# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1892_S43
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1892. 43

$1500.00 could have been built, but, through the prudence and practical skill of our missionary, came to only $700.00. The number of souls here is already 78, of whom 34 are communicants; the Sunday school has 106 and the weekday school 54 children; contributions about $50.00. At the invitation of other Negroes Missionary Schooff preaches every Sunday also in Keysville, and enjoys a large audience. This station is the first that owns a parsonage and has already laid out a cemetery (*Gottesacker*, "God's acre"). Pastor C. Obermeyer visited this station in the course of this summer and was able to make this gratifying report about it.

IV. Springfield, Illinois.

Missionary H. S. Knabenschuh has labored here for four years. The station owns a very pretty church with an attached schoolroom, worth $5000. — The work has not had quite the progress hoped for, yet the number of souls is 100, the number of communicants 41, of pupils in the Sunday school 65. The weekday school unfortunately had to be suspended for a time.

V. Concord, North Carolina,

is the newest and most extensive field that God has opened to our mission work, within the last year. There, about eight years ago, four Negro pastors, under the presidency of a certain Pastor Kountz, had joined together into a synod under the name Alpha Synod. When the president died, the remaining three found themselves helplessly orphaned. The most prominent among them, Phifer, however, read of the Lutheran Negro Mission of the Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] and now wrote to the Reverend General President H. C. Schwan, asking that he take steps so that the Lutheran Negro mission in his state might come into safe Lutheran hands; they were unable, he said, to maintain and build it. The commission therefore, on receiving word of this, sent the missionaries Bakke and Burgdorf to travel through the field and report on it. Since the report was extremely favorable, and we had long wished to take up the Negro mission also among the rural Negroes, the commission resolved to send Missionary Bakke into this new field. In August 1891 he moved there and took up residence in Concord, N. C. God has given him an open door. Neither he nor the commission regrets having taken this step. God has entrusted a great work to us here. Pastor Obermeyer, on behalf of the commission, recently made a tour of inspection in this region to get to know its conditions, prospects and needs at first hand, and returned from this journey filled with great hope. — Missionary Bakke has fixed stations in Concord and Reimerstown. Under his special oversight and instruction stand the three Negro pastors, among whom Phifer proves himself the most gifted, one who will yet become a thoroughly useful laborer in the Lord's vineyard.