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Frances Zoeckler interview, 1987 at Women's Association of St. Andrew PC Albuquerque, NM, side 2.
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- speakerThey might give lip service. You might think they were converted. But if the pressure was sufficient,
- speakerthey would backslide and become
- speakerMoslems again.
- speakerAnd that happens. It's very difficult for a person to
- speakergo against all of his family and accept Christianity.
- speakerThe servants that my parents had
- speakerwere. My mother [Mary Dayton Allen Zoeckler] had
- speakera woman who worked as her assistant at the
- speakerhospital when she married my father [George Frederick Zoeckler]. And her daughter
- speakerwho worked for her, when my mother married my
- speakerfather and moved to Malayer, he took these two with her.
- speakerThe younger woman married my father's servant, who
- speakerbecame their cook. So that we were sort of served by a family.
- speakerThey became Christians. And they were they were pillars of the
- speakerchurch in Malayer. But, after
- speakermy parents
- speakerwere transferred to
- speakerHamadan, and the servants decided not to go with them because they
- speakerhad property in Malayer. And after my
- speakerparents' death. And as their children,
- speakerwho were not all, who had not all accepted Christ
- speakermarried into Muslim homes, the pressures on them began to get
- speakerheavier and heavier. There was no social life for them
- speakerbecause there were no other Christians in Malayer. So that their only social
- speakerlife was with Muslims. The two women of the
- speakerfamily did go back to their
- speakerMuslim faith. As one of them said to me, "We don't really believe it, but
- speakerit is the only way we can live here." And yet the town of Malayer
- speakerhad been so affected by the years that my parents were there
- speakerthat friends of ours, who went there
- speakeron an evangelistic trip, or something else, said, "That town is not
- speakerMuslim. It is Christian." Because the whole city
- speakerhad been affected. They were much
- speakermore tolerant than Muslims anywhere else in the country
- speaker. It's hard to know just what influence you have
- speakerin a Muslim country. A person may believe in
- speakerChrist completely, but because of fear will not admit it.
- speakerAnd yet that's happened. And it's happened more than once.
- speakerThe way they begin to behave
- speakermakes it clear to their family, their relatives,
- speakertheir friends that they're no longer Muslims, they're Christians,
- speakerbecause they live differently.
- speakerOne of our most famous Christians, Dr. Sa'eed Khan [Kurdistani, Said Khan] and his brother Kaka
- speakershowed this very well. They lived in the village of
- speakerSan ad Dege. And Dr. Sa'eed Khan was a
- speakervery intelligent, very
- speakerliterate man. Actually he was he and
- speakerhis brother were sons of a village priest. And were
- speakerbeing trained to follow in their father's footsteps.
- speakerAnd Dr. Sa'eed Khan met up with a
- speakerNestorian evangelist who was living in the town and.
- speakerUsing the excuse that he wanted to learn the Syriac
- speakerlanguage of the Nestorians so that he could
- speakerstudy further in with some of their literature.
- speakerHe studied Christianity with this Nestorian.
- speakerHe became, he became a Christian. But he still didn't tell his
- speakerfamily. He still didn't claim his faith,
- speakerbut when he would be sent up to give the call to prayer,
- speakerinstead of saying, "God is great!
- speakerAnd Muhammad is his prophet." He would say, "God is great and God
- speakerforbid that Muhammad be his prophet."
- speakerEveryone was so used to listening the call of prayer that they
- speakernever paid attention to what was said. And eventually,
- speakerbecause of his way of life, this Nestorian
- speakerpastor refused to baptize him because he feared for his own
- speakerlife if he did so.
- speakerSo,
- speakerwhen Dr. Sa'eed Khan found that he was.
- speakerhis friends no longer, knew now that he was Christian because of his behavior, he had to
- speakerflee. His brother his brother Kaka was going to kill him. So he went to the
- speakervineyard and took a cluster of grapes, squeezed
- speakerthe juice into a cup and
- speakerhad his first communion all by himself and, and then he fled
- speakerto the city of Hamadan. Where he was taken in by the
- speakermissionaries, given further education.
- speakerHis brother came after him, dressed in all his
- speakerKurdish regalia and carrying his shot his rifle. He was
- speakergoing to kill his brother. Somehow or other.
- speakerThe missionaries managed to persuade him to, not to
- speakerkill his brother right away, but to come and visit with them and see what he
- speakerwhat it was his brother was believing. He became converted.
- speakerHe was never a scholar that his brother was. His brother went to England and
- speakerbecame a physician, and was physician to the king and various other things in his
- speakerlife. He was a very well educated man. But
- speakerKaka never had that sort of education. but he was one of the finest
- speakerevangelists the Iranian church ever had. He was fearless.
