of the
commendable missionary activities in Anatolia was the establishment of
orphanages for children from Christian backgrounds. Several organizations
started orphanages that brought hope and direction to children who would
have had no bright prospect for their bereft lives. Many children reared in
these institutions became useful people in their communities and elsewhere.
The town of Zinjidere was also targeted for the building of an orphanage by
Swiss and Swedish missionaries. Its founder was Miss Maria Anna Gerber, a
determined Swiss woman. She was born in 1858, in Tramelan, in the Canton of
Bern, one of twelve children in the family. Being an ambitious girl she
left her father’s farm to study nursing and midwifery. Following her
training in Switzerland she went to the United States to attend Moody Bible
Institute in Chicago. After graduation, she joined D. L. Moody’s
evangelistic team as a soloist. Some time later she heard about the
oppression of the Armenians in Asia Minor and that there were orphan
children everywhere. After several waves of Armenian massacres Maria felt
the compunction to assist these oppressed people in Anatolia. She persuaded
another student, Miss Rose Lambert, to accompany her. They were not
associated with any missionary organization; she belonged to a Mennonite
denomination. As the common saying goes, ‘They went out on faith.’
In 1898, they
disembarked at the port of Mersin. This was three years after the first
massacre of the Armenians which had been organized under the harsh rule of
Emperor Abdul Hamid II. Their destination was Hajin in Cilicia. This very
poor Armenian city of thirty thousand people had attracted many refugees,
remnants of the 1895 massacre. More than two thousand were widows. Being
the center of Armenian nationalism, the population had already sustained
several blows and more were in the making. Maria and Rose became the Lord’s
angels to thousands of bereaved and destitute people. Their hearts grieved
as they were compelled to send away many widows and orphans because of lack
of accommodation. Many pled to be taken in, but there was no room for
them. Both women and children were falling dead in front of their eyes.
Maria tried very hard to feed them and at the same time present to them
Christ’s message of salvation and comfort. She tried to create jobs for
them. She came to be known as the mother of many orphans. God used Maria
in a spiritual awakening in the midst of overwhelmingly grim and sad
circumstances in Hajin. In 1902 her health broke. She left the work in
Rose Lambert’s hands and went to the United States to recover.
A year later, at her
return, Maria moved on to Konya (Iconium) with the intention of starting an
orphanage in that large city. She gathered abandoned orphan boys who if left
alone would have had very bleak futures. She placed them with Christian
families who had room and paid all their expenses. The number of orphan
boys in homes quickly grew. Her application to start an orphanage in Konya
was sternly rejected by Abdul Hamid’s government, a great disappointment to
her. During this time, a Swiss lady sent her two Swiss francs, encouraging
her to start an orphanage. This gift she considered a sign from God to
proceed elsewhere with her desire.
She left Konya and
moved to Zinjidere, the focal point of our story. She bought a two-acre
piece of land on which she could build. With the Lord’s guidance, she drew
the plan for four buildings. The time came to find building stone. The
locals told her that all the stone in that area was unsuitable as it was
soft. But one day as she was walking around, she saw a piece of granite on
the ground. She called one of the townsmen and asked him to dig right at
that place. To everyone’s amazement, the poor man struck a bed of granite
about five feet deep! This was God’s provision. A few days later, Miss
Gerber took some sticks for marking out where the walls of the first house
should stand. Poor men were employed to dig. Amazingly, there was a
straight, natural foundation where she had placed the sticks for the
building! So they had no expense for the foundation work. She gave her
heavenly Father the glory for preparing it for them. Through this building
project, ample work was provided for the unemployed in the town. Help
started pouring in from other countries. It was after one of the waves of
massacres that they started building. This home became the refuge for
hundreds of poor, where they were kept from starvation. Zinjidere was the
perfect place for an orphanage, having a vast Christian community, favorable
climate, ample water, in a location removed from the brewing unrest in the
country.
She had a wide circle
of Christian friends in many lands that assisted her ministry through prayer
and gifts. The German Mennonites were quite well off in the then-Czarist
Russia. They owned farmlands from which they realized high profits from
their crops. A good portion of her needs were met by these
fellow-Mennonites. Looking back on those days, we can see how radically
times and conditions have changed!
