# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1926_S23
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. 23

tions the attendance at Communion has been very
good, Kings Landing shows the largest total with
320 guests. This congregation, with a membership
of 63 communicants, had more guests in 1925 at

Negro Dwelling in the Alabama Black Belt.

Holy Communion than any congregation in the
entire mission during 1924, excepting St. Paul’s,
New Orleans. Other congregations have as good
an average. Then, too, the spiritual life of our
congregations may rightly be judged by the

Contriputions. — Inclusive of the money re-
eeived at Luther College, the total for the field in
the “Cotton State” is $8,218.22; exclusive of said
money it amounts to $6,396.21, an average of ap-
proximately $10 per member annually. And the
Black, Belt people are not numbered among those
rich in this world’s goods. Tere again —in giv-
ing — Kings Landing led the field with a grand
total of $664.90, by far the largest sum ever brought
together by one congregation in Alabama. Look at
the figures and see how liberally other congrega-
tions, some of them small, have contributed for the
Savior and His Church. The outstanding collec-
tion of the year was the Africa collection, gathered
in the fall of the year. This collection totaled
close to $1,400. The following figures show the
steady growth in contributions during the past
five years: —

TCE aes ape Seer $2,539.62
SEL) Em eine ly 3,634.76
1923 fener rr ii oe eae 4,342.56
1924 eRe arcen Sacre 6,349.44
1926 vere tectn no tea 8,218.22

Scrroors snp SunpDAy-scHoors. — The enrol-
ment in our schools during the fall term of 1925
is the largest in the history of Black Belt Lutheran-
ism. Very close to 1,500 children are now sitting
at the feet of Christian teachers learning the “one
thing needful.” Streams of blessings which no

man can begin to estimate flow from these schools
into the spiritual darkness and ignorance of Black
Belt cabins which dot the plantations. Attendance
at school is still not near what it should be, but it
is improving. In our Sunday-schools we have en-
rolled 1,404 scholars, of which number possibly 500
are adults—-among them some very old people.

_A banner has been offered the best Sunday-school,

and this has helped to stimulate interest. Instead
of, as formerly, using back numbers of Sunday-
school literature, we get our literature from the
publishers direct; and this has evidently helped
the work in our Sunday-schools immensely. A good
number of lay people act as teachers in this depart-
ment of church-work.

Our Lurmer CoLLecre now numbers 45 stu-
dents, 34 of which are in the College Department.
Eleven of the scholars attend our local parochial
school on the college campus, though housed in the
dormitory and under the care of our matron.

MiscELLaNEous. — There were on the field
13 deaths, only about S$ per 1,000. Our pastors
united in wedlock 6 couples. ‘Two new congrega-
tions were organized, and aside from the erection

Superintendent Geo. A. Schmidt.

of our college plant, three chapels with schools and

one parochial school without a chapel were erected —

during the year. For the first time in the history
of our Colored Missions a chapel has been erected
without any help from outside sources. We refer
to the