- speakerHe went into. He traveled all over the country by himself.
- speakeron foot usually, preaching the Gospel.
- speakerFleeing when he had to. Going back to Hamadan
- speakerfor supplies and for fellowship
- speakerand then going out again. I remember him as an old man
- speakerso deaf he couldn't hear anything he said to him.
- speakerWith false teeth which he just shoot out to try and scare us or or intrigue
- speakerus kids. My grandmother, who was also deaf, came out to
- speakerIran to visit us for a year. The two of them got along together beautifully. They sat
- speakerchatting. Neither one hearing what the others each thinking the other was a wonderful
- speakerperson.
- speakerWell. Iran, perhaps because of its
- speakerattitude of rebellion against
- speakerthe Arab conquests of the country, was always more lenient towards
- speakerChristians than the neighboring Muslim countries.
- speakerEven though, even there, true Muslims
- speakerwanted to kill their members of their family who became Christians.
- speakerStill they tolerated more. And then under the
- speakerlate regime that is the Pahlavi, the
- speakertwo Pahlavi Kings. Religious freedom was granted to
- speakereverybody. You could. We were allowed to believe what you wanted.
- speakerSo that during that time, the church was able to
- speakergrow. People who had been afraid to come out and say they were
- speakerChristians began to do so.
- speakerThere are many many more inquirers in our evangelistic rooms,
- speakerSo that the church grew and we felt that the time had
- speakercome for the church in Iran
- speakerto do its own evangelistic work.
- speakerTo rule itself and to use
- speakerthe foreign assistance to help build them up, but not to do
- speakertheir basic work. It was at this time we began to have to cut
- speakerback on our hospital work, not because and because the hospital work had been kept
- speakerseparate from the evangelist. Our
- speakerschools had been closed. Many years previously by the government
- speakerbecause. Because they felt
- speakerthey wanted it to be Iranian schools, not just
- speakerforeign-directed schools, the only school we had in the country was a
- speakercommunity school in Tehran, which was for children of foreigners.
- speakerAlthough children of Iranian diplomats often were allowed
- speakerto attend because, traveling from country to country, their
- speakerschooling was quite different from the Iranian schooling. And they could do
- speakerbetter in the community school than they could in the Iranian schools.
- speakerThe church was very reluctant to take on this responsibility
- speakerWe kept trying to make the missions keep going on. The mission kept saying
- speaker"No, you know you've reached the point where it's your responsibility now. You know we're willing to
- speakerhelp you through getting you teachers
- speakerto help build up your. Help your evangelists. Your
- speakerministers. To give you special assistance in
- speakeraudiovisual work and things like that. But, you've got to take the responsibility."
- speakerFinally they agreed to it and took it over. And, I think, they
- speakerwere glad they did once they have done so because they realized that
- speakerthey were freer to do what they wanted, what they felt need to be done.
- speakerThey were freer to use the type of evangelism they felt would be most
- speakereffective, rather than going the way that foreigners had set
- speakerup.
- speakerOur medical work
- speakerfaded out rather gradually. First our Hospital
- speakerin Resoyer was closed when the government made
- speakerall missionaries in that area get out. This was after the Second
- speakerWorld War. The reason was that they wanted to be able to force
- speakerthe Russians out. But there, if they allowed
- speakerour work to continue there even though we were not government connected, the Russians
- speakerwould say, "Well, you let them in, why can't we?" And
- speakerthen we had to
- speakerclose our hospital in Kermanshah.
- speakerThat was a tough time for me because, at the
- speakertime that hospital was closed, I was director of the hospital. And
- speakerthe other hospital that we had to think about,, as to whether it
- speakerwould be closed or not, was the Hamadan hospital, which was very
- speakerclose to my heart because I had known it all my life. At times my mother had been
- speakerdirector of the hospital. And the question was: Which
- speakerhospital should be closed? Our, I'll never
- speakerforget the annual meeting, at which that decision was made. We studied the
- speakerquestion from every angle. From the financial standpoint,
- speakerHamadan hospital was the one that should be closed.
- speakerBecause they had the worst financial status.
- speakerThey needed new building. They
- speakerwere.
- speakerI mean, that there were many things that financially made that hospital the one should be closed.
- speakerBut, we start to think of it from others standpoints.
- speakerThe church was much stronger in
- speakerKermanshah. It didn't need support. And the
- speakeremployment services that Kermanshah hospital gave.
- speakerHamadan was weaker and needed that support.
