# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S46
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

46 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

[blessed] heaven. How can we worthily praise and extol God for such grace? "Ah, were every pulse a thanks and every breath a song!" —

Such a feeling of joyful gratitude must also move our heart when we let the fulfillment of the promise of sowing and harvest in our Negro Mission [*Negermiſſion*, the period's term] in the last two years pass before our eyes. Yes, here his word applies to us in the fullest sense: "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are already white for harvest. And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together."

The last two years in our Negro Mission we may call years of gracious visitation by God, our Savior. With the last convention of the Reverend Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] God poured out a new spirit of love and joy for this mission upon our dear Christians, which has revealed itself in manifold and faith-strengthening ways. It had been resolved at that convention to collect, in the course of the next two years, the debt of the mission treasury of $5300 and, for the continuation of the work, to raise $30,000. God our Savior was pleased with these resolutions and spoke his Amen to them. Therefore they have been gloriously carried out. The debts are paid, the promised sum is raised. Our four new stations, Winston, Southern Pines, Dry's Schoolhouse and Mansura, have not only been taken in hand, but, with the exception of Winston, have already received their chapels. Already a gratifying harvest has begun there. The appointment of out-of-town members of the Commission to represent this mission in the respective synods has thus proved excellent. These brethren have greatly raised the interest in this mission. The number of readers of the "Missions-Taube" [Mission Dove] has risen from 16,000 to 20,000, of the "Pioneer" from 4000 to 5000, and a generous income from them has flowed into the mission treasury. The contribution of the Negro congregations in this period amounts, in spite of their great poverty, to $2164.57. In 21 stations with some preaching places or branches our eleven missionaries and eight teachers work among a congregation of nearly 3000 souls, among them 850 communicants. Children in the Sunday school 900, in the weekday school 750. And they work indeed according to the precious promise: "He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life." For our workers in this mission may have glorious experiences of the power of the divine Word. From New Orleans they write: "In earthly things we have two hard years behind us. The two epidemics of yellow fever with the burdensome quarantine regulations, the epidemics of smallpox and measles last winter, have bitter poverty among our Negroes [caused; sentence continues on the next page]