The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 23

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

23

Working Among the Silent.

The old home missionary was a romantic figure.
There was something truly heroic about his ven-
turing into unknown and untried regions, carrying
the good news of the Gospel to places where it had
never been heard. He was a pioneer in the fullest
sense and often had most exciting experiences.

But the old kind of home missionary passed
away with the settling of the country. Our home
missionaries of to-day, while still finding their lives
filled with rich experiences, have more or less cir-
eumscribed areas in which they work, and there is
but little “roughing it” in the daily routine of most
of them.

However, there is one missionary who still gets
his good share of traveling in our day. This is the
missionary working among the deaf. The Lutheran
Missouri Synod has nineteen ministers thus em-
ployed in this country and Canada. One of these
missionaries has a field extending from Duluth,
Minn., to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, a distance of
‘over a thousand miles. Another one of these mis-
sionaries serves people in Washington, D. C., Ohio,
Kentucky, Alabama, and Georgia. Another, to
mention only one more, preaches in Missouri,
Kansas, and Oklahoma.

Most people do not realize that there are about
80,000 deaf-mutes in our country. In a city of
a hundred thousand persons you would probably
find about sixty to seventy deaf-mutes. In our
larger industrial centers there are hundreds of
people unable to hear and speak. These hundreds
and thousands derive no benefit from the many ordi-
nary church services held every Sunday for men and
women able to hear. The sermons and hymns which
may inspire you who can hear, bring no instruction
and solace to those who sit in unending deepest
silence.

Here the missionary to the deaf-mutes steps in
to help. He travels from city to city, holds services,
and ministers to the deaf wherever he finds them.
There is something singularly touching about these
silent services. Though not a word is spoken by
the preacher, you can see the play of emotion on
the faces of his “hearers,” — rather, spectators.
Though not a sound is heard, yet these deaf-mutes
“sing” our hymns in the sign-language.

The coming of the missionary is always quite an
event in the lives of the silent men and women to
whose wants he ministers. Many of them will come
for miles to attend the services. These services also

give the deaf-mutes an opportunity to satisfy their
social wants, which can only partially be satisfied
by their association with those who hear. In a
measure the deaf, though surrounded by men and
women, live in a world of their own; they are
isolated though living among thousands of their
fellow-men. For this reason they welcome the
opportunity to meet with their own kind and come
many miles both to. these services and to the small
social gatherings which often take place after the

It may seem strange to some of our readers, but
yet it is true, that many of the deaf, though living
in this so-called Christian country, have never
heard of Christ; their Redeemer. Deaf children,
just because they are deaf, are not taken to church

Chapel and Parsonage-of Deaf-Mute Congregation
at Minneapolis, Minn.

as hearing children are, and even if they were, they
would there and in an ordinary religious instruction
period have no opportunity to receive Christian
instruction. Then, too, the parents are not in a
position to impart this knowledge to them. The
result can only be great or total ignorance of the
life-giving truth of the Gospel. Our missionaries
to the deaf tell us that they are often the first to
bring the tidings of the world’s redemption through
Christ to the members of their missions.

It seems strange that parents of deaf children
should not try to learn the sign-language in order
that they might converse with their ehildren; but
experience shows that very few parents take that
trouble. In many instances the deaf child has no
one to associate with in or out of the home, except
in those rare instances when it meets other deaf
children. Our missionaries do a good work in urg-