# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1892_S39
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1892. 39

rejoices. Behold once more the divine power of the unobtrusive but heavenly little mustard seed! —

The same wondrous way of God is revealed again in the work of Missions. After this work had rested almost entirely for centuries, and God, before the final judgment of the last day, willed that His Gospel be proclaimed among all peoples as a testimony of His love and of the salvation of sinners, He chose two men from the Lutheran Church to be missionaries and sent them, under the mockery of believing Christians, like sheep into the midst of the wolves of the heathen Hindus. And through these two men, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, He planted the garden of God of holy mission, whose blessed boughs and branches now cover the whole globe and give light, comfort, peace and life where otherwise the shadow and darkness of death reigned. Through missions the Holy Scripture has since been translated into more than 200 languages, and the Gospel is now proclaimed to more than 200 heathen peoples. The heavenly little mustard seed has once more proved its wondrous divine power!

Our Negro Mission [*Negermiſſion*, the period's term] too, on whose progress and standing we today render to the honorable Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] its due biennial report, is such a wonder of the wisdom and grace of our God. For how small and mustard-seed-like was its beginning, what opposition it has met, and still meets, among a part of our Christians, and yet what a glorious work it has become, what a tree of blessing has sprung from it! Already it stretches its fruit-bearing branches over a large part of the southern states of our country. Fifteen years ago the honorable Synodical Conference resolved to take up the mission among the Negroes of this country, and appointed a commission to carry it on, at whose head it placed the unforgettable Pastor F. Bünger of St. Louis. Already one year later the first missionary, F. Berg, reported that, at the urgent request of a grown Negro, he had been permitted to give him holy Baptism one hour before his death, and so to help him to a joyful and blessed hour of death. What has become of the small beginning in these 14 years? Our mission now counts 7 missionaries, 3 Negro pastors, one Negro teacher, 11 stations, 6 white schoolteachers, 9 weekday schools with 705 pupils, 13 Sunday schools with 935 children, 437 communicants and 777 souls. And these congregations, although they consist of the poorest Negroes, have in the last two years already collected some $2000 in contributions among themselves. In property the mission possesses 8 churches, with 2 more under construction, 2 two-story school buildings and a parsonage. — Is this not a glorious success, a rich blessing of God? When we consider how slow the progress of mission work is in the distant heathen lands, how often missionaries in the same time do not win half as many souls; two missionaries on the South Sea