The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1920, Sheet 69

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The Lutheran Pioneer.

teacher of Mount Zion School for thirty-seven years.
Thousands of boys and girls heard from him the
Message of Life, and hundreds of men and women
eall his memory blessed.

Our most extensive field is in North Carolina.
We have no less than 22 congregations in that State.
A very promising field in that State was abandoned,
because a suitable building could not be rented and
several appeals for funds to purchase a building site
were not heeded. It is certainly most deplorable to
think that a strategical place like Wilmington had
to be surrendered by us for the lack of a compara-
tively small sum of money. The largest congrega-
tion in North Carolina is in Concord. This con-
gregation numbers 123 communicant members and
contributed the sum of $1,185 last year. May the
example of Grace Church be followed by our other
congregations. Grace Chureh is worthy of imita-
tion also in other respects.

The attention of the Board was directed to the
Alabama field by Miss Rosa Young five years ago.
We now have twelve mission-stations in this field.
So far, all our Alabama congregations are rural,
but steps are being taken to open the work in Selma,
Birmingham, and Mobile. We have about 400
members in this field and the schools are attended
by almost 1000 pupils.. The promising nature of
this field has aroused the interest of many white
friends, so that it was possible for the Board to
provide this field with a number of chapels and
schools with less than ordinary trouble. IT. J. L.

We Need a Girls’ Dormitory
at Greensboro.

¢

To accommodate the girls that attended Im-
manuel College during the last school-year, the
Mission Board rented two dwellings at-a monthly
expense of $39: ‘The attendance of girls was so
large that both houses were uncomfortably crowded.
Neither one of the dwellings was adapted to the
purposes of a dormitory, and both were situated at
great distances from the college. The girls were
obliged to travel the many blocks from these dor-
mitories to the school daily in all kinds of weather
no less than six times —early in the morning to
the school to attend chapel exercises, then back
home for breakfast, then back to school for the
Morning recitations; again to their homes for din-
_ her, after dinner to school for the afternoon, ete.
- ° Those fully acquainted with the situation say that

67

it will never do to let things go on in this manner
any longer. A dormitory for the girls attending
Immanuel College must be erected on the college
campus. The building site has been selected and
will cost us nothing. The Synodical Conference
already six years ago was convinced of the necessity
of a girls’ dormitory, and passed the resolution that
one be erected. But, alas! though six years have
passed since that resolution was adopted, the funds
necessary to erect an adequate building for the pur-
pose have not been forthcoming. What a pity! And
we need it so much. The need for educated female
teachers is great, so great that important places
liave been left unoccupied because of the want of
teachers. A higher institution, which was offered
the Board as an outright present, could not be ac-
cepted because the necessary teaching force was not
available. At present our Colored Mission has only
two white teachers, and one of these is seventy-five
years old. All the calls of the Board for white
teachers have been declined. The available colored
boys are urgently needed for the ministry. The
great avant of teachers can be supplied in no other
way than by educating colored girls for the work.

And while there has been so great a want of
teachers, the work has greatly increased. The cry
for more schools and for. more teachers has gone
forth incessantly. Four years ago the Mission em-
ployed only 12 female teachers, to-day there are
33 in the service, and still more are needed. Think
of the school at Plaquemine, La., with its 150 pupils
and only one teacher; think of the prosperous school
at Spartanburg, S. C., where the missionary and his
wife were obliged to teach 177 scholars! These are
conditions which should not be tolerated by us. We
can get the female students, but we must provide
suitable living quarters for them. Can we, dare we
hesitate? Let us remember that our Christian day-
schools are the best means of doing successful and
enduring mission-work. Not to provide the nec-
essary workers for our schools will mean the crip-
pling of our mission-work to such an extent that
the writer hates to think of the deplorable conse- —
quences. It would be like crippling the engine of
an ocean liner. Surely our Christians will not per-
mit the blessed work our Colored Mission is doing
to be hindered and crippled just for the lack of
living quarters for those that are willing to be fitted
out to carry on the work. Our good people will
surely furnish the Board with the necessary funds
to build this dormitory, which circumstances make
a crying necessity. FE. J. L.