Shirley Birth
American Hospital
P.O. Box 65
Tanta, Egypt
shirleybirth@hotmail.com

Shirley ended her term of service in June 2003.

In the late 1940s, Shirley Birth worked for three years as a Presbyterian missionary in the American Mission Hospital in Tanta, Egypt. After that, she returned to the United States, married, raised four children, and retired. But then she began to hear a call…. She decided she wasn’t finished with her work in Egypt. "I kept asking myself," she explains, "Did I forget to do something there? Does God want me to go back?" yes.

Shirley Birth is now assistant to the hospital director at the American Mission Hospital in Tanta, Egypt. She helps with improving the administrative apparatus at the hospital and assists with any situations that require English. She serves as the hospital's principal correspondent with overseas donors and supporters. She is assisting two students with their study of the English language. Her term began in June of 2001 and will end in June 2003.

Letters from
Shirley Birth

• April 2003
• December 2002
• May 2002
• February 2002
• October 2001

"The three years I spent in Egypt were the highlight of my life," Shirley writes. "You might say I ‘grew up’ in Egypt, as I was all of 21 years old when I went. I learned so much from my fellow mission workers, the doctors and nurses, both American and Egyptian. The hospital and mission school were a beacon of light for Christ in a predominantly Muslim village. Now that village is a city of 2.5 million people, and the hospital is more important than ever."

Tanta is located in the delta of the Nile, halfway between Cairo and Alexandria. The terrain is very flat, and the summers are extremely hot. The hospital where Shirley will work was originally built by the Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church over a hundred years ago.

Before retiring, Shirley worked for ten years as a legal secretary in Southern Pines, North Carolina. For five years before that, she was a secretary and real estate broker in the same town. She has held various secretarial positions in Beckley, West Virginia, in Oneida, Tennessee, and in and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She devoted 16 years to working as a homemaker and raising her children, Donald Keith Birth, Terri Lynne Birth, Randall Wayne Birth, and Richard Alan Birth. She has one grandchild, W. Donald Birth. Three of her children live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Richard is in Great Falls, Montana, with the U.S. Air Force.

Shirley holds a certificate in secretarial science from the Stenotype Institute of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Birthday: November 17