The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1914, Page 85

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the fall, they said, “That is wrong.

The Lutheran Pioneer.

85

ee ——————————

well imagine with what glad heart the missionary
told this poor penitent about Jesus and the forgive-
ness gained for all sinners.

At first the natives would not believe that the
missionaries were human beings, but regarded them
as some kind of spirits. Though the missionaries
tried to convince them again and again that they
were real flesh and blood, it was a long time be-
fore all doubts vanished. ‘hey liked to hear the
story of creation, but when they were told about
Your grand-
parents may have been bad, but ours were good.
You white people may have a bad heart, that is
nothing to us; we are black people and have in-
herited customs different from those of your parents.
Nor were our first parents made out of clay, but

the great Spirit made them grow out of the.

ground.” All arguments seemed to be useless.
What finally convinced them that the white mis-
sionaries were human beings was the birth of the
first white child. ‘The advent of this first baby
created a great commotion. Almost day and night
the people crowded around to get a glimpse of
the wonderful little creature. And though the
white baby was lacking much which they thought
desirable, though its nose and ears in their estima-
tion were far too small, yet the natives were now
ready to say, “Now Hoffmann is a lalu tamo, a

real human being.”

Finally, after the faithful labors of six long
years, the first convert could be baptized in 1893.

Since then the work has progressed slowly, but

surely. ‘The number of missionaries has beeen in-
creased, and the number of converts has grown
from year to year, thus proving that the Gospel
of Christ is also the power of God for the be-
nighted and degraded Papuans. The horrors of

- cannibalism are passing away, temperance and in-

dustry are spreading apace, and the war drums,
which twenty-five years ago were beating their
weird music continually, are growing silent. ‘The
dense shroud of heathen superstition which for-
merly smothered the energies of the race has been
rent in many places and torn away to a large degree.

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To Our Colored Lutherans.

Out of great love to God and for the spiritual

and temporal welfare of the negroes of the South, -

and the North, too, for that matter, the Evan-

 gelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North

America, which held its biennial sessions at Mil-
waukee, Wis., August 12—18, resolved to erect a
girls’ dormitory at Greensboro, N. C., said build-
ing to cost three thousand dollars. Now, for this
generous resolution we heartily thank the members
of Synodical Conference, and all who were instru-
mental in bringing it about; and we hope that
soon the building will be erected. As the case
stands now, our good Lutheran fathers and mothers
have no Iutheran boarding-school’ to which they
can send their daughters, not even those of our
missionaries who have daughters old enough to
send to a boarding-school. We need good, strong,
Christian young women as teachers to help rescue
our race from the bondage of gross ignorance and
soul-destroying superstition, and set them in the
liberty and light of God’s Word. This great need
cannot be supplied, however, unless we. have some
place to train these young women teachers. Now
that we are assured of a building, a place to send
our girls, we can show our appreciation in no better
way than by helping to erect this building.

We are promised a three thousand dollar struc-
ture, but as you know, dear reader, we cannot get
a very large building for that sum, and in the
course of a few years we shall need more room,
and then that will mean an extra expense, loss
of time, and, perhaps, the loss of several valuable
young women. Now, since we are going to build,
why can we not put our hands in our pockets, and
contribute enough money to erect a large and hand-
some building, one that will answer ‘all our needs,
one that will be modern in every respect? We have
in our mission 1,145 communicant members, and
if each communicant member would give $5, we
would have $5,725, and this, added to the original
three thousand, would give us a beautiful and well-
equipped building costing $8,725.. But the greatest
beauty about it would be that we could say with
pride: “We laid the most brick in that building,
and we did’it in appreciation of the work which
God is doing for us through the Synodical Con-
ference.’ As yet we have no building of which
we can boast that we really helped to build; now
here is the golden opportunity knocking at your
pocketbooks; open, and let if in.

Now I know that most of us are poor, and
cannot afford to part with $5 all in one lump,
but where there is a will, there is also a way.
Whenever we go to buy anything that costs a great
deal of money, we generally do ‘not pay for it
all at once, but we pay a dollar or more down,