{"id":61562,"date":"2018-06-03T12:37:52","date_gmt":"2018-06-03T18:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=61562"},"modified":"2018-09-05T09:53:37","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T15:53:37","slug":"the-sacred-cemetery-in-haifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/06\/the-sacred-cemetery-in-haifa.html","title":{"rendered":"The sacred cemetery in Haifa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Bahai<\/a>
A view of today\u2019s downtown Haifa, Israel, and its Baha\u2019i Gardens
(Photograph by Danny Lyulyev, Wikimedia CC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continuing with my narrative of the history of the Church in the Holy Land and the Middle East:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

At first it appeared that Elder Sjodahl\u2019s prayer would be abun\u00addantly answered. He did have some success among the Arabs. How\u00adever, sickness cut short his mission in the Near East, and he was obliged to return to Switzerland. There were other setbacks, too. In 1888, Magdalena Grau, the blacksmith\u2019s wife, died and was buried in the old German cemetery in Haifa at the foot of Mount Carmel, where her grave can still be seen. Her husband emigrated to Utah for a few years, but returned to Haifa in the late nineties as a mis\u00adsionary to his old German friends in the colony there. For some years, he served the branch in Haifa as its president. Meanwhile, in 1890, Elder Edgar D. Simmons became the first Latter-day Saint missionary to die in the Near East when he succumbed to smallpox and was buried at Aintab, Turkey (modern-day Gaziantep). Another, Elder Adolph Haag of Payson, Utah, died of typhus fever at Haifa on 3 October 1892 and was buried not far from Magdalena Grau in the city\u2019s little German cemetery.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was sad, but the work went on. Elder Haag\u2019s companion, President Musser of the Turkish Mission, kept himself busy preach\u00ading the gospel in both English and German, as well as studying Ara\u00adbic in order to expand the scope of his missionary service yet further. He visited Jerusalem on several occasions, working among the Arabs. He was astonished by their customs, which to him were completely exotic. He was also deeply impressed by the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim shrine on the Temple Mount. By the time he left, there were three small branches of the Church in the Near East: at Aleppo in Syria, at Aintab, Turkey, and at Haifa. In 1895, how\u00adever, yet another missionary, serving the Lord in a far off and very foreign land, died of smallpox. Elder John A. Clark was buried near the grave of Adolph Haag, again in the German cemetery at Haifa\u2014 a place that, for more than one Latter-day Saint visitor to the Near East, has now taken on something of the character of holy ground. Yet the graveyard is not entirely a melancholy spot, and not only because we know of the glorious promises made to those who give their lives in the faithful service of the Lord. It demonstrates, as elo\u00adquently as anything can, the interest that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> has long had in the land of Palestine and the high price that members of the Church have been willing to pay for that interest and that faith.[1]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> It has been claimed that, many years later when the question arose of official recog\u00adnition for the Church in the nation of Israel (previously Palestine), the graves of Elders Haag and Clark in Haifa served to demonstrate that the Church had been actively established in the land prior to the partition of Palestine and the organization of the State of Israel, which was a condition required for recognition. See Baldridge, Grafting <\/em>In, 7. Unfortunately, recent research has cast doubt on that claim, and it cannot be sub\u00adstantiated at the present time.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Continuing with my narrative of the history of the Church in the Holy Land and the Middle East: \u00a0 At first it appeared that Elder Sjodahl\u2019s prayer would be abun\u00addantly answered. He did have some success among the Arabs. How\u00adever, sickness cut short his mission in the Near East, and he was obliged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe sacred cemetery in Haifa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Continuing with my narrative of the history of the Church in the Holy Land and the Middle East:   At first it appeared that Elder\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/06\/the-sacred-cemetery-in-haifa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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