You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me.I think there is value in a missionary not being on-site with the sole purpose of getting people saved. The person/family having a purpose in the community, rather than being strictly supported by people back home or locally, is important to showing their commitment to the people. Otherwise, you can get into the situation where they unintentionally cut themselves off from the people they are trying to minister to, because they're just cruising along while the community is barely avoiding starvation, like what happened in India.
Given my own parents are supported missionaries, I have to reconcile this with their status. Partly, it's not such a big concern to me because they're in a support role, not directly ministering to the people. Also, there are a certain number of administrators necessary where the work is full-time, and not easy to work "in between" a job schedule. I don't know if this is a fully adequate explanation, but it's something I'm still thinking about.
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