Hard to Help People

A missionary that went to India saw problems arise in the most unexpected areas, such as the distribution of milk powder.  Their missionary hospital regularly received large barrels of milk powder from the United States under a program called Milk for the Millions.  What a great idea providing milk powder for the many poor and hungry people around the world.  But if they gave packets of milk powder to people, they would run to the coffee shops and sell them.  They tried mixing the powdered milk with water and having the people drink it before leaving.  They didn’t like the taste and stopped coming, even though they were hungry.  They tried giving glasses of milk to the locals that worked in the hospital, but they refused to drink it without gruel.  So they cooked gruel for them to eat with the milk.  Then they discovered them eating the gruel without the milk.  So they stopped doing that.

They were busy giving help that wasn’t help.

Then there were the dried beans.  The American government gave them large bags of dried beans.  It turned out that even after soaking the beans all night, the average village family could not afford the fuel (usually cow dung chips) to cook the beans.  They finally took the beans to the mill and had them ground into powder so that the people would have bean powder to cook with their curry.

They missionary said “I thought how often it is really hard to help people!”

Source Medicine and Miracles amid the multitudes

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