How is your imagination? For example. Have you ever had to face a surgery, the dentist or a procedure or talking with a friend about something that you really dreaded? You may have dreaded it for days or weeks and in your mind it was going to be a bad outcome and painful.
Such was the case at the dump. What I imagined in my mind did not touch what was there. It was worse than the worst picture in our minds. The odor was overpowering but not as overpowering as the tremendous human need in one place at the same time.
I have never been to the dump in Tegucigalpa but heard that people lived there and needed help so we arranged to go there for a visit. We packed 300 lunches for the people living there. Our team arrived to find that alot more than 300 people lived and survive at this small portion of the dump. The small section we were in was as big as a football field and had trash as high as a 3 story building in places. A bulldozer in constant motion to move mounds from one place to another as the people with no other way of surviving and eating scurry like ants to get at the rotton food and supplies in the piles. The bulldozer not even willing to stop for anyone or anything. Here are the homes they live in on the side of the dump.
The face of poverty was on many faces but on others were still smiles in the midst of the lives that they face every day of their lives.
Many people simply could not get off the bus. They still wanted to do their part so they helped with the lunch distribution from inside the bus. Most of those who did get off the bus could do nothing but stand there with tears running down their faces. Some of the team climbed in the dump piles and helped the people find food and supplies. Some prayed. Some greeted the line waiting to get lunch. The hands and feet and eyes and ears and hearts of Jesus pulling together for one purpose... "whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me" (Matthew Chapter 25)
Serving Him with you, gayle davidson
