# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S72
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

72   Proceedings of the 19th General [Synod], or

and would have done so even better if we had been better assisted
from within our own church body.

    "Our missionary, Pastor S. Keyl, in the period named forwarded
15,696 souls. Work and earnings were procured for 518 persons, in
such a way that, besides their daily bread, they also had the
opportunity to use the means of grace pure and unadulterated. Alms
were given out in the amount of $1481.81, by providing poor
immigrants with meals, overnight lodging, or provisions for their
onward journey. The sum of the moneys received and accounted for in
forwarding immigrants or sending them on to Germany amounts to
$222,760.61. Advances to persons wholly or partly without means were
made in the amount of $24,694.30. Of this, unfortunately, nearly
$5000 is still outstanding from last year and earlier. Whoever looks
at the above figures with reflection will readily see that, through
advances alone, truly great things have been accomplished for the
benefit of these strangers. Many tears have thereby been dried, many
a sorrow stilled, heavy costs forestalled — in short, many have been
helped. It is all the more shameful when such experienced kindnesses
are so quickly forgotten and the moneys received are sent back only
after a long time, or not at all. — Distributed free of charge were:
98,000 tracts; 60,000 copies of the "Luth. Kinderblatt" [Lutheran
Children's Paper], published and donated by President J. P. Beyer;
361 copies of the "Jugendkalender" [Youth Almanac], by the same;
6,080 calendars of our Synod; and 600 copies of the Canadian
"Volksblatt" [People's Paper]. Letters and postcards received numbered
13,944; written and sent, 10,775.

    "Mr. Skov, missionary of the Norwegian Synod, has rendered very
valuable services to our missionary, by seeing to the distribution of
tracts and church papers and by representing Pastor Keyl at Castle
Garden, seeking out there the immigrants assigned to him and
bringing them to him at his office, where Pastor Keyl could then take
in hand and arrange everything necessary for them.

    "The Hamburg mission for emigrants, which has now worked hand in
hand with ours for 11 years, has also in the years just past proved
most richly blessed and has earned the thanks of all who have come
into contact with it. Mr. H. Tormählen, 14 St. Annen, is missionary
there, and Mr. V. L. Meyer, 13 Gröninger Str., most kindly attends to
all the correspondence work. In vain have slanderers at home and
abroad tried to bring our missionary, S. Keyl, into suspicion in
Hamburg and to damage our connection with the mission there.

    "Since the end of 1882 we have also had our own emigrant-mission
assistant in Bremen. In recent years Bremen has become the most