# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1905_S89
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

11th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1905. 89

Estonian and Latvian Mission.

"It falls to the Committee for the Estonian and Latvian Mission, for
the second time, to report on the mission among the Estonians and
Latvians undertaken by the Reverend Synod in 1899.

"As this is now to be done in what follows, your committee begs
leave first to give thankful remembrance to the mercy of God, which
has also presided over this mission — relatively small though it is, yet
certainly important — throughout its second triennium of existence.
The precious Gospel has, in the field of this mission too, proven itself a
power of God among the Estonians and Latvians, who are not related
to us in language but who nevertheless confess with us that same one
precious faith; it has proven a good seed that has already borne fruit
and, according to God's promise, will certainly bear more in the future.
And the fact that God has assigned it to our dear Synod in particular,
above others, to be allowed to scatter this good seed, his seed, ought
rightly move us to thankfulness toward God and to renewed zeal in this
blessed work.

"In order now to give the Reverend Synod some insight into this
mission and an overview of the missionaries' activity, the committee
ventures to submit the following.

"In 1902 the Reverend Synod resolved to call a second missionary
for the western half of the immense territory, which comprises all the
states west of Illinois as well as the whole of northwestern Canada.

"Pastor Sillak, at that time serving the German mission at
Josephsburg, Can., was called to devote part of his energy to the
service of the Estonian and Latvian mission, and the Synod granted
him a salary, or supplement to his existing salary, of $300.00 a year.
This provided at least makeshift help for the western territory, while
the eastern territory remained, as before, with Pastor Rebane, our long
and faithfully serving senior missionary. Following a petition made to
the committee by a larger conference in Wisconsin, which was better
acquainted with the situation than the committee living far away, the
so-called Wisconsin Colony was, in the fall of that same year, after
consulting the Reverend General *Präses* [president], assigned to the
eastern territory instead.

"But still in the course of that same year it became apparent that it
served neither the German mission nor ours for one missionary to
devote his energy to both missions, or rather his