# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1857_S364
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 364 —

...then, in a congregational meeting, he exhorted the red brethren in
the most urgent and heartfelt terms and received from them the
promise that they would henceforth diligently hear God's Word and be
obedient to it. He, in turn, promised them that the Synod would
continue to make it its concern to work for the welfare and prosperity
of the congregation in Bethany, in particular by devoting more effort
than before to establishing an English school there, for which
purpose a special schoolteacher might then also be called to Bethany.

Surveying the whole matter, the president of the Synod, as well as his
companions, had to admit that the Synod, compared with the great means
that have at all times been spent on maintaining the Bethany station,
can at present see still little fruit from it. The chief deficiency,
apart from the Indians' frivolity, seems to lie in the constrained
character of the preaching — which still always has to go through the
mediation of a (thank God) faithful interpreter — and in the school's
incompleteness; and both defects, it was thought, could be remedied by
calling a capable man who would devote himself entirely to the school,
thereby freeing the missionary to spend more time studying the
language and working out his sermons in the Indian language. The
schoolteacher to be called should occupy himself not only with the
children's lesson hours, but should also join them outside of these in
their games, their small garden and field work, and their other
activities. Through such a fatherly upbringing and guidance of the
young, we would win over the old as well, and gradually form, out of
the young, a well-instructed and well-raised core of the congregation.

If we now turn our gaze beyond Bethany's borders, we can, thank God,
say that the Lord has opened to us, in place of the field lost at
Shebahyonk, a new and larger mission field in Minnesota. Already at
the last general synodical convention in St. Louis we had turned our
gaze toward Minnesota and wished that the Lord would open a door for
us there. To this end, the president of the Mission Commission
resolved to visit the Chippewa Indians of Minnesota together with
missionary Mießler in August of last year, in order to learn their
situation and circumstances. It would be superfluous to set out the
details of this journey here, since they have been recorded in "Der
Lutheraner" of last year's volume; we will only repeat here that we
found a people crying out for instruction and Christian life, a people
who, though living in the deepest corruption of heathendom, nonetheless
feel their own misery. It would not let us go until we had promised
them a missionary would soon be sent. Although it proved no small
difficulty to find a man within our Synod who, besides the otherwise
required qualities, also had enough desire and energy to found a
mission station in Minnesota, God nonetheless finally raised up for us,
in the spring of this year, Pastor Clöter of Saginaw — a man who took
pity on the plight of the heathen in Minnesota and declared himself
ready for mission service among them. The Mission Commission at once
took up the task of equipping this brother, so that he could still
move to Minnesota in the month of May. The congregation in Saginaw let
their beloved Pastor Clöter go in peace into mission service, and so
missionary Clöter, in God's name, taking his family with him, has made
the first beginning of his mission work, namely on the upper
Mississippi near Gull Lake post office