One of the persons
who offered volunteer service for the building project was Hampartsum
Pambukian, Haralambos’ old friend from Tarsus. A brother in Christ, Kevork
Toumaian came along to assist him. Hampartsum installed all the plumbing.
Others joined them in putting up the four buildings. God so provided that an
unusual home for many orphan boys was built. The orphanage was happily
completed in 1908 and began operating a year later after all the red tape
was completed.
Maria was a
remarkable woman. She was in full charge. She looked after the spiritual
ministry as well as the administrative duties — a hard task for any
foreigner, but especially for a woman! She seemed always to be able to
tackle problems and cope with difficult situations with a cool head.
However, the pressures finally compelled her to look for a capable director
to manage the affairs of the orphanage. At the inception of building the
orphanage Haralambos was involved in securing governmental approval and when
the orphanage opened, Miss Gerber asked him to become the director.
A woman of
spiritual insight, Maria Gerber always sought single-hearted men and women
who would not waver from their call. She confided to Aneta that the reason
she sought her services was her conviction that Aneta would be attached to
her task and not pursue marriage! Maria was a very industrious person, a
good organizer. She took in a few young girls to work for her without pay.
“We’re doing everything for Jesus,” she would say.
Along with
accommodating two hundred and fifteen lively orphan boys, the well-known
center in Zinjidere became a hub of spiritual activity. Besides the actual
caring for these orphans, a continuous flow of traveling evangelists passed
through to preach to the boys. Rose Lambert, who in the meantime continued
working in Hajin, was effective in the same way. God used these two women in
two places of Asia Minor as his devoted servants. They served thousands of
bereaved and destitute people, saving many lives.
The boys in the
orphanage were Armenians and Greeks from several parts of Anatolia. Twelve
male teachers and Aneta as the only woman, taught in the school. As a
bashful novice she needed much training. Several widows worked in the
kitchen.
Two boys had come
from the back country with no concept of what constituted good manners.
Aneta was given a class where many of the boys were from the same
background. Cosma, twelve years old, and Lazarus ten, were shepherds. Their
language was neither Turkish nor Greek, but an incomprehensible village
dialect. She tried hard to make sense out of their strange babbling!
Day after day Aneta
struggled to impart to the boys a measure of knowledge. But their insistence
on speaking their unintelligible dialect made her task insurmountable. All
efforts to impress on them the benefits of speaking ordinary Greek or
Turkish fell on deaf ears. They reasoned with her that she should learn
their language instead!
Little progress was
made. One day during class they started intonating Greek Orthodox Church
chants in their dialect. The other boys laughed, but they were not dismayed.
They carried on, asking Aneta to join them. When she said she was unfamiliar
with these chants, they retorted, “What kind of a teacher are you with such
a crying lack of knowledge?” To think that she was unaware of church chants
in their beautiful language was insulting to them. “If you refuse to learn
our language we will ignore your teaching,” they threatened.
That initial year
at the orphanage school was on-the-spot training. Aneta’s inefficiency as a
teacher became clear as she struggled to cope with all the challenges in the
classroom. She prayed for guidance. Patience toward these wounded boys
became her daily aim. After all, they were entrusted to her care; they were
her responsibility. So she did not give in to the temptations she was
facing. When the school decided to expel Cosma for his unruly conduct, it
was through her intervention that he didn’t get kicked out. In the end, both
he and his friend Lazarus made good progress and were kept from returning to
the mountains as illiterate shepherds.
During this period
a respectable distance was kept between the principal and Aneta. Being an
eligible young man he was the object of attention of a number of girls in
town. Aneta and Haralambos had had a few exchanges of letters prior to his
assuming this task. Throughout her whole tenure in the orphanage they had
only one private conversation. At the end of the year Aneta turned in her
resignation. She was going to start teaching at the American school. Miss
Gerber was unhappy about her decision, but Aneta felt she should move on.
The orphanage was a
great blessing to the many homeless boys, but alas, it was not going to
operate for very long. In less than ten years the government took it over
converting it into an army barracks. This was a crushing blow. What
happened to the orphans? Thank God for the Near East Relief which came to
Turkey at the time of the Armenian massacres. They took care of the boys by
sending them to Greece. Aneta’s sister Elizabeth, who was a nurse,
accompanied them.
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