- speakerKermanshah had better medical other medical facilities than
- speakerHamadan. And eventually it became obvious. that Hamadan
- speakerwas the hospital to be kept open and Kermanshah dlosed. Nobody
- speakerwanted to make the motion.
- speakerFinally it was my job that I make that motion. I hated doing it,
- speakerbut it seems the right thing. When we closed that
- speakerhospital, I was transferred to Resht. And that was quite a change for me.
- speakerKermanshah was at an altitude of four
- speakerthousand feet. Resht was forty feet below sea level.
- speakerKermanshah was dry, sunny,
- speakerwith mountains all around. Resht was
- speakerdown. There were mountains but you could never see them because of the clouds. It was wet,.
- speakerwhereas the Kermanshah area had a rainfall
- speakerabout thirteen inches a year, Resht had rainfall of forty inches a year.
- speakerAnd, It just. Just as
- speakerfar as I was concerned was very depressing. I used to say that we
- speakersaw the sun or the moon once every two weeks. Not both!
- speakerThere were other drawbacks to the Resht area. I didn't understand Kelackee, which
- speakeris the common language spoken there. The director of the
- speakerhospital there was in his first term.
- speakerHe and his wife were the most
- speakerundecided people I have ever met. They would tell you very firmly that this was their
- speakerdecision on something. Twenty four hours later. "Oh, no. We never said that. This is what we want."
- speakerTrying to keep up with them was impossible.
- speakerIt was difficult for me too, particularly, because I had been in Iran so many years. To
- speakerhave someone who'd been there such a short time in the position of telling me what to do.
- speakerAnd knowing that it wasn't always the best thing for. In that
- speakerparticular situation. However I was willing to put up with it
- speakerAnd moved. I went to Resht in September. And in the spring,
- speakerthey decided I should go to Meshed,
- speakerwhich was on the eastern border of Iran. I'd been on the western
- speakerborder in Kermanshah. To substitute for
- speakerDr. Stewart [Stewart, Ashton Tatnall, Sr.] who was going on furlough. Well, it was
- speakerexpected that I would be there only about a month until
- speakerhis replacement arrived, but
- speakerwe had an annual meeting the end of that month. And, I was assigned
- speakerpermanently to Meshed, which was
- speakermuch more like Kermanshah than Resht had been,
- speakerbecause it was up on the plateau again between three
- speakerthousand, four thousand feet altitude. And dry and
- speakersunny all the time. My
- speakersurprise. One thing that really surprised me when I went to
- speakerMeshed, which is one of the holy cities
- speakerof Iran. There are two holy cities, Meshed and Qom, in Iran.
- speakerAnd they're are about equal in importance to, so that there are
- speakeralways pilgrims there. But one of the things that surprised me was
- speakerwhen I found that priests coming to our hospital for treatment
- speakeroften would ask to see me, rather than one of the men doctors,
- speakerand was a prejudice against women that there was an Iran. That really
- speakersurprised me. But I realized it was because I was the only doctor on the
- speakerstaff who spoke Persian fluently. The, we had two other
- speakerdoctors on staff, Dr. Huntwork [Huntwork, Bruce Leslie] , who was in his first term and was still a
- speakerlanguage student. And a German doctor, who spoke the most
- speakerweird form of Persian I have ever heard. It was a jumble of
- speakerEnglish Persian and German.
- speakerOur medical work has always had nursing schools with it.
- speakerAt times, we have
- speakertaken girls who had no education at all and
- speakertrain trained them to be fairly good nurses. Matter of fact I have come to the
- speakerconclusion that the amount of education one has is not the
- speakerdetermining factor of whether a person is a good nurse or not. It's the
- speakerdedication to helping others. And their willingness to learn what they
- speakercan do to help. That's important. And we never had
- speakergirls with more than a ninth grade education. And yet we had
- speakersome very very fine nurses. I wouldn't hesitate to put in
- speakera hospital in this country, providing they don't have to deal with the
- speakercomplicated equipment that we now days have. But up until we got
- speakerthe very sophisticated medical equipment that we have in this
- speakercountry, any one of our nurses would have made a very good nurse here
- speakerOur American nurses were very dedicated. We had one nurse,
- speakerWilma Pease [Pease,Wilma Elizabeth] . She was a little tiny person. I don't think she was more than about
- speakerfive foot three. Slender, but she was a dynamo.
- speakerShe always carried around with her a little basket, which had a hammer, a pair of
- speakerpliers. I don't know what all else she had. If she saw a nail sticking up a chair,
- speakerBang!. She saw something. If she saw a light bulb that was out.
