The Tegucigalpa city dump was eye opening. People were covered head to toe in beenies, long sleeve shirts, jeans, boots and tennis shoes that didn’t match that they probably got from one of the dump trucks. As we entered the dump immediately the smell of paint thinner hit your nostrils. It was only compounded when two of the workers jumped on the back and it radiated off their button down flannels. When we finally reached the crest of the trash mountain the reality finally hit home. People had houses made from plastic bags, tires, cardboard, and anything else sturdy enough to stand. The number of vultures rivaled the hundreds of people working there. When new dump trucks entered the land people would run to, having to fight through the cows, and pick out any cardboard, glass, aluminum, or metal they could find. On a good day a worker could get $10-$20 from sun up to past sun down.
Our time there we got to hand out spaghetti and water and ask people how we could pray for them. It was an awesome opportunity to also minister with the translating high school students. Some of them believed in Jesus, others believed in God. Asking their perspective of their experience and getting to see how they perceived the dump was awesome.
The Lord taught me some awesome things through this month. The two biggest were these…
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The Lord is more about than just offering salvation. Our relationship with the Lord is about more than salvation. If it was just about salvation then our entire relationship would be based on our sin and need but he cares about us so much more than that. He cares about us so much that he not only offers us salvation so we can stand before him justified but he also adopts us into his family! He calls us his kid. He didn’t want us to only be able to stand before him; he wanted us to carry his name. He cares about us so much that he stamps us with his mark and his identity. He doesn’t stop there, he also offers us his inheritance. He wants us to participate in His life and His blessings. Not only in the future, but now. The Lord showed me that at the end of the day if it was only about my need for a savior and not his ability to be an amazing father, then the relationship wouldn’t be relational at all. It wouldn’t be about how he can share his heart, how he can shape me, how he can grow me. It would have stopped the day I accepted him but he is so much more than a God who offers salvation. He is a God that offers goodness, protection, care, guidance, compassion, gifts. He’s at the end of the day a great Father and will not only rescue his kids but pour out his love better than you can possibly imagine. Read Ephesians 1: 3-5.
- Faith is about willingness, which is two fold. First, it’s willing to respond to the ways in which the Lord calls us. If you hear him asking you to pray for, tend to, care for someone then you should. It’s about believing he has purpose in that and he will respond to your response whether it be to the person you minister to or to you. Also, it’s about being who you know the Lord has made you to be; to use your giftings whenever possible; and to enter situations with the intent of sharing the Lord.
So that was my month in Honduras. Sorry it took so long to update you. Hope all is well back home and in your lives!!!
