Although the complexities of “conversion” of Eastern Christians to Western Christian confessions have been looked at with respect to some outstanding figures such as Hindiyya or As’ad as-Shidyaq, little research has been done on what this process meant for ordinary men and, particularly, women. The case of the Kaiserswerth deaconessate offers a unique opportunity for analyzing this phenomenon. From the time this German Protestant organization settled in the Middle East in 1851, it had intended not just to free the girls and women of all religious communities from their alleged servitude and lead them to modernity through education, but also to recruit, from among their pupils, future Protestant deaconesses. Until World War One, approximately forty-three Arab women, mainly former Greek Orthodox Christians, entered the organization as aspirants – a step for which conversion to Protestantism and a break with one’s former community were deemed essential. Required, like all sisters and novices, to hand in a curriculum vitae and to maintain a confidential relationship to the Board in Germany by regular correspondence, the Arab deaconesses left a precious body of autobiographical documents allowing for a nuanced analysis of the problem of “conversion”. Although none of them suffered as drastic persecution as the “martyrs” / “heretics” As’ad and Hindiyya, all of them experienced personal as well as religious crises, being torn between seemingly mutually elusive social and religious allegiances. Having been in a “doubly marginal” position as women and members of a religious minority, they were even more marginalized by their entry into a Protestant institution. Even their new community did not treat them as equals. While fulfilling important functions as cultural intermediators and raised to be forerunners of a modern Protestant society, they could, at best, become “almost the same but not quite”: from the point of view of their German superiors, theirs would always be an imperfect Protestantism. This paper will look at the way the Arab deaconesses managed to manoeuvre between both worlds, which conflicts, compromises and complexities arose from their conversion to the Protestant faith, and which consequences resulted from it for the organization they served.