- speakerIn went a new one. She kept
- speakereverything in operating condition at all times. And yet
- speakershe had time to be a real friend of the students. To really teach them to
- speakerbe good nurses. There's nothing she wouldn't do for a patient, if that patient
- speakerneeded it.. And she made her nurses feel the same way.
- speakerOf course, there are none of us out there now. Flumming the revolution
- speakerand the attitude of the
- speakerrevolutionaries toward our government made it necessary for
- speakerall of our missionaries to leave the country. Even one or two
- speakerwho had Iranian citizenship.
- speakerHowever the church goes on there.
- speakerIt goes on under very difficult
- speakercircumstances. Because, although they've not
- speakersaid that the church couldn't exist, still there is
- speakerpressure to make at least those who are Muslim
- speakerbackground to go back to their faith. If
- speakerso many of the church leaders have had to come to the States
- speakeror leave Iran. Some of them had
- speakercome over here before, were just about the beginning of the revolution for
- speakereducational reasons and weren't able to go back.
- speakerBut, from what we hear, and I have not been in a position to
- speakerhear as much as most of our missionaries. The church
- speakerstill is going on. It's having its services. Perhaps
- speakerit is working a little more closely, although they've always worked closely together,
- speakerwith the Episcopal Church in the south.
- speakerThey need our prayers because these are difficult times.
- speakerAnd yet, we know, the church always seems to thrive
- speakerwhen it's under persecution. We need to pray for them
- speakerwith strength, for courage and the will to
- speakerkeep up the good work.
- speakerFrancis, thank you so much.
- speakerYou're welcome. You certainly
- speakerwidened our world, our understanding. I've had Francis
- speakermake this. Landlord. Tell them what
- speakerprompted plant. How much seed to save for the next year.
- speakercrepe paper,
- speakerall one bundle wayside when the Homeini regime came in.
- speakerThey were very respond. And, since every young man
- speakerhad to go into, had to do military service, to have those who had
- speakertwelfth grade or higher education, being. They were given, taken in. They
- speakerhad, had a two-year, I think, military service. It was very.
- speakermandatory, but what they would do was take them in the first six
- speakermonths. They had the basic military training, plus
- speakertraining in the field which they had chosen. And then they were sent out to
- speakerthe villages.
- speakerFurthermore, they also put in a law that physicians and
- speakeranyone graduating from the medical schools could not
- speakerwork in the cities until they had put in a certain length of time
- speakerin the rural areas because they were,
- speakerthere were doctors all wanting to work in the big cities, where they could make a lot of money.
- speakerThey didn't want to go to the rural areas. But some of them, having gone, having had to go to the
- speakerrural areas, felt that they were better off, that they could do
- speakera better job in the rural areas Instead. So.
- speakerI was interested in what you said about
- speakerthey pervious want to tell you what. That's where we got
- speakerin trouble. My husband had some
- speakergraduate students he had had. And, I tell you, sparks flew
- speakerwhen you said Mr. Khamali, or something because they never knew what he was
- speakerdoing. He'd tell you, "Yes, so and so." You know.
- speakerThe other thing. The proper thing his professors wanted to hear was never
- speakerWell, They are. They are also are not. Their system of
- speakerschooling.
- speakeris to memorize it. When I started, when I was teaching nurses,
- speakerI would find that, that I gave lectures
- speakeri didn't, we didn't have textbooks
- speakerThey would stop and say, "What do you want me to repeat?
- speakerexactly what I said. I said I can't repeat it for you exactly. I said I don't want to you to memorize it.
- speakerI want you to understand what I'm talking about. In your own words tell
- speakerme what I've said. It took some. It used to take a new
- speakerclass coming in quite a while to realize that I didn't
- speakerwant them to. They weren't thinking for themselves. Yeah, we didn't want them
- speakerto say verbatim what we said. We wanted them to understand what we said.
- speakerAnd be able to do it or
- speakerThen could you get through to them? Did they respond to that one?
- speakerOnce they began to understand what we wanted, they could do it. They were
- speakerintelligent enough to do it. It was it was just a matter of learning, of finding a different
- speakerway of learning.
- speakerWell, thank you so much, Francis. We're glad you came. And I think maybe your lecture was better
- speakerthan your slides. How long have you been in Albuquerque? How long have you been here? I've been living in the
- speakerarea since the first of May. Oh. Oh, you're a newcomer.
- speakerI bet you like. Did the climate get you?
- speakerLike the climate or When I first came out here with AmRev
- speakerto see whether I wanted to invest in land here.
- speakerMy golfing plans got put on hold..
- speakerYou look at those mountains and that dry land. Mountains, dry land, adobe housing. Blue sky.
- speakerOnce you get used to it, it is hard to give it up, isn't it?
