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Help for the Unemployed and the Homeless
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Attention should be given to the establishment of various in-
dustries so that poor families can find employment. Carpenters,
blacksmiths, and indeed everyone who understands some line of
useful labor, should feel a responsibility to teach and help the igno-
rant and the unemployed.
In ministry to the poor there is a wide field of service for women
as well as for men. The efficient cook, the housekeeper, the seam-
stress, the nurse—the help of all is needed. Let the members of poor
households be taught how to cook, how to make and mend their
own clothing, how to nurse the sick, how to care properly for the
home. Let boys and girls be thoroughly taught some useful trade or
occupation.
Missionary Families
Missionary families are needed to settle in the waste places. Let
farmers, financiers, builders, and those who are skilled in various arts
and crafts, go to neglected fields, to improve the land, to establish
industries, to prepare humble homes for themselves, and to help
their neighbors.
The rough places of nature, the wild places, God has made
attractive by placing beautiful things among the most unsightly.
This is the work we are called to do. Even the desert places of the
earth, where the outlook appears to be forbidding, may become as
the garden of God. “In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the
book, And the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, and out of
darkness. The meek also shall increase their joy in the Lord, And
the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.”
Isaiah
29:18, 19
.
By instruction in practical lines we can often help the poor most
effectively. As a rule, those who have not been trained to work
do not have habits of industry, perseverance, economy, and self-
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denial. They do not know how to manage. Often through lack of
carefulness and right judgment there is wasted that which would
maintain their families in decency and comfort if it were carefully
and economically used. “Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but
there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.”
Proverbs 13:23
.