The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-04-09
WORK OF THE WOMEN
IMPORTANT PHASES OF METHOD
 IsT HOME MISSIONS.
Great Meeting Is to Begin nt Court Street Church Next Friday and 800 Delegates Are Ex-
 pected.

The forthcoming meeting in Mont gomery of the Women's Home Board of Missions of the Methodist Church, South, draws attention to the import ant work of that body.
 The Board will meet at tho Court Street Methodist Church next Friday morning the meeting to be preceded Thursday evening by a reception to the delegates. It is expected that fully 500 women from at least dozer States will be present.
 The custom of the Methodist Church of moving the pastors every year calls for hardships and even suffering. Be- cause of this 1t becomes necessary to have at every appointment a parson- age or home for the preacher.
 In 1886, when the Woman's Home Mission Society came into existence, there were 2,030 parsonages valued at $2,247,2S5 in the Methodist Episcopal Church. South. In these eighteen years the number has grown to APIS. The Parsonage Department of the Wo- mans Home Mission Society has helped over one-third of this number. Apart from this substantial aid there is no question but that the agitation | of this subject by the women through | out the connection has done very much | to increase the interest in the preach CTS homes, even III tHOSe COIuHuhllico where financial aid was not needed. There are records on the frontier | where the church has been enabled to | hold its own by the parsonages built by these women. The changing pop ulation of these frontier sections made | 1t impossible for the people to build | 8 parsonage themselves, so 1t is clear | ly seen that a home for the preacher must be built by an outside party. Not only on the frontier. but in the | older conferences have they been in strumental In making comfortable the | home and thus saved rent to the | preachers who in some appointments are poorly paid.
 Closely allied to this Parsonage De- partment Is one known as Supplies,
 which is managed by Mrs. J. H. Yar- | brough of Nashville, Tennessee. | Through her business-like methods a | system of blanks has been devised by
 which the Presiding Elder can make application for help for any one of his | preachers The measurements of each | member, from head to foot, are for | warded to her office and later on, | when auxiliaries desire to send a pox,
 they communicate with her and she
 furnishes these papers so that the | goods are all bought and made with a
 view to the individuals whom they
 are to fit Solid comfort Is thus car
 ried into the homes of many preach
 CTS who would suffer but for this de- | partment.
 This work is carried on with the ut | most delicacy. since no one In the aux Hilary, save the President, knows to | whom the boxes are sent. About these l supplies cluster a number of pathetic | stories One Is told of a box sent out
 from Opelika. Ala. The women of the
 Methodist Church at that point re-
 quested the privilege of sending a box
 to one of their own needy preachers
 in the Alabama Conference. It So
 happened that there was no arplica-
 ton for help from any of the Ala
 bama preachers so with gracious
 note Mrs. Yarbrough explained the
 situation and sent them the measure
 mcnts for family fin the Indian Ter
 ritory. short time after the box
 was shipped there came a letter from
 the preachers wife in which she told
 of the comfort and cheer the box had
 brought and to think that 1t had 1 come from her own church where she
 had married long, long years ago.
 With the changes of appointment she
 had dropped out of the minds of many
 of the people and especially of the
 good woman who had the management
 of the box.
 This Department sends boxes, not l only to the preachers families, but tC ! Conference orphanages and Home Mis-
 sion schools. It has sent out more
 than S9O00O worth of goods in these | years.