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conference favored the Lehmans' going to this work. In September of 1905 they spoke to a large and appreciative audience at North Lima about their call and the challenge this means to the church. The congregation stood for prayer and then sang the hymn, "Speed Away."

After the meeting several hundred people bade the Lehmans good-bye "not knowing when in God's providence we shall meet again." Something of the zeal and fervor of the occasion is seen in the Herald of Truth account of September 7, 1905. Referring to M. C. Lehman and his call the account states:

Here he grew up; here he was received into church fellowship and now the time is so near at hand when he is to bid parents, friends, and loved ones good-bye and cross the great ocean and take up the work fraught with such solemn responsibilities in faraway India. May God's richest blessings go with them and may they he instruments in the hands of our heavenly Father by which many souls may be brought from darkness into His marvelous light.

If further evidence were needed to prove that a missionary impulse was pervading Ohio churches, it might be found in the organization of the churchwide Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities in May 1907, at Rittman, Ohio.' This Board was the result of a merger of the Mennonite Board of Charitable Homes which had been organized at Marshallville, Ohio, in 1899 and the Mennonite Evangelizing and Benevolent Board organized by a merger in 1906. When it was formally organized at Rittman in 1907, three of the Board's officers were Ohio ministers. They were M. S. Steiner, president; C. Z. Yoder, vice-president; D. C. Amstutz, secretary.

In October 1908 members of the Mahoning and Columbiana County churches founded a mission in Youngstown, Ohio.' A. J. Steiner was the first superintendent. In January 1910 the missionary urge of the Pike and Salem congregations in Allen County led to the founding of a mission in Lima, the county seat. N. E. Troyer and C. D. Brenneman were the first superintendents, with B. B. Stoltzfus of West Liberty, Ohio, later locating at the mission.

Thus by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century the Ohio Mennonite and Amish churches had become missionary-minded. A movement was started that finally permeated every congregation, and in the succeeding decades was to grow in personnel, in scope, in variety, and in outreach.