This is a blog by one of our racers Rachel Iverson. She is in Honduras at the ministry I just blogged about.
Her name is Sandra. She has dark brown hair and skin, and gorgeous blue-green eyes. She is sitting on a curb in the heat of the day behind a dumpster doing her homework. She is with her grandmother Germina, who makes a living by picking through the things other people throw away. She takes out the things that can be recycled (plastic bottles, paper, cans) because the recycling place will give her money for them. This is actually an organized system where different people pick through the garbage in different places. But while earning this money, she has to pick through bags of maggots, flies, rotted food, and other revulsions.
Sandra does not know how old she is or when her birthday is because she does not have a birth certificate, though her grandmother says she is 11. It is her first year in school and she has learned to draw circles, then letters and now is working writing simple words. She is excited to learn and proud of her work, though it is hard for her. She had not been in school because her family could not afford the tuition, and is now attending classes because she has received a sponsorship.
She has a large and complex interconnected family with many problems of poverty and illness. She witnesses countless boys pass that are high on paint thinner, including her 16-year-old cousin Christopher, who is spending this month getting clean and is going through withdrawal. Yet her grandmother professes faith in God, and Sandra too says she goes to church and knows Jesus. She does not complain about the smell or the heat, but leans lovingly on my arm, sipping a coke and snacking on some bread.
I have seen poverty before, but to see the daily living conditions of this sweet innocent little girl still crushes me. I want to help; I want to save them, to make their lives better. But I am not the Savior. Jesus came to save the least, the lost, and the lonely. The street kids who everyone else says are hopeless. Sandra and her grandmother as they spend their day in a dumpster in a parking lot.
