The Reformed Presbyterian Church has been given a rich legacy of missionaries, and their service involved considerable hardship and life-and-death situations. Here is just one such story. The history of Herbert and Evalyn Hays was compiled by Philip Hayes, and the quotations (in italics) are from an interview recently conducted with Evalyn Hayes at the RP Home in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Evalyn was born at home during a snowstorm in Cleveland, Ohio, on Mar. 3. 1912, to Lloyd and Elizabeth Link. Her father worked with Elliot Ness as a detective.

Evalyn was regarded as a tomboy because of her athletic and energetic ways. Her brother Leonard felt she had Olympic potential. Evalyn has told stories of unusual happenings while living above a funeral home and the days of eating onion sandwiches. There were hard times as her family experienced the years of economic depression in the U.S.

Evalyn worked at a grocery store before graduating from high school. After graduating she moved on to a job at the Mazda Lamp Factory. Her high school friend and neighbor, Jesse Lee, got a job there too. It was Jesse who introduced Evalyn to the Youngstown Reformed Presbyterian Church where J. B. Wilson was minister. It was at this church that Evalyn came to love the Lord. She became an active member and served as Sabbath school superintendent. She dreamed of becoming a missionary someday but could not afford to go to college for the needed education.

Herbert Hays from Iowa, a student at the RP Seminary in Pittsburgh. Pa., had been doing his student ministry at the Youngstown church around 1930 and graduated in 1932. That year he was appointed stated supply for the Youngstown RPC. He was ordained and installed as pastor on Aug. 17, 1933. A quiet romance had developed between Herbert and Evalyn soon after he arrived in Youngstown. It was a subtle relationship because they didn’t want to upset the members of the congregation.
In 1935, Herbert felt the call to go to Syria as a missionary. He knew that Evalyn also had a long-range desire to be a missionary, but they knew Evalyn’s lack of a college education could be a barrier. At the meeting of Synod in Beaver Falls, Pa., he presented himself for Foreign Missionary service, and he was accepted with no objection to Evalyn joining him as his wife.

The two were married on Aug. 8, in the living room of Rev. E. L. McKnight in Pittsburgh. Within a few days they were heading for New York City to board the grand Italian ocean liner The Rex to leave the U.S.A. for the first time in their lives, not knowing what challenges they would face in the cause of Jesus Christ.

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“We prayed about it, and they needed help in Syria to continue the work. That’s why we went—because we wanted to give people a knowledge and love for the Lord. We wanted salvation to be made known through Jesus Christ, not through Mohammed or anybody else.”

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On the ship with them was a returning missionary to Syria, Elizabeth McElroy. While she would go on to Latakia, Syria, they would report to Jerusalem in Palestine for two years of Arabic language study. Jerusalem was in turmoil, and the British were trying to retain control. World War II was just over the horizon.

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“The Arabs and the Jews were starting a war, and we could see the gunfire from our balcony so we didn’t go out on the balcony very much. We went to the Newman School of Missions, right on the border between the Jews and the Arabs. We were in the protection of the Lord because, as I walked with my husband to school, there was shooting in various places. This was in 1935. We continued through the school for two years and passed our examinations in Arabic. My husband got the highest grade in the classical Arabic because he was going to preach, but I was able to pass in the colloquial because l was around people a lot. I got the better grade in the colloquial and he got the better grade in the classical.”

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Armed with a working knowledge of Arabic, by 1937 the Hays’ were ready to serve in Latakia, Syria. The RP Mission in Latakia had a history that went back to the 1850s. Churches and schools that had been developed in Syria over the years were at this point adapting to changes. The mission hospital had closed but the boys and girls schools were in full force. A large city church and a number of village churches and schools were the continuing part of what used to be a much larger operation during the Ottoman Empire. Syria was now a French Mandate as a result of the treaties that dismantled that Empire at the ended of WWI.

Evalyn was pregnant with her first child. In September, Herbert took her to the American Hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. The Armenian doctor there wrongly concluded that a natural childbirth was possible, which cost baby Marilyn her life and almost led to Evalyn’s death.

