what do you consider beautiful? would you consider a garbage dump city a beautiful place? an extremely poor area where the people have trouble surviving or feeding their own children? where they earn less than $3/day digging through garbage, sorting to sell different plastics or materials? would you be willing to search through other peoples’ garbage every day to survive? what if you found human remains while digging, would you stop? what if there was nothing else you could do?
the past few days, we have worked to clean up the playground area(which was under water) and the street in front of the church(which is covered with this muck that includes trash, sewage, and who knows what else…it’s better not to ask too many questions). we shovel it into bags and drag the bags to piles(sandbags). it rains so much here that they have to do this every 6 weeks. they struggle to drive over it with their trucks.
this activity has shown us the strength of this community. people would come out to help us crazy white people scoop and cut up the trash mounds. the people of PCF and Tondo have been so extremely generous and loving. we have felt so blessed from the first moments our feet stepped into the church. our contacts, Ron and Joanna, are such incredible servants of God. they sacrifice so much to do the work God has called them to. they have many volunteers from the community that come to help out others in need; they are also in need. you wouldn’t notice unless you listen to their stories or walk around the area with them. they have so much joy, compassion, and love. they are beautiful. this place is beautiful. our new friends give to us almost every second. we get hugs, kisses, praise, jokes, amazing food, and bananas-on-a-stick with a toasted crape and sugar around them. YUM! they don’t have the money to do this, but they want to do this because we came to help. when we had limited help, the young girls we played with from the church came to hold the bags as we scooped the muck into them. their actions are truly what kept me going today. they are full of life. they washed my gloves, they helped me wash the dirt of my arms, and just loved on me.
who is really serving who?
my helpers
