The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 174

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174

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

we have a vast field for our missionary endeavors
among the patients, aged people, and inmates of
other institutions. The three workers, two mission-
aries and one trained woman worker, last year served
nine institutions regularly and visited patients in
thirty additional hospitals and sanatoria occasionally.
The number of patients in institutions where we do
religious work regularly has recently been unusually
large. At Ancker Hospital, the city and county
hospital in St. Paul, there have been from 750 to
800 patients. The Gillette State Hospital for Crippled
Children is filled to capacity, having 250 children
that receive care and treatment. In addition, there
is a waiting-list of nearly 100 young children. The
Ramsey County Home and Infirmary has 280 in-
mates and chronic patients, who almost all are of
an advanced age, and many of them are not prepared
to face their God if called out of life. At the United
States Veterans’ Hospital, Fort Snelling, Minn., the
number of patients ranges from 550 to 590, and of
these fully 375 are on the visiting-list of one city
missionary. Jor weeks we have had twenty-two and
more on our list of “seriously ill.”

In Minneapolis the conditions are the same: at
the General Hospital 400 patients, at the University
Hospital more than 300 ill people. At Parkview
Sanatorium and Bethany Home for Girls our Minne-
apolis city missionary has open doors for our soul-
saving work. In all these institutions and many
others which should be visited regularly by our three
workers many more patients and inmates should
receive regular spiritual care, instruction, counsel,
and comfort. It is impossible to reach them all.

The reader will have a vision of the splendid
opportunitices we have in the two largest cities of
the Lutheran Northwest when we state that the
number of hearers in 341 services in public institu-
tions exceeded 11,330. There were baptized 21 adults,
57 infants; there were confirmed 17 adults, 9 young
people; 208 people were communed privately. Periods
of instruction for baptism or confirmation were 274,
and persons instructed (total) were 594. In 27 meet-
ings of Bible classes the total attendance of nurses
and ex-service men was 638. Bedside and cell visits
made numbered 5,775 and home calls 539.

_ he Lutheran City Mission Society of the Twin

Cities consists of congregations of the Synodical Con-

_ ference in the Twin Cities. Regular financial sup-

“port is received from the District mission boards of

the Missouri Synod and of the Wisconsin Synod.
The work was begun in the fall of 1922.

A. E. Frey, City Missionary,
in Ev. Luth. Herald,

A Strange Discovery.

It was a most wonderful discovery that the
French explorer Captain Bertrand made in Central
Africa a number of years ago. He made the dis-
covery between the great Congo and the wonderful
Zambezi. And what do you suppose he discovered in
that wild, heathen country? This, that there is
a living Savior and that this living Savior was also
his Savior.

You wish to know how all this came about? Let
me tell you.

Captain Bertrand was a wealthy man and could
well afford to spend his time in travel; but ordinary
traveling did not appeal to him; he much preferred
to explore unknown regions, such as the wild parts
of Central Africa. While exploring the country lying
between the Congo and Zambezi rivers, he heard
of a remarkable man of whom the natives spoke only
in accents of reverence and love. He was told that
before this remarkable man had come there, the
people had practised cannibalism and had delighted
in the perpetration of every kind of cruelty. But
this man, the informers claimed, had changed the
lions into lambs.

All this greatly interested Bertrand, and as
a real explorer he decided to sound these rumors to
the bottom. He proceeded to the capital of the
Barotse tribe, where the aged Missionary Coillard
lived. It was a Saturday when he arrived, and on
the following day he was to be given an opportunity
to make his observations.

On the next day, a Sunday, he went to church.
It was a very plain building, as primitive as could
be, and built of clay and wickerwork. But the real
beauty of a church was there —a large audience,
numbering about 700 hearers. Bertrand was given
a place in the chancel. Hardly had he taken his seat
when a tall, strong man took a seat at his side and
joined in singing the hymns with a loud, but pleasant
voice. After the service, Bertrand inquired who the
man was that had sat at his side, and he was told

' that it was King Lewanika himself. Once a whole-

sale murderer, a cruel tyrant, and a bloodthirsty
savage, he was now a man who had submitted him-
self with all his people to the easy yoke of the Gospel
of Jesus.

This made a deep impression on our explorer-
He sought for the cause of this change, the hidden
power by whose means Coillard had brought about
this miracle. And then—in God’s own Word —
he met Jesus, the risen Savior. That was a wonderful