The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1917, Sheet 61

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

_ had turned out in full strength for the joyful, but
also solemn occasion. All were glad that they again
had a pastor, after Pastor Polzin had been called
to another field of labor, and all were especially
glad that their new pastor was to live among them
and personally take charge of their school, and not
to serve them from a distant city. ‘The good women
of the congregation had decorated the church for
the occasion. The service was an impressive one.
In the sermon which the writer preached on 1 Cor.
4, 1. 2, he showed his hearers how the new pastor
‘is to regard himself, how all in the congregation
are to regard him, and what they are to require
of him. After the ordination and installation the
new pastor closed the service with a prayer and the

~benediction. A basket-dinner was served in the
schoolroom adjoining the church.

Our new pastor and missionary at Meherrin is
a graduate of Immanuel College, Greensboro, N. C.,
haying graduated from the Theological Seminary of
that institution this year.
to hope that he will be an efficient and faithful
worker. He will have enough to do. Besides
preaching regularly at Meherrin and teaching the
mission-school there, he will conduct the mission
at Washington, D. C. The Lord has given him

_a strong constitution. He is over six feet tall,
broad-shouldered, and physically “as sound as a
dollar.” He is already thirty-five years of age and
married. His wife, who was formerly a Methodist,
became a Lutheran at the time he left the Baptist
Church and joined the Colored Lutheran congre-
gation at Concord, N. C. From September, 1916,
to May, 1917, she taught the second division of the
mission-school on the college grounds. Pastoral
work and missionary endeavors are no new ex-
periences to Brother Fuller: While studying phar-
macy at Raleigh, N. C., he attended theological
classes at Shaw University of that place, preached
frequently in Baptist churches, and even acted as
supply -pastor to a Baptist congregation. Of
course, he has had much to unlearn and much to
learn. He fully appreciates the grace of God, which
Jed him into the Lutheran Church, the Church of
the pure Word and Sacraments, and made him a
‘minister of the pure Gospel.

Instead of himself writing a sketch of the new
missionary’s life, the undersigned, who was one of

- his teachers at Immanuel College, will append the
brief autobiography written by Brother Fuller for

the undersigned some time ago. It is as follows: —

“I was born on December 9, 1881, at Apex,

We have every reason’

N. C., and am the fourth son of William M. and
Mary Ann Fuller. I finished the public school there
at the age of sixteen, and on November 1, 1898,
entered the Normal Department of Shaw University
at Raleigh, N. C., spent six years in this depart-
ment, and in 1904 began the study of pharmacy in
the Leonard School of Pharmacy, a professional
school connected with Shaw University. I finished
the pharmaceutical course in 1907. In that year,
after having passed a successful examination be-
fore the North Carolina State Board of Pharmacy,
I moved to Salisbury, N. C., and took charge of
a drug store there. During my stay of two years

Rev. John W. Fuller.

or more at Salisbury I formed the acquaintance of ©
Revs. Bakke, J. Ph. Schmidt, W. H. Lash, Stuart
Doswell, and M. N. Carter. The latter and some
professional men persuaded me to open a drug
store of my own at Concord, N.C. From Concord
I went to Charlotte, where I had charge of three
drug stores at the same time. In 1918, I moved
back to Concord, as the drug store in Concord had
become my exclusive property. The late Rev. Henry
Kent, while he was still a student at Immanuel
College, always stopped with me on his way to and
from home in vacations. When he was going to,
or coming from, Immanuel College, he got me
interested in the study of the Lutheran Catechism.
When he was on his way to take charge of the work
in Spartanburg, S. C., in the summer of 1914, he