nineteen hundred and forty-six - Amazon Web Services

HOME MISSION BOARD 337
midst a great people that needs the Gospel desperately; He has put in our hearts
the great Gospel that these people need; and, He has put in our hands the
material resources needed for giving the Gospel to them. May we not fail now
when the door is open as it has never been before!
We have reason to be encouraged by the progress of our work among these
people here in spite of the fact that the work is still altogether inadequate in
the face of the opportunities. At present, the total membership of the Spanishspeaking
Baptist congregations amounts to approximately one per cent of the
Spanish speaking population of the territory. Possibly as many as five per cent
belong to some evangelical faith. The remainder are about fifty per cent to
sixty per cent nominally Roman Catholic and forty per cent to fifty per cent
nothing at all.
According to the statistics of the Mexican Baptist Convention of Texas,
which is our largest organized group, we have been winning to Christ about
one person for each three church members and baptizing about one to every
nine and one-third members. This is three times as many in proportion as have
been won and baptized in the Southern Baptist Convention during the same
period. This past year, July 1944 to June 1945, our churches reported one
baptism for 8.1 members.
Of course winning and baptizing is only the first link of a long and continuous
chain of experiences. Every Christian must grow and ^win others.
Therefore, we have an intensive educational program.
We undertake to find the people God has called and help them to prepare
themselves for this mission work. Last year we knew of sixty students in our
schools definitely preparing themselves for the work. The Home Mission Board
through the Ida Perle Bell and J. W. Beagle Scholarship Funds was helping
twenty-four of these. This year we know of approximately seventy-five who are
preparing themselves for the work and the Home Mission Board is helping
twenty-seven. This is a great advance over the status' of our work ten
years ago when we had three students of which we knew and no scholarships.
We are undertaking also to help educate the missionaries we have on the
field already. Heretofore each year we have held five regional conferences
for the pastors and workers of the whole Southwestern Spanish speaking mission
field. This year we held, February 11-22 in San Antonio, what we called the
School of Prophets in which we taught fundamental concepts of the following
nine subjects; Homiletics, Church History, Doctrines, Evangelism, Methods of
Religious Education, Spanish Grammar, Church Music, Bible and Christian
Ethics. This school was supported jointly by the Home Mission Board and the
Executive Board of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. We had
seventy-five workers present for the duration of the course, not counting the ten
or eleven people who participated in the administration of the work. We feel
that the school was a great success from the standpoint of instruction and of
the inspiration that the brethren gathered from it and also from the standpoint
of fellowship which the brethren enjoyed with new acquaintances from
various parts of the field.
Besides this school we have had four conferences on Sunday School work
in the four regions of Texas and three conferences on W.M.U. work. We have
planned now one other W.M.U. conference which will be in Albuquerque, New
Mexico. For the Training Union we are expecting to promote simultaneous
study courses during the latter part of 1946. Also in San Antonio, Texas,
February 25-28, we held a conference for Kindergarten teachers with an
attendance of twenty-six of the thirty-two teachers working in Kindergartens
among the Spanish speaking people under all auspices in the Southwest.
We have been directly supporting our State-wide encampment at Alto Frio
as an agency for training the leaders and membership of our churches. Besides
that we have the privilege of encouraging and cooperating with encampments
at Palacios, Texas, and Menard, Texas, for the Mexican people. We have
noticed an increase in the attendance and effectiveness of these encampments
from year to year and we are expecting during 1946 to open an encampment
in New Mexico near Albuquerque for the Spanish speaking people of New
Mexico and Arizona.
We have been encouraging the churches to promote Study Courses in the
various Sunday awards. auxiliary School During Study 1944-1945 organizations. Course we awards had In Texas 379 and Sunday for 257 the Training School year awards 1943-1944 Union and Study we 469'Train-
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