Harvey Staal, RCA minister and missionary, graduated from Hope College (1943) and the Western Theological Seminary. Staal and his wife served in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon. In 1966, they returned to the U. S.for two years while Staal worked toward his doctorate in Arabic at the University of Utah. In 1972, Staal became the first pastor of the Protestant Church in Muscat, Oman. Staal later became pastor to the English-speaking congregation of the Community Church of Beirut. His Utah doctoral theses, a modern Arabic translation of the Syriac text of Epistles and Acts, known as Mt. Sinai Arabia Codex 151, were later published as a scholarly book. The Staal collection is ripe with materials describing missionary efforts in the strife-torn Middle East, as well as four decades of photographic slides