Early in January 1938, the Hayses and Elizabeth McElroy went to the village of Inkzeek. They had been told by the minister of that village’s RP church that there was a newly-born motherless child. He had been born just before Christmas and had survived a village midwife’s contamination that led to his mother’s death plus the death of two other children and their mothers. The little baby boy’s father was desperate, having three other children to worry about. He and his family belonged to the village RP Church and needed help. Herbert and Evalyn had prayed about this situation and had decided to go to the village. They had committed themselves—if the child was still alive—to take him back to Latakia and make him theirs. The round trip journey by bus was an adventure that led to their rescuing the scroungy two-week-old baby who was renamed Philip. Philip became the oldest child of the Hays family.

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“My husband would go to support the Syrian people and to give them the Word of God. We had Syrian schools in the villages—I think eight villages—and he would go to visit those schools. Now, they weren’t schools like we have here, with desks and all of that. They had to sit on the floor, but they had their readers and they had their pencils, and they’d begin to write, and enjoyed it so much. When they wanted further education, they would try to get into the school and we had many of them come down for further education. We have met many graduates through the years as they moved out of Syria and came to America. They knew the Lord.”

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Evalyn was soon pregnant again. This time the American Dr. Boyes was on duty at the American Hospital in Tripoli, Lebanon. A baby boy named Harry was delivered, but the happiness was short lived. Harry lived only 40 days and Evalyn was seriously weakened. She remained at the American Hospital in Tripoli while Herbert returned to Latakia to bury his second child. A doubting friend wrote from the U.S. and asked Evalyn how she could still have faith in a God whom she had given her all for only to be rewarded by His allowing her two babies to be ruthlessly taken from her and almost costing her own life. Her response was that she never had a moment of doubt in her Lord, and her love for Him was never weakened, even in the darkest moments of her tribulation.

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“We got curious looks whenever we went outside to do anything. The senior missionary Miss McElroy, who had been in Turkey and was now doing work in Latakia, Syria, was with us. People were watching us. They told me a woman should never go out alone, because it hadn’t been too long before we went out that a missionary had been murdered in Latakia. She had retired and made her home in Latakia, so they gave her a little house there and she was doing work with the people. They told her never to go out alone just like they told me, but she got a call from a girl who had been studying the Bible with her. The girl was ill. The other missionaries told her ‘Don’t go.’ She said, ‘You mean to tell me I can’t go when they’re asking for me?’ She said, ‘I can’t do that. I have to go because she’s dying, and she knows the Lord.’ The missionary left, but never came back again.”

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World War II was about to begin and some of the missionaries were escaping while it was possible. Because of Evalyn’s weakened condition it was not wise for her to travel. This left the Hayses along with Elizabeth McElroy as the only American missionaries to manage the mission’s extensive duties through WW II. This situation extended their first term away from their country to almost 11 years.

On June 19, 1941, Norma was born at the American Hospital in Tripoli. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 and the U.S. was drawn into WW II, placing Americans all over the world in an adversarial position with Germany and its allies.

By 1942, the Germans had overrun France, which had the mandate over Syria. To fill the void, English, Australian, and Indian soldiers representing the British Empire came to Syria. Many English and Australian solders enjoyed the hospitality of the American Mission. Elizabeth McElroy, the Hayses, and the Syrian Christians in Latakia did their best to show hospitality to those men so far from home.

Tom McNaughton from Beaver Falls, Pa., was the only American soldier to visit Latakia during WW II. As an RP he had purposefully found his way to the Latakia RP Mission. He found out he was a distant relation of two young ladies who lived in Latakia—Helen and Florence Fattal—through their mother. She had come to Syria as a missionary nurse and had married a Syrian pharmacist.

North Africa became the bloody battleground where some of those young soldiers lost their lives. The Battle of El Alamain was fought toward the end of the year, with the British troops under General Montgomery driving back General Rommel and his German-Italian troops.

