# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1905_S99
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

11th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1905. 99

...for the past year 1904 reads as follows: 1 congregation, 1 preaching station, 144 souls, 27 communicant and 8 voting members, 1 school, at which the missionary and various assistants have worked over the last three years, 30 schoolchildren, 8 baptized (including 2 adults), 2 confirmed (both adults), 86 communicants (5 private confession, 81 general confession), 5 married couples, 7 buried. — At Red Springs, services are held regularly on Sunday morning and catechism class in the afternoon; on weekdays there are Passion services, a singing hour, and a meeting of the women's society, at which likewise something from God's Word is presented or read aloud for instruction and edification. Collection-bag offerings are also taken up at the services, the proceeds of which cover the congregation's smaller needs. Conditions in this congregation are becoming more and more similar, the longer it goes on, to those in our white congregations. But it is unfortunately also true that not everything in this small congregation is wheat, and that a good deal of weed keeps showing itself again and again. Our missionary especially has cause to complain of the unreliability of some of the male members. In the Indian mission too, we find on the whole that not much more can be done with the older generation; we must therefore place our hope all the more on the youth who are growing up under the influence of God's Word in our school.

"It is all the more to be lamented that we have not yet succeeded, to this day, in securing a dedicated teacher for this school again. After it pleased God the Lord, in January 1903, to take our teacher O. W. Volkert, after only 4½ months of service, by a blessed death into His heavenly kingdom, we have, despite the most earnest efforts, still not succeeded in getting another teacher. For the whole 2½ years we have had to make do with assistance that was at times very meager and of the most varied kind — for months with somewhat better-educated Indian girls, who, however, were by no means equal to the task. At present we have a student from Springfield who works faithfully and skillfully, but whom we must give up again at the end of the school year. Whether the Reverend Assignment Commission can this time give consideration to our call, again sent to it? God grant it!

"Probably the greatest expense at Red Springs is caused by the school there, because we are obliged to feed, house, and in part even clothe the greater number of the schoolchildren. We do this by having these children