Self-Supporting Work for the Needy

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 23, 1913

Self-Supporting Work for the Needy

Brother Andrew Roedel, secretary-treasurer of the British Columbia Tract Society, tells the following personal experience in Christian Help and Christian health work: “About one year ago one of our canvassers found a widow with several children in quite needy circumstances. I have been visiting her and helping her ever since. As a result, she has become interested in the truth. She has a little girl about nine years old, and I suggested that she might do some self-supporting missionary work; so several weeks ago I took a few days off and went out into the neighborhood and solicited subscriptions to Life and Health. The little girl was to take the magazine to the customers every month and receive ten cents on the delivery of each copy. In about six hours I had secured fifty subscriptions, and our standing order for fifty magazines is the result. I helped the little girl make her first delivery, so as to acquaint her with the route. She did nicely, and in the future will make her own delivery. Some day I intend to increase her list to one hundred. The people taking the magazine like it, and it would do your heart good to see the happy look on the girl's face when she returns from her delivery with a pocketful of dimes. These go to help keep up the home, after the magazines are paid for. The experience was certainly a help to me.” Are there not many other places where this same plan can be followed in relieving the distressed through giving them self-supporting work that is both pleasant and profitable?