[Part I…Look for Part II to come]
dumps?
Imagine waking up to rain on
or leaking through a tin or cardboard roof, the smell of trash all around, and little
or nothing to eat every morning. Imagine
looking through mounds and mounds of trash each day just in hopes of finding
food or something valuable enough to sell or make into something creative to
sell for enough money to eat for the day.
Never could I imagine living
life this way. I was only there around
this environment for a few hours and was ready to go home. How do they live in this every day of their
life? Monday a few of us took the
opportunity to ride an hour away to the largest dump in Nicaragua, where 300 people live; the Managua Dump. I wasn’t completely sure what to expect
before we arrived, but I never expected what I saw.
There were small houses and
huts everywhere along the mountains of trash that seemed to never end. As we walked just asking the Lord what He
would have us do during our short time there, we came across some people in
front of their little house just going through trash they had collected. We said good morning, got to know them just a
bit and asked if we could pray for them.
They said sure and so Manuel (the Nicaraguan pastor who has been helping
us out since we got here), and Seth prayed for them. We proceeded to go to the next house behind
them where a young girl was standing outside.
She told us a little about her family.
There were four kids there, three girls and a boy. Her mom came out and we asked if they were
Christians and she said she had been a Christian for six years. But they didn’t say much more. She said they went to church. We weren’t sure if they were just saying what
we wanted to hear because they knew we were missionaries or if they were honest
answers, so I was able to pray over their whole family with the little I
knew. We prayed for the Holy Spirit to
be real and work in them, for them to know His power and love.
After Seth and I had prayed
for this family, we went to the next house where there was a lady outside listening
to music on her CD player and hanging clothes up on the line. The moment I saw her, I could tell she had
sweet, tender spirit. As we talked and
heard more of her story she welcomed our prayer for her marriage as her husband
wanted a divorce and she was heartbroken.
She also asked for prayer for their family and health. So we prayed, thanked her, gave her hugs and
she was so grateful and said much thanks as we left.
As soon as we were done
praying for her, a young girl, Jacqueline, from the family we had just prayed
for came up to Seth boldly and asked him to prophesy over her life. So, we went a little bit back up the hill to
their house and all laid hands on her, listened to the Lord and waited for the
words He had. We got words such as: you
are a daughter of the King, you have a joy inside that God wants you to share
with others, you have a boldness that God will use to impact those around you,
and many more words God just kept bringing to us. And then Manuel got a word from the Lord for
the mother and instantly she started crying.
The Holy Spirit was at work! We
once again prayed for the whole family, that the Holy Spirit would just
continue to fill that place and that God would use that one family in the dumps
to spread hope and light to others around.
After we prayed, they
started to open up and talk more about who they are. Constance, the mother, shared that her husband
was a Christian, but had no interest in going to church and didn’t want to work
at his relationship with God. We also
found out that the three girls that were their were her daughters and she had a
son that was helping her husband, his father find metal in the lake less than
five minutes away. The boy there,
Rafael, who was 14 years old, was their nephew and no longer had a mother, so
while his father was working finding stuff, he stayed with his cousins.
As it poured most of the
afternoon, we waited under their little roof for it to subside, but when it
never did, this family so willingly took us out into the many acres of trash to
see what was out there. We walked
through mud and squishy trash, some clothes, some food, some stuff from a
hospital, some person items. There were
many people hand searching through the garbage to find anything that could of
any value. There were horses, cows, and
dogs out there all around as well. It broke my heart.
Rafael and Jacqueline both
had smiles and a light of hope in their eyes I will never forget. Before we left, Constance
shared with us that God had brought four different people at four different
times to prophesy over her telling her that God would bring her a new
home. And a year later, she moved from a
different part of the dump with a smaller house to this one and it was an
answer to prayer. She said, God is a
good one and He always comes through.
All I could think was, ‘wow’! She
has nothing and yet sees God in everything and is so grateful for what she
has. GOD
IS ALIVE AND WELL EVEN IN THE DUMPS!! I think He’s more alive there in
places than He is in a lot of churches.
This was an encouragement to me and confirmed more in my heart that God
is going to use this family to bring hope to those around them through Jesus
Christ.
God brought to mind Isaiah
61:1-2, a passage that has been prophesied over my life and I think applies to
everyone.
“The Spirit of the
Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news
to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the
prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of
our God, to comfort all who mourn.”
The parts that God brought
to my attention was that we were able to do something that He has called us to
do. We were able to bring the love of
Christ to the poorest of the poor and to proclaim freedom from darkness over
them as we prayed as well. We were able
to comfort them. Even more than us doing
as God has called us to do, we were blessed more than I think they were through
this. God did something in me that I
can’t explain and showed me that He is everywhere and cares about each and
every person. He prepared us and them
for these encounters and knew who we would talk to before we even went. God had it all worked out. So…the next time I think I’m down in the
dumps, I hope I reconsider and remember what God has shown me.
“GOD IS ALIVE AND WELL EVEN IN THE DUMPS!!!
(maybe more alive then many churches around the world)”
*I wish I
had pictures of the people we talked to and prayed for…but we were told to only
take one camera and the other group took it with them.
