[Propertalk] Weekly Illustration - Flukes

[Joe Parrish]

http://www.proclaimsermons.com/illustration.asp 

Suffering for Others

Some years ago, there was a medical missionary serving in Egypt. He was
perplexed that many of the people he loved and served there suffered from a
life-sapping anemia. All of his efforts to treat this disease failed.
Finally, he learned that the anemia was caused by a parasitic flatworm,
known as a liver fluke. These flukes lived in the soil of the riverbank
along the Nile, and got into people's systems through the water.

To find a cure, the missionary gathered a sample of the parasite and flew
with it to the U.S. to have in analyzed at Johns Hopkins Medical School.
However, when he landed in Washington, U.S. Immigration officials refused to
permit him to bring the liver flukes into the country.

He explained the situation and pleaded his case, but the immigration
officers stood firm. Finally, defeated, the missionary went to the men's
room to dispose of the flukes. But then he remembered his friends in Egypt.
Without anymore hesitation, he drank the contents of the jar containing the
flukes, and entered the country.

He spent the next five years struggling to stay alive, but in receiving
treatment for the anemia himself here in America, he was able to provide the
medical community with the specimens they needed to find a cure for his
Egyptian friends.

 

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