In 1946 Syria became an independent country. Judy was born in Tripoli with the help of Dr. Boyes on Mar. 3. Leonard, Evalyn’ s brother, died from an injury in a car accident in Hollywood, Calif.

Finally the day came in May for the arrival of the long awaited ship that would take the Hays family to America. A long overland journey would take them to a troop ship leaving from Alexandria, Egypt. The Vulcania made a stop in Italy and finally sailed into New York Harbor with a full load of Italian war brides and their babies. A plane welcomed the ship with a sky-written greeting, and the ships picture was featured on the front of The New York Times.

After almost 11 years, Herbert and Evalyn were back in their home country. Herbert was appointed stated supply to the Olathe, Kan., RPC and drove many miles across the United States sharing his message about the mission work in Syria. After over a year of furlough and a year as minister to the Olathe congregation, it was time to return to Syria.

In the fall of 1948, the family sailed from New York City on the Egyptian cargo passenger ship the Kaddive Ismail. It would be seven long years before the return trip to the U.S. Herbert performed a wedding ceremony for an anxious new missionary couple in Syria, Kenneth and Marjorie Sanderson.

Evalyn’s son Bert was born Dec. 11. 1951 at the American Hospital in Tripoli. In 1955, Herbert was accused of spying for the U.S as a ploy to expel him from Syria and not allow him back for future missionary work. The order to leave the country in 24 hours was held back respectfully by the local authorities for a month, since it was known that the Hayses would be leaving on furlough at that time.

The journey began without the threatened military escort to the boarder. The Italian ship Enotria sailed from Beruit, Lebanon, to Italy. The month-long journey back to the U.S. involved travel from Italy by train across Europe with stops in Switzerland, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. Missionary friends were visited along the way. Even Bert’s teddy bear managed to survive this family adventure. The Holland­American ship The Ryndam was boarded off the coast of Ireland by tender and finally, on July 16, the New York skyline appeared on the horizon. Thus began a year of furlough and travels across the country to speak about the mission work in Syria.

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“When we finally got a furlough, they said. “Well, we’ll send people with you from the government, to be sure that you leave.” They wouldn’t say, it was because of our religion, but we knew why we were being put out—because they didn’t want to hear the truth any more. But my husband said, ‘We’re going out, and we don’t need an escort. We came in here without an escort and when I’m saying “We’re going out” I’m telling you the truth. So we don’t need anybody to go with us to put us out.” And they didn’t send anybody. So we were the first ones to be put out after eight decades of work in Syria.

“We always prayed that the Lord would direct us in our meeting with people, and in doing what we were supposed to do—to offer salvation through Christ. My husband was in charge of the schools for a while, and one subject they were all required to take was the Bible. And if they said no, my husband would say, ‘What do you teach in your schools?’ Of course they said, ‘We teach the Qu’ran.’ And I said ‘well, if they’re coming here to a mission school, they have to take the Bible, have to study the Bible.’ So this is one of the reasons why l think we were put out.”

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After a year living in the Geneva RP Church parsonage in Beaver Falls, Pa., Herbert was called to be the pastor of the Geneva RPC in 1956. He was honored in June by Geneva College with a Doctor of Divinity degree and chosen the same month to be Moderator of the 127th Synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church. Evalyn started to fulfill her belated ambition, a college degree. She was 44 with a lifetime behind her and a lifetime ahead of her. Evalyn started the long road to a degree by taking classes at Geneva College while being a mother to her children and a supporting wife to her busy husband. The physical damage done to her in those years in Syria would surface to plague her as she followed this challenging path in pursuit of an education. In 1963, Evalyn graduated with a degree in education from Geneva College. Philip also graduated from Geneva the same year with a B. A. in history and left home to teach in Geneva, Ohio. Evalyn began a five-year teaching stint in East Palestine, Ohio.

After ministering to RP congregations in Ireland and Clarinda, Iowa, Herbert went to be with the Lord in 1971. Evalyn continued an active life, moving into the RP Home in 2001.