The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 117

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

117

as being very grateful for the institute and testified
that it had helped them greatly in their work.

We were much pleased to hear these expressions
of satisfaction on the part of the teacher-students
and could not but feel that as long as such a spirit
dwelt in our mission-workers, God would not with-
hold His blessing.

In other parts of our extensive colored field the
teachers of our mission-schools attend a session of
summer-school for a period of several weeks. Since
these summer-schools have been brought into exis-
tence, the teaching in our mission-schools has greatly
improved. Parents, teachers, and pupils are seeing
the great benefit of these summer-schools for
teachers.

We are sure that it affords our readers great
pleasure to hear of this desire on the part of our
mission-teachers to become more and more pro-
ficient in their blessed labors, and we are also cer-
tain that the friends of our Colored Missions will
ask God to bless His workers richly in their prepa-
ration and labors. F.J.L.

Often a- Hard’ Struggle.

. We have recently again confirmed an appreciable
number of colored children and adults in Louisiana.
In New Orleans alone during the past two months
more than‘fifty’have knelt-at:the Lord’s altar and
promised faithfulness to theit,God and Savior.

- Many of the readers of these lines, I am sure,
have not the slightest idea what a hard struggle
confronts many of those who have been confirmed
to remain faithful to God and to the Lutheran
Church. You who are reading this may by God’s
grace have a Lutheran relationship. Your father
and mother, your brothers and sisters, your aunts
and uncles, your nieces and cousins, are all Lu-
therans. Day by day you may associate with
Lutherans, with persons who rather encourage than
discourage you to continue to hold fast what you
have received in your Lutheran church and school
and confirmation instruction. But this is not the
case with many of our newly confirmed. Many of
them have no Lutheran relatives; their relatives
are Catholics, Methodists, or Baptists, who often
try to induce them to leave the Lutheran Church.
And frequently they live under the same roof with
such relatives. Of all those who have been con-
firmed during the past two months I know of but
two who have only Lutherans in their homes.

A year ago, to give you a concrete example,

a girl — we shall call her Mae — was confirmed in
one of our Lutheran churches. She is a fine little
girl, in whose heart the Savior dwells, whom she
learned to know in our Lutheran school and church.
And she loves the Word of her Savior. But she has
a relationship which is partly Catholic and partly
Baptist and Methodist. This conglomeration of
denominations was found under that same roof
which was her home. I shall not attempt to de-
scribe her struggle with her home folks when she
sought to gain her parents’ consent to permit her
to join the Lutheran Church, nor will I make an
attempt to describe the awful struggle she had after
she was confirmed. While her home folks already
before her confirmation sought to dissuade her from
joining our Lutheran Church, they now, after her
confirmation, tried almost daily to make her break
the vow she had made at the Lutheran altar. True,
she was always told that she might do as she pleased,
but she was given to understand that her father
and mother would be much more pleased if she
would quit the Lutherans.

We cannot praise God enough for the work that
He wrought in Mae’s heart by His Word and His
Spirit. Mae remained faithful and steadfast and
is a good little member of our church to this day,
and what is more, now also her mother and her
brothers and sisters have joined our church. God
be praised!

One Sunday —it was some time after Mae’s
confirmation — her mother said: “Mae, I’m going
with you to your church. ‘I want to see for myself
whether your church is really as good as you say
it is”? And she really went, and Mae’s brothers
and sisters went along with her. O the joy that
filled Mae’s heart when for the first time her
mother walked at her side as she was going to her
church! On the day of her confirmation she had
walked to the Lutheran church all alone, and in
church none of her relatives heard the vow she
made and the blessing pronounced upon her. But
now her mother was with her, she who had de-
spised the Lutheran Church and so often tried to
persuade her to fall away from it. Mae’s joy was
great, and her joy was to be increased that very day.

That Sunday was to be a day of great blessing
for Mae’s mother and brothers and sisters. The
warm greeting they received, the beautiful Lutheran
hymns that were sung, the prayers that were spoken,
the Word of God that was preached, all was so
different from what they had in their church, every-
thing was so inspiring, the Gospel so reassuring,
that they resolved then and there that this would