The Centennial of Reverend Mirzaei

Disease had spread everywhere. More than eight decades have passed since that time. Healthcare facilities were not accessible to the general public, and the Iranian people, due to illiteracy, saw no way out but to submit to the circumstances before them. However, Christian missionaries, together with believers who considered service to God as the ornament of their lives, came to the aid of the people and established hospitals and schools in several cities of Iran. The entire cost of establishing and operating these medical centers was provided by Christian believers from outside the country. After that, access for people in several major cities of the country, including Mashhad, Tabriz, Rasht, Isfahan, and Kermanshah, to medical and healthcare facilities accelerated.

Eliyar Mirzaei was going through his adolescence at that time. He was born in 1917 in a family engaged in agriculture, near Kermanshah. From his youth, and especially at the age of 12, he had before him role models who prioritized service to God and evangelical work. They were missionaries who, despite the difficult conditions of Iran at that time, came to our country to serve Jesus Christ. Eliyar, raised in such an environment, found the truth and chose an appropriate path to quench his thirsty soul.

Christian missionaries from various countries, including the United States, who were present at the medical center and its adjacent school in Kermanshah, spared no effort in the education and development of this young believer. Until Eliyar Mirzaei, after his military service, gained the honor of working as a Christian missionary in the Church of Jesus Christ in Kermanshah. He was then employed by the Bible Society.

For ten years, he served in distant cities and villages through book distribution activities. Sanandaj, Kangavar, Kabudarahang, Kermanshah, Sarpol-e Zahab, Qasr-e Shirin, and Shah Abad were among his areas of service. Eliyar Mirzaei has bitter and sweet memories from this period, which he spent in difficult and exhausting circumstances due to the country’s backwardness. He compiled this collection of memories in a book titled “Memoirs of an Unprofitable Servant.”

This writing was compiled with the aim of creating motivation and encouragement for young Christians. Young people who regard Jesus Christ as their sole savior and do not harbor any fear in their hearts for proclaiming the good news and Christian gospel, and for whom physical death is meaningless.

Eliyar Mirzaei was ultimately ordained on March 22, 1970, coinciding with the second of Farvardin 1349, by the Assembly of Churches of Iran, and continued his service to the country as “Reverend Eliyar Mirzaei.”

The main focus of his Christian activities was evangelical work. Reverend Mirzaei, in the years following the revolution, despite the martyrdom of some of God’s children and the creation of difficult conditions for Christian servants’ activities in Iran, continued his evangelical services in his homeland.

However, ultimately seven years after the revolution, he was forced to leave his homeland and went to Germany. He then chose to migrate to Canada and has been engaged in church services in this country since 1989.

This servant of God, who is now celebrating his centennial, has blessed the decades of his life with the hope of eternal life with our Lord. The fruit of his marriage to his wife Martha is four daughters who have honorable children, and all have had Christian marriages.

We are proud that Reverend Eliyar Mirzaei wears the crown of honor of discipleship and studentship of our Lord, and we acknowledge that the title “unprofitable servant” is justly deserved by him.