The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1928, Page 187

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

187

A School in the Far North. — “Several hundred
miles north of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, a school
of thirty-three pupils, taught by a 1928 graduate
of River Forest, was opened this fall, just fourteen
months after the congregation had been organized.
A new log house serves both church and school pur-
poses.” (News Bulletin, Missouri Synod School
Board.) This school is about 500 miles north of the
uttermost boundary of our country.

Genuine Gratitude. — A blind deaf-mute lady
in England praises the goodness of God in a letter
of appreciation for the Lutheran Herald for the
Blind. She writes to the editor as follows: “Dear
Sir: —I return to you my grateful thanks for send-
ing me the Lutheran Herald for the Blind. I think
it is lovely, and I do enjoy the reading of it, as I am
deprived of hearing; but God is good to place His
Word in my hand. Please accept my thanks.” —
The Lutheran Herald for the Blind is published
quarterly in Moon type. It is almost six months
old and reaches approximately 250 blind people.
To date the requests for copies have always exceeded
the supply. — 0. C.S.

An Extensive Inner Mission Work. — ‘The Nor-
wegian Lutheran Church of América conducts nine
homes for the aged, in which over 400 old people
are given loving care. In the eight orphanages con-
ducted by this body 860 homeless children were
cared for last year. This synod has twenty-seven
workers in twenty-one cities of our country carrying
on the work of institutional missions in prisons,
hospitals, and other places. This synod’s Board of
Charities also cares for unfortunate children,
housing, feeding, providing them with work, and

schooling them. This board maintains a nursery in-

Chicago and one in Brooklyn and conducts a summer
camp at Spring Valley, N. Y. Last year the Home-
finding Department took care of 498 children,
among them seventy-four babies. In the three rescue
homes of the synod 245 girls were cared for and,
besides, 210 children. At the Lutheran Deaconess
Hospital in Chicago forty-seven student-deacon-
esses are in training. This hospital cared for almost

* 6,000 patients last year. Another hospital is being

maintained in Brooklyn.
Judicious Locating of Churches. — Dr. Leamer,

- president of the Iowa Synod of the United Lutheran
- Church, is quoted as follows in the News Bulletin

of the National Lutheran Council: “They [Lutheran
churches in some Jowa communities] are not judi-
ciously located, so as to meet the needs of the people.
From where I now stand I can almost see a church

that was begun some fifteen years ago with about
twenty members. They have that to-day. <A pastor
has served them. What he has been doing to occupy
time no one knows, but he is there.... I look in
another direction in this city and see six Lutheran
churches within a radius of eight blocks, and two of
them belong to the same synod. This huddled-up
situation cannot but result in our people in the
suburban sections finding their way into other
denominations .that have carefully located their
churches to meet the needs of their people and ours,
too.” Mission boards should indeed be very careful
in the location of new mission-chapels and schools.

Lutherans in Iowa. — There are 300 Lutheran
congregations in the State of Iowa, with a confirmed
membership of 125,000 and a baptized membership
of more than 200,000. The property owned by
Lutheran congregations in Iowa is valued at
$6,500,000. The membership of the Lutheran
Church has decreased in Iowa during the past ten
years despite the fact that more than 3,000 Lu-
therans have come into the State from foreign lands.
The state institutions of higher learning had the
following Lutheran enrolments: Iowa State Univer-_
sity, 370; Iowa State College, 280; the State:
Teachers’ College, 160. ‘To conserve these young
men and women for their Church constitutes a real
and vital task. At Iowa City, Pastor J. A. Friedrich
is doing successful work among the Lutheran
students, and the Iowa District of the Missouri
Synod has built a fine chapel there for the student —
congregation.

Mission Opportunity! — In New York there are
640,000 people who claim to be Lutherans. Only
140,000 of these are enrolled in the Lutheran
churches of the city. What a mission opportunity
presents itself right here to our Church! No fewer
than 500,000 unchurched Lutherans in one city! —
Here is a challenge which our Church should not
leave unanswered.

“The Lutheran Nurse.” — This is the name of a
new publication, published by the National League
of Lutheran Nurses. The publication is to be help-
ful to nurses, to remind them of their obligations as —
Lutheran nurses, and to make an earnest attempt to
bring all graduate nurses affiliated with the Lu-
theran Synodical Conference into closer union. The
intention of the Lutheran Nurse is to be instru-
mental in organizing groups of Lutheran nurses as
branches of the National Lutheran League of Nurses
in every city with a Lutheran hospital and every
city with a Lutheran institutional missionary. These