# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S407
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

MISSIONS

Conferences

Ephphatha Conference has met every year. All missionaries
are to attend this annual conference, in which our workers discuss
problems and needs of the work. Quite a little time is always
given to the sign language, for our workers must become more
and more proficient in the use of this language. Also audio-visual
aids are on every program.

Regional conferences also meet every year. These are attended
also by lay people who serve as delegates from each field. Regional
representatives usually are the leaders in these meetings. These
lay delegates read papers assigned to them. Thus also the deaf
are led to take the initiative in the work of the church.

Expansion

The United States is quite well covered extensively, but not
intensively. Therefore we are dividing fields in order that more
intensive work be done, especially at the home base. The Oakland
Field was divided and a new man placed into the San Francisco
Area; the Los Angeles Field was divided and a candidate placed
into Long Beach; the New York Field was given a second man;
in the Florida Field the second man was placed into Jacksonville;
in the Texas-Oklahoma Field the Houston man takes care of
stations in the southern part of Texas, and a vicar was placed into
Oklahoma City to serve stations in Oklahoma and in the northern
part of Texas; the Kansas City-Denver Field was divided, and
a candidate was assigned to the Denver Field to take over the
Colorado stations and several in Nebraska. In the course of time
several other fields will be divided, and thus more intensive work
can be done in the reduced areas.

Chapels and Parsonages

In most of our preaching stations our hearing congregations
open their doors unto the deaf, for which hearty thanks are due
them. In four cities congregations have set aside a little chapel
for the deaf. Memphis has done this before, and during the past
triennium the following congregations have followed the good
example of Memphis: Devils Lake, Oklahoma City, and Great
Bend, Kans. Parsonage was bought in Des Moines and also in
Memphis, and church and. parsonage in Madison, Wis.; Newark,
N.J.; Columbus; Rochester, N. Y.; and Jacksonville, Il. It facil-
itates matters if a deaf congregation has a chapel, and a considerable
amount of rent is being saved by acquiring parsonages.