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AN APPEAL FOR AID
FOR OUR
PREACHERS AND CHURCHES
IN THE 
Grasshopper-Scourged Regions of the Northwest

     TO THE METHODIST CHURCH AT LARGE AND ITS
FRIENDS:--At the recent session of the Northwest Iowa Conference, that body, at the suggestion of Dr. KYNETT, and with the approval of the President, BISHOP HAVEN, adopted a paper setting forth the deplorable condition of a large proportion of our churches on the frontier, and concluding, in substance, as follows:
     Resolved, That a Commission be now appointed consisting of the Presiding Elder and one Layman from each District, with Governor C.C. CARPENTER as Chairman, and Rev. J.H. LOZIER as Secretary, to adopt measures to secure relief for our most needy and destitute preachers, and for our [[underlined in pencil]] church building enterprises [[/underlined]] now embarrassed or placed in jeopardy by the prevailing calamity.
     In pursuance of this action, we desire, in the briefest manner practicable, to present our case:
     First, we would remind you that the area of the Northwest Iowa Conference, instead of being limited to the northwestern quarter of Iowa, embraces all of Dakota Territory,--a region vastly more extensive than all of Iowa, and containing Presiding Elders' Districts probably larger than a majority of the Conferences east of the Mississippi river. In order to comprehend the extent of our territory, begin at a point one hundred miles north of Des Moines, and sweep westward through to the Black Hills, and northward around Bismarck, Pembina, and the head waters of the Red River of the North. In this sweep of vision you take in the territory which you have bidden us occupy and hold for CHRIST, and for our church, in common with sister churches. And it is worth the holding. Aside from its supposed mineral wealth, it is exceedingly fertile, healthful and beautiful, and is fast filling up with enterprising and worthy people.
     But here, for the past two seasons, the "grasshopper has become a burden." It is but a repetition of other Western States in their early settlement, except that in some portions of our Conference the affliction is intensified by the re-visitation of the destroyer: an unusal occurrence and a calamity we trust forever over-past.
     We come now to the VITAL point of interest: Amid communities destitute, and many of them calling for aid from abroad, a majority of our preachers have toiled through the past conference year. Their poverty and privations cannot be readily imagined. No place or period in the history of our church furnishes more worthy examples of christian heroism than can be found among the preachers of western frontier.
     Most of our preachers were able to reach the seat of conference, some in borrowed apparel, some eschewing public conveyences and lightening expenses by shooting game and camping our; but all bordering upon financial destitution. With no increase of missionary appropriations (if you ask WHY, those older and wealthier Conferences may answer, who, if they did not increase their collections, nevertheless failed to relinquish their DEMAND for missionary funds), and with a probability of only a moiety from the already strained and burdened Church Extension Society, our brethren have returned to their fields for another year. Where Circuits have received missionary appropriations at all, they did not average above fifty dollars, and yet to all human appearances quite a number of our preachers can get NOTHING from their charges--unless it is after another harvest.
     Some of our churches have already been sold for debt, and, unless [underlined in pencil]] speedily redeemed, will be lost to us forever. Other edifices for church purposes--projected before this crisis,-- [[/underlined]] are incomplete and in jeopardy from debt; while many societies, especially in Dakota, have not even a school house in which to hold meetings. Reader, in CHRIST'S name, and for His sake, help the brethren in the devastated regions of the West and Northwest. Whatever your sphere, do SOMETHING; do what you can, remembering that it was in reference to the treatment of just such cases as these that our Master said, "Inasmuch as ye 

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