# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1879_S36
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 36 —

College at St. Louis and, after his return, the student Mr. H. Frincke from the same place were assigned as assistants at a salary of $30.00 per month. Now your Commission has called a permanent teacher for the mission school in Little Rock in the person of Mr. E. W. J. Jeske of the teachers' seminary at Addison, Ills. A salary of $40.00 monthly has provisionally been set for him. Since the space of the church room could not hold the number of children in the school, it had to be enlarged by removing the partition that separated the two rooms, hitherto used as the missionary's dwelling, from the church room. In order now to provide a dwelling for the missionary and his family soon to be founded, your Commission found itself obliged to rent a small house for $10.00 per month. A school examination held at the close of the school year gave our missionary and his assistant much joy. To improve the church singing, Teacher Hattstädt gives the school children singing lessons every Saturday. Missionary Berg has so far baptized in Little Rock 32 children and 12 adults, in all 44 baptized. 15 persons, mostly adults, have been confirmed; 28 persons have so far been received into the congregation as members, of whom, however, 9 have unfortunately fallen away again. A tenth, who had likewise fallen away, has returned repentant. The highest number of children in the school was 138.

"In Mobile, Ala., where the dear brethren had maintained the Sunday school for a long time even after the death of the late Pastor Both, it finally had to be given up, because the opinion already expressed by Pastor Both was confirmed, that it is impossible to carry on mission successfully without a missionary of its own. We unfortunately could not hold out the prospect of the early appointment of one in Mobile. Yet the instruction given and the Lutheran books distributed will not remain without fruit for eternity.

"In December of last year the Evangelical Lutheran congregation at Sherman, Texas, offered its church property to the Commission for sale for the purposes of the Negro Mission. For it was so heavily in debt that the congregation could not possibly keep it; and since there was great danger that the fine property would fall into the hands of the Romanists, the congregation preferred to preserve it for the Lutheran Church by sale to the mission. Your Commission then commissioned Pastor Berg in Little Rock to travel to Sherman and give an exact report. He believes that Sherman would be a favourable field for our mission, because a considerable Negro population is found in the region with as yet few Negro churches. The congregation's property, consisting of a building lot (50 x 140 feet) and a well-appointed large frame church with a tower (24 x 40 feet), which is encumbered with $1084.90, the congregation wanted to leave to us on our taking over this