# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1947_S877 # Machine transcription, uncorrected β€” CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) MISSIONS 877 best interests of our missionaries. Even so our South American ” District Home Mission Boards have from time to time increased the subsidies, as the above statement of subsidies granted clearly indicates. A statement recently made by one of the missionaries now on furlough is significant and very forcibly brings out the true facts. At the present time he is receiving a salary according to the scale which missionaries of the District receive in which he is spending his furlough. It is a salary which is rather above the average salaries paid missionaries in Home Missions. After the missionary had been with us on furlough for a few months and -had enjoyed his relatively high salary in the United States, he stated that he enjoyed the conveniences he was now privileged to have, but he intimated that the salary he now received did not reach much farther than his $50β€”$60 per month he received in South America. Forty-seven years ago we began our South American mis- sions. Today we have a total of 113 parishes in our South American fields. β€˜To carry on these missions, a subsidy of $148,000 was granted for 1947. This means that each of our South American parishes is receiving an average subsidy of $1,309 per annum, : The average contributions pledged by each of the 113 parishes amounts to approximately $442. One might ask, why do the missionaries then receive the low salary indicated? It is because the subsidy is not granted only to assist in the payment of the salaries of the pastors but also of the teachers, and also for the erection of new chapels, for the transfer of missionaries and candidates within the Districts, for special aid in emergencies, for administration, for the amortiza- tion of the debt resting on the church properties. In the above amount the cost of furloughs, $30,000, and the cost for printing a Portuguese and Spanish literature, $7,000, are included. After all, it is not only a matter of dollars and cents to properly fix the salaries of our missionaries, it is rather the placing of our South J American Church on a sound financial basis, in which it takes an 4 active part (financially and otherwise), so that in due time it can J blossom forth to a self-sustaining, self-governing Church. 4 To our knowledge none of the missionaries suffered want a unless they did not make known their need to their respective Mission Boards. That some found it difficult to adjust themselves ; to the prevailing condition we can understand. But even though they must forego many things which they might have if they served the Church in the United States, though conditions in many F of the faraway areas are exceedingly primitive, our missionaries, God-fearing as they are, willingly serve the blood-bought souls.