REDLANDS, Calif., Jan. 9, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Missionaries all over the world sacrifice their lives for people and ideals. The new book, Twenty-Five Years in Persia: The Memoirs of Mary Allen Whipple (now available through 1stBooks), by Samir Johna, is an account of sacrifice that compelled a family to travel to the Middle East to help others.
"(This book) is not just another missionary story, but rather a unique account of a family whose ideal of service required them to make the difficult journey to Persia and to make considerable sacrifices in seeking that ideal," Johna says.
Twenty-Five Years in Persia is an edited version of the previously unpublished memoirs of the Whipple family. The memoirs recount the story of a family who shared everything they had to spare the lives of people they had never met. In this book, Mary Allen Whipple tells her life story, beginning in the mid-1800s when she first met William Whipple. Their love and commitment to each other and other people led them to Persia in the 1870s.
In Persia, the Whipples spent 25 years as dedicated missionaries. The book recounts their tumultuous life in the Middle East and tells how they trudged on through countless tragedies and hardships. They lose four children to disease and battle the heat and destruction all around them. Whipple offers snap shots of herself, her family and friends as they traverse through the hardships and tragedies that befell them. She relishes in the moments of triumph and the confusion of the changing times in which they lived.
Offering a complete picture of these people and who they were, Twenty-Five Years in Persia is a book like no other told in the words of a woman who lived it.
Johna is an Assyrian surgeon born in the suburbs of Baghdad, Iraq. A graduate from the University of Baghdad School of Medicine, he was drafted into the Iraqi military. After six years, he migrated to the United States where he completed his residency in general surgery. He is an associate clinical professor of surgery at Loma Linda University School of Medicine. He has published one other book, The Memoirs of Allen Oldfather Whipple: The Man Behind the Whipple Operation (TFM Publishing).
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