Page:Kvartalshilsen (Kvinnelige misjonsarbeidere). 1920 Vol. 13 nr. 1.pdf/3

 

Dear K. M. A. friends in Norway, please pray for the Armenian people who are in great spiritual and physical distress and need our prayers more than any other people in the world. There is a danger that the last remnant will perish in boundless wailing and suffering. Isa 62,6.

Miss K. M. Petersen, who returned from Armenia in mid-October, writes in a letter to me:

Political conditions are still difficult, and it is not decided who will have the land. The Turks in Sivas, Malatia and Harpoot say that they will resist to the end if the English are to come, as they themselves will retain the land and will not hand it over to the Armenians. They are even threatening a massacre on the small remnant left, and they will have enough time and power to do so if they should hear that the great power lands are approaching. Still the conditions in the inner land are very uncertain and difficult. The Turks do not care about any command from Constantinople but do as they please. They do not give the Armenians back their property but threaten and torment them.

You all probably remember our badvelli (minister) Krikor Stephanian, who during all the years I was in Musch faithfully assisted me in my work. Both he and his wife were deported and killed in the summer of 1915; but their only daughter Araxi was then at the American College of Harvoot to be educated as a teacher, and it became her rescue. When I spoke to her in Mesereh, she was inconsolable over the loss of her dear parents and all her relatives. Later, she fled to Russia when conditions in Harpoot became very uncertain. Since her escape I have heard nothing from her and was afraid that she too had perished; but two weeks ago, I received a long letter from her from Constantinople, stating that, with the help of the Persians, she fled to the Caucasus. For almost 3 years she worked as a nurse at one of the Red Cross hospitals in Russia and, after the truce, moved to Constantinople, from where she will travel to America to study at one of the universities there. You will surely be as pleased as me to hear that she is saved and in safety and pray for this young, lonely girl who, after all she has gone through, feels restless and unhappy. Araxi is very similar to her father. She is a quiet and smart girl and was one of our best students at the school and at the Sunday school in Musch.

She tells me that one of our dear teachers, Margarid, who also fled to the Caucasus, now resides in Tiflis and helps in an Armenian orphanage there. That was also a great pleasure for me.

Also, from our pastor Benjamin Bedrossian, I recently received a letter. He served for several years as a priest and teacher in the village of Havadorig, near Musch, and later some years as an evangelist in the great Musch district; but for the last few years he has resided in Constantinople, where he is employed by the Americans as a priest and teacher in an Armenian village near Constantinople. 