the dump

First of all, I know I will return here (the dump) many times before my time here is over, but I felt this first trip back to the dump after months was worth its own entry. For those of you who have experienced the dump here, or anywhere else like it, it's easier to visualize. For those of you who have never been to place like this...well, I can try and try and try to explain it the best I can, but I really don't think it does it justice. The city dump of Tegucigalpa houses garbage, obviously...it also houses hundreds of buzzards, I'm sure millions of flies, a stench that sticks with you for quite a while, and most importantly, and unfortunately, people...creatures of God made in the likeness of God, which is also a very significant fact to understand and keep in mind.

The only creature God made in the likeness of Himself.

That's gotta mean something, right?

So, the next question is, how does the only creature made in the image of God Almighty end up in what is possibly one of the closest things to Hell on Earth? Marc and I talked about this as we were leaving the dump. He was basically asking God why this was happening and for Him to show us a way to do more for these people than just feeding them. Feeding them is a huge step in helping them, don't get me wrong...but it doesn't take them out of that constant suffering. You know, I bet a lot of the people at the dump work harder than some Americans who have been blessed with jobs. Some people were raised into this poverty on the streets...some of them probably started sniffing glue to cure their hunger pangs...lost a ton a brain cells along the way as they became addicted, then somehow wandered over to the dump.

I met a girl named Fannie (spelling may be totally off), who sat in the back of Marc's rental truck after all of the food had been dispensed (which was, by the way, a bowl of rice, beans, and tortillas, along with minimos [small bananas], and water for each person until all food ran out). I pretty much failed at talking to her (my spanish has backtracked a lot...when I didn't know much anyway). She stayed in the bed of the truck as we left, and after asking Marc where we were taking her, he replied that we were taking her to get some milk. After he bought the milk and we dropped her off outside of the dump, he then explained to me that she was 16 and pregnant...oh, and she already has a 3 month old. How does such a sweet girl end up in a situation like this?? Then Marc brought up something I had kept myself from thinking about...in a setting like the dump, in a culture where women can be easily taken by men, she's probably been raped many times over...it's a terrible thing to think about, but it's probably the truth. It's seeing things like this that makes the cry for Jesus to come back even more urgent, so that He can redeem His creation and correct all of this mess.

Fannie's on the right.

On the flip side of this sad, sad story, I heard some people from an Ohio/West Virginia group talk yesterday evening about how meeting the people at the dump has made them more aware of seeing themselves in other people. Apparently there was a young person in the dump who had aspired to finish their education and do something with their life...one of the volunteers heard this comment was made and realized that she was the same person as the Honduran in the dump...she has the same goals. The comment was then made that this volunteer saw herself in this poorHonduran soul, and that this must be how Jesus looked at us during His ministry on Earth. He saw Himself in each person He encountered. This was a neat thing for me to hear, because it's like a revelation of "Hey! This is what it really means to be like Jesus!" I think we miss this a lot as a church...we just choose to live in our little church building bubble, avoiding the things and people that make us uncomfortable--the same people Jesus met with and ate with...what we might term the "scum of the earth".

Anyway, I got to meet lots of really cool people yesterday and got to eat some very good food as well, but I won't get into that. To me, the dump was a huge focal point of the day, and my first experience with it since last year, and I felt it was worth sharing. Seeing people with the eyes of Jesus can be a VERY tough thing, because it's easy to fight against. I'm in no way perfect in seeing people this way, but I really believe experiencing conditions like those at the Tegucigalpa dump really help.