Life in Cambodia was humbling to say the very least.
The Jesus Jewels implemented ATL (ask the Lord) time into our free time, in which we would walk the street praying and asking God for opportunities to talk to people and share The Gospel with them. Our 2nd week in Cambodia we started going to the local garbage dump during this time. We didn’t go to see the landfill, but the people that live in it.
Our contact had shared with me that many children live in the garbage dump. Something like 70% of Cambodia is under 20 years old, so its a country filled with babies raising themselves ya’ll. And many of them live alone in trees by a river, or as we witnessed at the garbage dump.
Many of them don’t have time to search for work, or go to school, because their main goal is eating the next day. Since the garbage trucks start pulling in to the dump at night the children stay up all night long in order to sift through the newly dropped off garbage in hopes of finding things that they can turn in for food. They search for plastic bottles and cans to turn in for cash. They also look for anything else that can be turned into a profit. They do this, all…night…long. And if they’ve had a successful night, they are able to eat the next day. This is their goal.
This is their motivation. Finding things so they have food for their hungry bellies.
So, we went to the garbage dump to talk to people, to pray for people, and to offer them bread. We took bread with us to hand out as we talked to people because it seems only appropriate to come for something for their bodies and their souls. Seeing the children, and the families that lived there further humbled me, and reminded me how much God has given me in my life. It also allowed me to enter into a reality that I could easily ignore because it hasn’t been my reality, but by going there, God broke my heart for the things that I know breaks His heart.
Those days in the dump, we talked to people, we asked them about their lives: who they are, what they needed God to do for them. Many of them build shacks near the dump, and have to pay $7 a month in order to live there. If they don’t pay, their shack is burnt down! Can you imagine what pressure and fear these people live under to make sure that the little bit that they do have is protected?
As they shared with us, we in turn shared a little about who we were and why we came. We listened to God’s heart for these people and prayed the words we heard over them. We loved on them, and then when we got ready to move to the next person or shack, we gave them bread.
Bread. How heartbreaking to think that that loaf of bread may have been the only meal those people had that day. But there was also something quite beautiful about handing out bread.
Jesus cares about us holistically. So to be able to meet them at their hunger, and link that hunger with a spiritual hunger that only The Bread of Life can satisfy was a beautiful thing.We left them with bread, and a prayer: that they would encounter the great love of the Bread of Life…that Jesus would nourish their soul with His goodness.
Connecting with the people at the garbage dump was really impactful to me. Hearing their stories, and having a glimpse into their reality changed me forever. I now understand the value of bread a little bit more, and in that more fully understand what Jesus meant when He called Himself the Bread of Life. He sustains us, fills us, and satisfies our deepest hungers like no one else ever could.
“Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35
