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Help for the Unemployed and the Homeless
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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.
Farmers, financiers, builders, and those who are skilled in various
arts and crafts should go to neglected areas 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
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earth, where the outlook appears to be forbidding, may become as
the garden of God.
“In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book,
And the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out
of darkness.
The humble 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 matters 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-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 fallow ground of the
poor, and for lack of justice there is waste.”
Proverbs 13:23
.
We may give to the poor and harm them by teaching them to
be dependent. Such giving encourages selfishness and helplessness.
Often it leads to idleness, extravagance, and intemperance. No