As our truck continued driving the smell became progressively worse. I closed my eyes. It was almost unbearable and just when I thought it couldn't get any worse the truck came to a stop. I slowly opened my eyes and heard someone next to me whisper "oh my gosh". I looked around and couldn't believe what I was seeing. We had just arrived in one of the Tegucigalpa Honduran dumps.
That day we had partnered with a man named Mark who is from the States and now lives in Honduras. We came to help him serve food and clean water to over 200 people that live and work inside of the dump. Mark serves lunch to these people twice a week and as soon as they saw our trucks pull in, it was evident that these people depend on it. They came running, pushing and yelling. They were desperate. Tears rolled down my face as I absorbed everything I was seeing. People sleeping in piles of garbage, the sky full of vultures, starving cows and dogs scavenging for food. It was the most horrific site I have ever seen and my pictures and words just don't seem like enough to fully describe it. For the first 10 min I just stood there with tears filling my eyes. Half of my team was already busy serving food and the only thing I could do was stand there. I then thought to myself "I'm wasting time." I have always said "you may be the only Jesus people will ever encounter, be intentional with your words and time" and in that moment i decided to put it into action. I knew i needed to go talk to these people. I grabbed one of the translators working with us and a couple of my teammates and we began walking. My eyes were instantly drawn to a woman standing away from the crowd. As we began talking to her, she told us she was 7 months pregnant. We asked if we could pray for her but she said no. She told us she didn't know what we were talking about and that she had never heard about Jesus. I was able to share with her about Christ and the hope we have in him. I told her that if she only believes that she can live in heaven where there is no struggles, no pain, and all of this (pointing around) will all be a memory. After a few minutes of talking she asked if we could pray for her and her baby, so we did. Our time was short with her but our words were from God, they were powerful. The rest of our time there was spent talking to person after person wanting to know about Jesus or needing prayers for healing or sickness. Towards the end of our time there a dump truck pulled into the area. The place became complete chaos. Men, women, children, they all went running to get the best of the new trash. People were crawling on top of each other trying to grab trash that came raining out of the dump truck. This is how these people survive. They search for food and clothing. They collect the glass and plastic bottles which can earn them a little bit of money. We didn't waste any time, we continued sharing and praying for as many people as we could. Then the sound of our own truck's horn started honking signaling it was time to go. As I walked back to the truck I was overwhelmed and heartbroken. I felt like my time there was too short. That there was so many more people that we needed to talk to. As we drove home I wondered if this is how Jesus felt when he came to earth. All of the brokenness and people desperately in need of his touch. His love is the only thing that will last long after I'm gone and I thank God I was able to share it with them that day.
Reminder: I'm just one girl from a small town in the middle of Kansas, preaching the word of God, inside of a huge dump, inside of the capitol city of Honduras. Our God is truly mighty to save and he really does live inside of a dump, I've seen it myself.
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