# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S863
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISSIONS 868.

such subsidy where it is granted. Thus in the Ambur District
some thirty congregations are managing their own household in
this fashion, and the other conference districts are developing this
system also. Another significant feature is the manner in which
the Indian congregations are learning to carry on personal mission
work, and the fashion in which they themselves are initiating and
supporting new mission ventures, such as that in the Wynaad area
in Trivandrum. Here work was begun among people who had
not been touched by civilization nor Christianity, and this work
is altogether a project of the native Christians, native evangelists
volunteering for the work and the native Christians collecting
among themselves the money needed for this mission venture.
Besides the efforts of our missionaries and their native co-workers
to give pastoral care to Christians already won and gathered, and
to extend the missionary activity to countries still to be won, we
have in India quite a system of schools, both elementary and higher
schools, and several excellent seminaries for the training of pastors
and teachers. In recent years it looked as though our work might
be hampered by adverse legislation regarding education, however,
it appears at this time as though the matter did not turn out too
badly for our mission work. We might also mention the fact that
it has been possible to penetrate to ranks of higher caste people to
some extent, and that attention is being given to work in the larger
cities. Other features of our work have also been carried forward
and should indeed be expanded, such as the work through our
hospital at Ambur, and the zenana mission work, which means
work among women and older girls through our deaconesses or
Bible women trained and supervised by them.

Our missionary personnel in India has undergone a number of
changes, A missionary force in any foreign, especially in a tropical,
climate is apt to see missionaries forced out of the service by reasons
of health. That may be intensified when there has been a period
of war and stress, of shortages and unusual difficulties, of danger,
of overwork, and a period of service longer than the usual time
between furloughs. Thus within the last triennium a number of
missionaries saw themselves constrained to leave the service in
India, namely, the brethren E. H. Knoernschild, G. Oberheu,
W. Luedtke, R. P. Sieving, L. W. Wetzel, P. Kauffeld, while Mis-
sionaries G. Hattendorf and A. J. Lutz are suffering from ill health
during the present furlough in this country. As to Missionary
Hattendorf it might be mentioned that the Lord called his devoted
wife out of this world to Himself during the summer of 1946. To
be sure, these losses in manpower were offset to some extent by
new additions, namely, Missionaries Elmer E. Griesse, Armand
Graf, Theo. Michalk, R. T. Koepke, and Mr. Edward Krafft. There