# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1882_S91
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 91 —

services was procured. Our mission could not remain long in the premises first rented. After a long search Missionary Wahl at last found an old frame building which had served a Negro society as a meeting place, and it was possible to rent it for the purposes of the mission. We believed we still had to refrain from carrying out the proposal to procure a property of our own. Toward the end of the year 1880 the number of pupils in the weekday school had risen to over 50. Missionary Wahl charged the children a small tuition of 25 cents monthly, which, however, was paid more voluntarily than by any fixed rule and served to cover incidental expenses for rent, fuel and the like.

With this number of children the work — weekday school, Sunday school, preaching, house visits — became too much for Missionary Wahl. He asked for the appointment of a teacher. But since no teacher was to be found, and a daughter of the undersigned, who already had experience in school teaching, happened to be staying in Mobile in the Wahl family, she was called as teacher to the mission school. She accepted the call on condition that it be valid only until Easter. But since the number of children had not decreased with the coming of spring, as had been feared, and the Commission knew of no teacher for Mobile: Missionary Wahl, with the approval of the Commission, engaged a young man from the German Lutheran congregation there as assistant teacher. Two women and a boy, who were still unbaptized and without Christian instruction, gave the missionary special joy. He instructed and baptized them. In particular one of the women, Mrs. Smith, makes the impression of a serious Christian, who is joyful and thankful in faith in Christ. In the spring of 1881 the undersigned stayed a day in Mobile and convinced himself that Missionary Wahl was working with great faithfulness and zeal, and that his work was not in vain with many of the children either.

In the summer of 1881 Missionary Wahl was seized by a head ailment, which obliged him to seek rest and healing for a time. He went to Chicago and underwent a longer cure there. After some months he was able to go back to work somewhat strengthened but not completely healed. Unfortunately his head ailment worsened again, and it became more and more evident that the exertions which the office of a Negro missionary brings with it exceeded his strength. When therefore in December 1881 he received a call from the German Evangelical Lutheran congregation in Mobile, which had become pastorless, the Commission advised him to accept it.

Now Mobile was again without a missionary. The Commission also did not know whence to call one; moreover it was of the opinion that Mobile was not a favorable field of work for our mission; for on the one hand the