# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1896_S47
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] of North America. 1896. 47

Business Proceedings.*)

Negro Mission.

The Commission for the Negro Mission [*Negermission*, the period's term] had submitted the following report, which was read by Pastor C. F. W. Sapper:

Tenth Report of the Commission for the Negro Mission of the "Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America".
(For the period from August 1894 to July 1896.)

Two years have again passed since our last report, and in these two years also your Commission has carried out, on behalf of the Reverend Synodical Conference, among the Negroes of this country, the missionary command given by Christ to Christendom, to proclaim the Gospel to all nations, so far as this was possible with the means at its disposal. We therefore take the liberty of submitting the following report, as our duty, on this our missionary activity.

This time too we may joyfully boast to the glory of God: the LORD has been kind to us and has let His countenance shine upon us, so that our labor has not been in vain in the LORD, and through our poor work many a soul has been converted from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to the living God. There are, to be sure, peculiar shortcomings and defects in our Negro congregations, and yet everyone who has gained a closer insight into them will have to confess, to the glory of God, that in few of our white congregations, for example, is Luther's Small Catechism recited by the young people with more certainty and accuracy, as indeed there is probably little difference to be found at all between our Negro congregations and many of our white congregations.

With heartfelt thanks to God we can also report that our mission workers during the last two years have been able, with few exceptions, to attend to their office in health. Only the state of health of Missionary Burgdorf was so shattered a year ago that several physicians gave their opinion that he should leave New Orleans altogether. Since he had already repeatedly had to take leave in order to restore his broken health a little, we now saw ourselves compelled to grant him leave until his health should be fully restored and to let him move away from New Orleans altogether. On the advice of the physicians he betook himself to the mountains of Tennessee, to Wartburg. There, by God's grace, he found recovery, and in the month of May of this

*) Reported by the assistant secretary, Pastor F. S. Bünger (Hamel, Ill.).