Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1954, Page 148

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148 Proceedings of the Forty-Third Convention,

St. Paul’s Christian Day School with its kindergarten and seven
grades is taught by Mr. H. Rivers, Mrs. M. Vanderhorst, and Miss
V. Thompson. The enrollment is 152 children, of whom fewer than
one third are Lutheran children. We regret this condition very
much. We have until now not gained many of the non-Lutheran
children, but we have kept them in our school in the hope that
later on some will come to us. We have a real problem in our
school. We just cannot compete with the public schools when it
comes to the secular branches. Our teachers are trying hard, but
we just do not have the equipment which the public schools have.
As a result many Lutheran parents send their children to the
public schools and leave the religious side for the Sunday school
and for the confirmation instruction years. We try to have the
children attending a public school to attend two years of confir-
mation instructions. We succeed in this pretty well.

The congregation has given permission to the pastor also to do
institutional work. The pastor is, therefore, preaching every Sun-
day morning at the Milne Municipal Boys’ Home. Around sixty
colored and ten white boys are in the services. The pastor is the
Protestant chaplain at this Home. There is only one other chap-
lain there, namely, a Catholic chaplain. The Pastor also takes care
of the Lutherans in our Veterans Administration Hospital. He has
been requested by our Armed Services Commission to be their
contact pastor. At this hospital there is not much work. Not many
Lutherans are sent to this hospital, and most of those who are
sent there are Lutherans who have local connections and are taken
care of by: their own pastors.

Toward the end of last year the pastor has been asked by the
Staff of Charity Hospital to conduct a Bible class once a week for
colored TB patients who have requested a Bible class. Our Bible
class hour has seen from 18 to 43 patients. Our average attendance
is 30. How they love the WORD! They drink it in and are happy.
The pastor at present is studying “The Life of Jesus” with them.

Everywhere we go, God is blessing our work. To Him be all
praise and glory! E. H. Witpcruseg, Pastor

St. Paul’s, Mansura, La.

St. Paul’s, Lutherville Community, near Mansura, La., estab-
lished over half a century ago, is the only rural Lutheran congre-~
gation in our Louisiana field.. Fifty years of sound Lutheranism in
this section of the State, where superstition, ignorance, and idolatry
once reigned supreme, has brought untold and innumerable bless~
ings to the Negro race in and around this community. A complete
record of our.Church’s mission activity of reaching out to the lost
and erring souls to save them from darkness and the shadows of
death cannot be accurately attained in this life, but only in yonder
life will the full account be revealed.

Since the establishment of our Lutheran mission here, it is
now entering upon the service of administering the Gospel and
the Sacraments to the fourth generation of Lutherans. Third and
fourth generations of Lutherans are the dependable membership
of the congregation today. Progress in church membership is not
as promising as in the past years, due to the fact that southern
Negroes are moving north constantly where they find employment;