# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1898_S45
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Ev. Luth. Synodical Conference of North America. 1898. 45

For a year now the last three stations have been handed over to Missionary Schütz in Salisbury, who still does mission work there and in Catawba. Finally, Missionary Bakke has to supervise our Negro pastor Phifer in Charlotte, who besides his own station also serves Myersville, where a chapel was built last year. Concerning his newest station he reports as follows: "At Dry School-house the Negroes were weary of the loud, enthusiast services and sought something better. They came to Concord and visited Pastor Bakke, but also a Presbyterian congregation. At first they joined the latter, but lo! after a year this way of doing things displeased them too, and they came to the Lutheran missionary with the request that he take them under his care. Pastor Bakke did so, and just on the Sunday before his departure he organized a congregation, confirmed a large number of adults, and looks into the future of this station with great hopes."

Missionary Schmidt in Greensboro likewise received a chapel in the last year. His congregation numbers 71 souls, his school under Teacher Persson about 100 pupils. In addition he serves Elon College with 45 souls, where his teacher voluntarily kept school during these vacations. The few and poor Negroes of the station in Greensboro have raised $506.46 in two years and now pay $12.00 a month into our mission treasury. Our visitor, Pastor Kretzschmar, who visited the mission in North Carolina this spring, cannot praise enough what love for God's Word and for the Lutheran doctrine and church, what gratitude and love toward their two missionaries, and what zeal in godly conduct he found at this station. With deep amazement and joyful thanks to God he reported on this to the Commission and is ready to report before this Honorable Convention.

From North Carolina we still look up our oldest station, in Meherrin, Va. Missionary Schooff has worked there for eight years. It is a wonderful monument to the faithfulness of Lutheran faith among the Negroes. In the year 1886 the Honorable Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] resolved to let this station, consisting of only seven families, lapse and to have these Negroes moved to Little Rock at our expense. This latter hope could not be fulfilled. But something else happened which no one dared hope: the pure doctrine of the divine Word took such firm hold in the hearts of these few Christians that for two years they held together as a little Lutheran congregation through regular reading services [*Leſegottesdienſte*: services conducted by reading, without a minister] and Sunday school, and at last, upon their persistent pleading, a missionary was sent to them again. And behold, from this small, faithful flock of Christians a Negro congregation has now come into being of 133 souls, with a weekday school of 45 children and a branch school, four miles away, of 35 children. This latter school is kept by a pupil of our missionary. Outwardly, however, this station is in the best condition. It alone has, besides