It smells like fire.
On our left, there are homes.
Tons of it.
There are flies everywhere and vulture-like birds bounce through the mounds of trash picking whatever they can find to eat out of the muck. The heat on my face intensifies as I look to my right to see fire burning on top of the trash; ashes rain down from above. And not ten feet away, a young boy wearing a tattered pair of underwear and a tank top, probably four or five years of age, plays with his sister. Their mother looks on from the hut along the road.
I cannot process anything I am seeing. My mind is cloudy like the smoke filled sky around me. My breathing is interrupted periodically by that smoke catching in my throat, causing me to cough. (“These people LIVE here! This is their life.”) My little group of six Americans stop at the end of the road and look back. (“Where do we even start, Lord? What can we do? We don’t speak Spanish and we can’t fix this.”)
“I did not die for this. I died for them.”
We decide to head back along the road and see if anyone would be open to us praying for them. We find a few along the way and, through broken Spanish and (hopefully) warm gestures, we successfully pray – primarily in English – for them. They all seem grateful, but, unfortunately, I feel as if we aren’t really making a difference.
My group of six eventually meets back up with the other seven doing ministry that day in the middle of the road. They have a rope that we used the day before at the orphanage for limbo and jump rope. Before long, we have attracted the attention of several of the children living in the area. And, after some coaxing and modeling, we manage to get a handful of them in on the action. In the meantime, a couple of other teammates have begun to help a man search for plastic bottles, containers, whatever that can be re-sold (via recycling) in the piles of rubbish that lie beneath him. His two young children had been helping while watching the other kids jump.
As I sit here processing through all of this, I can’t help but think about how that man (unknowingly, perhaps) portrays Jesus each day to his children as he searches through all of the rubbish to find the jewels that can be redeemed; redemption due to the choosing of one who sees a quality worth restoring.. We saw all kinds of stuff in that trash – some of it not so bad, some of it downright nasty – but, none of it was gross enough to keep us from reaching through to grab the just visible piece of plastic, pull it out and toss it into the bag to be recycled.
