# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S65
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

of the Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America. 1902. 65

namely: number of souls 21, communicants 8, voting members 2, pupils in the Sunday school 65."

It is interesting to hear what Missionary Bakke has reported about the fruits of his mission work at his new station Monroe in the "Miſſions⸗Taube" [Mission Dove] (June 1902): "At the request of those who had been won, the missionary decided to spend a whole week among them, in order to instruct them further and to found a congregation. Pastor Schütz of Salisbury was also present for a few days and helped out with some sermons. At noon the people stopped their work, and with the catechism in hand they came afternoons and evenings regularly to instruction and to the sermon. The services usually lasted 2½ hours, but the hearers were attentive, and it was a joy to instruct them. The six chief parts have been gone through with them, explained and examined by question. Although these services were intended first of all for the candidates for baptism and confirmation, others came too, followed the instruction attentively and so also learned the way of salvation. On Palm Sunday 12 persons presented themselves for holy baptism and 15 for confirmation. Some are still in instruction. Is it not so, a fine fruit of the scattered seed of the Word. First (Rev. S. W.) Hampton and his wife made the holy vow to remain true to the triune God, his Word and the confession of the Lutheran Church to death. Hampton is an old man of 70 years and his wife a few years younger; both are gray, but still vigorous and active. Long, long have the two groped about in the darkness of error; at the evening of their life the light has dawned upon them by God's great grace. No wonder that tears of joy, of thanks and of victory ran down their cheeks. Then the others followed; 27 stood around the missionary, great and small, and made the vow of fidelity to the King of Glory, who was invisibly in our midst. It was a picture that the missionary will never forget. After the afternoon service, at which the Lord's Supper was celebrated for the first time, a meeting was held in which the 27 organized themselves into a congregation under the name 'Bethlehem,' elected officers and attended to other business. After the missionary had preached once more before a full house, he went home with praise and thanks to God for the undeserved blessing which he had laid on his slight labor, tired but content." (p. 42.) "The works of the Lord are great; sought out of all them that have pleasure therein": this applies here too, to this glorious mission fruit in Monroe, N. C.

Another picture. "In these days, when for the Honorable Synodical Conference accounts and figures going into detail are again being compiled quite exactly on the Negro Mission," writes Missionary Joh. C. Schmidt of Greensboro, N. C., "it is certainly only