# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S864
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

864 ; MISSIONS

still is a great need for additional manpower, particularly for the
Trivandrum area. Repeatedly the effort of the Board of Foreign
Missions to recruit candidates from the graduating classes met with
a very disappointing result, so that today our force of workers,
especially in Trivandrum, is only about one half of what it was
three years ago.
Statistics for India

In India we have 38 male missionaries, 3 female missionaries,

34 wives of missionaries, 90 children of missionaries; total, 165.

Of national co-workers we have 34 pastors, 15 evangelists,
168 catechists, 15 Bible women, 253 schoolteachers, 11 medical and
other workers; total, 496.

Souls, 19,866.

In China our missionaries with the close of the war surged
back into the areas in which we had been active before the Japa-
hese occupation. To our great joy we found our complex of
buildings at Hankow in good condition. All the equipment and
furniture were gone, of course; but the buildings themselves were
in good shape and could quickly be put back into good condition.
Then there came the work of gathering up the scattered forces of
our members, those that had remained throughout the occupation
and those that had fled to the interior and now started to drift
back. In many of these areas we therefore had a deep-reaching
program of rehabilitation, physical and spiritual. In Hankow the
chapel in the old cemetery was repaired and is now being used
by our Chinese congregation. In Hanyang a new chapel was
erected by the congregation, plus a dwelling for their pastor. In
Wuchang we rented a building and carried out the most necessary
repairs, and this now serves as a chapel and dwelling for one of
our evangelists. In Shasi both of our former churches were de-
molished as also was the house in which our foreign missionary
er missionaries used to live. We shall have to do considerable
rebuilding in Shasi. In Ichang it will also be necessary to purchase
some ground and to build a chapel and dwelling for the native
pastor. Similar programs of rehabilitation will need to be carried
out at a number of other places, such as Kweifu and Mitossu, while
the congregation at Wanhsien needs to have a center in the city
and the congregation at Enshih desires help towards the erection
of a school. At Enshth we should also relocate our hospital and
turn over the present hospital buildings to the use of the orphan
homes. Also in China efforts are made towards building an
indigenous Church. The executive committee of our conference
consists of equal numbers of Chinese workers and American mis-
sionaries. The General Conference at Hankow last summer was
attended by lay delegates from eight parishes. The lay members