The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1908, Page 39

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

39

NOTES.

STATISTICS oF OuR CoLorED Missions. — From
the Statistical Year Book of the Missouri Synod,
recently issued, we take the following statistics of
our missions among the colored people for the year
1907: There are 30 mission stations — 20 in North
Carolina, 5 in Louisiana, 3 in Virginia, 1 in Ili-
nois, and 1 in Missouri. At the close of the year
32 laborers were at work in this mission field —
10 white pastors and professors, 4 colored pastors,
6 white and 7 colored teachers, 3 white students as
assistants, and 2 colored lady teachers. The mis-
sion numbered 1908 souls, 845 communicant mem-
bers, and 228 voting members. 1386 children at-
tended the parochial schools. Immanuel College
at Greensboro, N. C., with 4 professors and 1 assist-
ant teacher, had an enrollment of 74 students, 3 of
them studying for the ministry; Luther College at
New Orleans, with 4 professors, was attended by
48 students, 4 of them preparing for the ministry.
During the year, $30,917.91 were received for the
mission treasury, the colored congregations con-
tributing $1883.55.

_Mernerrin, VA.— Our mission station at Me-
herrin, Va., is still vacant. The people, to their
great joy, are regularly supplied with preaching
twice a month by the professors of Immanuel Col-
lege in Greensboro. The Sunday school is kept up
by the members of the congregation, both young
and old attending the instructions in’ Catechism
and Bible History. Their earnest prayer is soon
to have a resident pastor to take charge of church
and school.

HEATHEN Musstons at Home. = Speaking
about “heathen missions at home,” an aged pastor,
“a friend of all mission work,” writes: “Whatever
we may do for the heathen abroad, we dare not
overlook the needy millions of colored people at
horhe, who have come out of the house of bondage
as Israel of old, demoralized and sorely in need of
the uplifting hand and saving mercy of Christ.”

A Nosie Conression.— Our ‘Lutheran. breth-
ren in Australia are doing .a.blessed mission work
among the native blacks on’ the western coast of
that continent. It is often difficult to. keep the
blacks at the mission station. Recently, when many
left, one of them stayed and declared himself will-
ing to work through the harvest for Jess than the
missionary had offered. He nobly said: to the mis-

sionary: “I am not here to make money, I am here
to learn to know my Savior. I love my Savior and
I do not work for an earthly master only, but I like
to please my Savior, even if you do not see me.
Money cannot make me happy, for we soon must
die. I like going to school because there I Tena to
read my Savior’s Word.”

Correct. — A Bishop of the A. M. E. Church
writes: “What our people need above’ all else is
simple, solid instruction in the Holy Scriptures.”
Correct! However, that simple, solid: instruction
is given them not in the noisy revival meetings and
wild camp meetings of the A. M. E. Church, but in
the steady, patient teaching of Bible and Catechism
in our Lutheran schools and in the sound doctrinal
preaching of God’s Word in our Lutheran churches.

PRAISE FoR MIssIoNaRIEs. —The late Robert
Louis Stevenson, the famous English writer, after
having come in close personal contact with the mis-
sionaries in the South Seas, and having daily
watched his own Samoans trained under missionary
influence, wrote: “I conceived a great prejudice
against missions in the South Seas, and had no
sooner come there than that prejudice was first re-
duced, and then at last annihilated. Those who
debate against missions have only one thing to do,
to come and see them on the spot. They will see
a great deal of good done; they will see a race
being forwarded in many different directions, and
I believe, if they be honest persons, they will cease
to complain of mission work and its effect.”

A Missionary CuurcH.— Says an exchange:
“A church in Kansas is enjoying the blessing of
being a missionary church. A few years ago it was
not at all prosperous and gave very little for mis-
sions. But it is now supporting its own mission
in India and another among the colored people of
the South.. It also has a local mission which it
maintains, and having thus become a TOE)
church, it is now growing and prosperous.” ‘Tak-
ing an active interest in mission work will not make
a congregation poor and will not hinder its growth,
but will give new life and strength.

Sap Conprtion or WomMEN IN Inpra. — Speak-
ing of the sad condition of heathen women in India,
a missionary writes: “If one becomes a widow at
five, she must live the’ rest of her life in suffering.
All-her- husband’s relatives’ and friends curse her, -