Medicinal charcoal: Nature’s super non-drug. With its many virtues, we use it a lot to help people at our project. Stomach aches and diarrhea? We give it to take internally. Abscesses, infected sores and scorpion stings? Absolutely! Just make a paste with it and apply it to the wound. I have even treated my dogs with it when they have eaten something bad. It is just amazing how fast it works and how easy it is to apply. It has saved many infected fingertips in the past years and has opened countless abscesses without painful poking and cutting.

We cannot just walk into the pharmacy and purchase medicinal charcoal powder here, though, and charcoal tablets are quite expensive. That is why we make our own charcoal powder. We buy charcoal that is usually used for cooking, heat it in the fire to make it almost sterile, and then pound it in a mortar. Finally, we sift it to have a nice, fine powder that we immediately put in clean jars and seal. That way we have charcoal ready for use at any given time. Since it is homemade and everybody has cooking charcoal at home, we can also teach people how to make and apply it. Thus the treatment becomes reproducible and affordable for everybody, and people don’t depend on us.

Needless to say, the person pounding and sifting gets the powder all over himself. That’s why the children usually get to do it, and they sure have fun.

We praise God that He has provided us with such an effective, cheap and natural remedy.

• Twitter