# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1899_S69
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Ninth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1899. 69

Home Missions, with the charge that it — the General Commission —
give this matter its particular attention and act, as the situation is
found to warrant, according to its best judgment. Should the
Commission, in consultation with the General President, become
convinced that the time has now come to begin Home Missions in
South America, it shall bring this to the notice of our congregations
and at the same time ask for the necessary funds, but keep the latter
strictly separate from the monies of the existing fund for Home
Missions.*)

English Mission.

"In the course of the three years elapsed since the last Delegate
Synod, the Commission for the English Mission has applied the
modest funds placed at its disposal, at eighteen mission posts, to the
purpose for which they were given, whether by congregations or by
individual persons. At four places the work was taken up in such a
way that, before there could yet be any thought of organizing a
congregation, a Christian children's school was first opened. These
beginnings were possible only because students of our seminary did the
work without pay, and the Commission had to bear only the rental
costs for the necessary premises and their fitting-out for school
purposes, the procuring of the necessary teaching materials, and the
traveling costs and other minor expenses of the students. At two of
the places thus cultivated there are now organized congregations, and
at a third post stands a missionary who devotes himself with faithful
diligence to the work at his mission school and to gathering a mission
congregation. At several places it has become apparent that material
for German Home Missions is present there as well, and two posts of
this kind have already passed into the care of a Commission for Home
Missions. At one of these places there is now an organized
congregation with a flourishing parish school.

"On the whole, the material that we have come closer to through
our mission work, and on which preaching and school instruction have
been able to have effect, is for the most part mixed from various
elements: partly people who do not understand German — Anglo-Americans
and Scandinavians; partly such as are of German descent but have
received no Christian instruction in the German language and in their
daily dealings make almost or entirely exclusive use of the English
language, although German is not wholly foreign to them; then also
such as understand an English sermon somewhat, but a German one
considerably better; and finally such as can effectively be served only
by German preaching at all.


*) As regards the charge given to the district treasurers, see p. 114.