# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1884_S81
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1884. 79

was a matter of filling the school again, in order to draw the adults to the services. As early as November 1882 the missionary reported that the services were attended "fairly well" and for the most part by the same persons. In the school there were at the same time 68 pupils. In March 1883 the missionary reported that not only the Sunday services but also the Passion services were attended "well," after he had diligently made house visits among the individual families. The number of pupils in the weekday school had risen again to 90. Until then the missionary had also kept school. Since, however, he could not possibly devote enough time to house visits and the preparation of sermons alongside school-keeping, the Commission had to give ear to the missionary's requests and to be concerned about the speedy calling of a schoolteacher. The Commission called several times without success and, in order to afford the missionary at least some small relief, was compelled to engage coloured assistant women teachers for a time. At last it succeeded, in the person of Mr. Selz, a pupil of the Springfield Seminary, in obtaining a permanent help for the school. Mr. Selz has worked in the school with great faithfulness from December 1883 until now. Yet the missionary also still took part in the work in the school. The state of things at the Little Rock station is on the whole a satisfactory one. No mass conversions are to be reported, but individual souls have always been added to the congregation. There also shows itself in individual converts a lively zeal to save others too by confessing the saving truth. As far as the state of the mission can be expressed in figures, the following is to be reported: In the weekday school there were 80 to 116 children; 80–86 were instructed on Sundays in the catechism and Bible history. In 1883, 6 adults were received into the congregation; 5 adults received instruction this year. 11 older children are in confirmation instruction. The small congregation numbers 37 souls and 15 communicants. — When the foregoing had already been written, the shattering news came that the missionary of this station, after a fortnight's illness with nervous fever, was called away from the Lord by death on 19 July. Precisely in this death too we feel keenly how wonderful the Lord's ways are. We had believed that we needed this man, who was truly a Negro missionary with delight and love and who, at his last visit to St. Louis about two months before his death, said that he wished no other field of labour than among the Negroes, for Little Rock. The mission has been struck a heavy blow by the death of the departed. If the labourers in the Lord's vineyard are few at all, there are still fewer who would be willing to work among the Negroes. We look up to the Lord. He alone can grant us help.