# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S64
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

64 Proceedings of the 24th General, or

hands often not at all, often only at low wages; many a Christian was
therefore unable to give as generously for missions as their love wished
to, but out of consideration for these conditions mission commissions
have already had to limit their undertakings. Experience has confirmed
that we still have, in this country, a field for this work of gathering and
building up — the doors are not yet closed to us — but it is likewise a
fact: for lack of funds, mission efforts have had to be curtailed, and for
lack of funds mission workers have had to wait and wait for their
meager support. Our traveling preachers and other workers in this
work are truly not so well provided for that they can indulge in luxury;
yet there is a great number of them who have been placed by us into
this service of the sanctuary and who must look to us for support. A
larger number could still be sent out. The mission work has in many
places become more costly. The individual traveling preacher must
travel long distances by rail; we must gather the ears left lying where
false believers have already harvested; we are compelled, even in
populous cities, to support missionaries for a long time, and often not
to see them for a good while, but only to hope, and besides our enemies
are very zealous in gathering funds for those who depart from the
doctrine of the Lord, and get ahead of us if we do not have open eyes
and full hands for sending out and keeping harvest workers. Thank
God for the grace that the cry — Oh, for workers! You Missourians
have no sufficient number of preachers, again and again we must beg
in vain — has almost entirely died away, because the Lord has made
our schools into fruitful mothers who supply us with many capable and
zealous servants. Dear brethren, is it not then all the more our sacred
duty of love to be cheerful and glad in sharing our earthly blessing, so
that God has filled the hands of ever more, many members of our
precious church? If God has so led us, is it not a kindly hint from him
that we too, when we dispose of our earthly goods by will, remember
by a bequest, an endowment, also the blessed work by which brothers
and sisters are led through the door of heaven opened by Christ, and
by which the tables in the house of God here and above are made ever
fuller?

"To confirm what has been said about the needs and the want, let
just one request for support be inserted here, of a kind that arrives not
infrequently. It reads: 'Our distress is once again especially great, and
we ought to have a subsidy of $2090.48 in order to meet our obligations
in the quarter just begun. Please do for us what you can. We could
and should take on still more people, if only we had the money. At the
coming Synod one will no doubt hear more about it from our district.'
We could