Walking up a mound of garbage isn’t the typical day in my life… but for some people it is. After making it to Jinotepe, Nicaragua about a week and a half ago (working alongside Glenn and Lynne Schweitzer, two missionaries from the New England area who moved here seven years ago), we took a day trip to the dumps in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
I walked around a bend on an old dirt road, where dozens of dump trucks passed us by – some filled with branches, some filled with garbage from hospitals (syringes, catheters, IVs, etc), and some filled with everyday things you would throw away.
As we got closer, the smell began to overwhelm me, the flies buzzed all around, and I began to see dogs and chickens eating whatever they could find.
A community has been built around this dump… 200 families call the dump in Managua their home. I can’t even imagine. As Pastor Manuel took Seth, Kari, and I around, we began talking to the people in the area. We walked up to an overlook where all you could see was mounds and mounds of trash bordered by water in the distance. We prayed for the people living in the vicinity… God spoke to me – “see, Molly, these are the least, in whom I care for… what matters is the spiritual…”
We carried on walking and met a family of seven, who moved into their house one year ago. After we prayed for the obvious, we continued on toward a house playing Christian music, where we found a lady grounded in her faith, yet struggling with her marriage. As we finished lifting her up in prayer, the children from the previous house came running after us to ask us to prophecy over the sixteen-year-old girl. We walked back up to their home and began speaking truth into her life. Rain started pouring down harder, so the family invited us to sit in their small home until the skies dried up.
Well, the rain never passed, so we began walking over more piles of trash in the pouring down rain. I walked over stuffed animals, broken glass, empty hair-dye bottles, syringes, etc. I’ve never walked over so much trash in my life. I was drenched and walking through “only God knows what.” The thought of “it’s time to go home” came to my mind, and then God spoke to me, “some people don’t get to go home to a place outside of the rain and beyond the heaps of trash… this is their home.” I can’t even imagine… my words became few… I didn’t even know what to pray… but what I do know –
God cares about them…
A few pictures to bring it into reality
Cows eating from the branches we saw brought to the dump in the back of a truck
This is work for many men (& women).
Even your typical animals help in the separation and hauling of trash…
This dump is their “playground.”
One of many houses in this community…
What may seem as a dump on one side…can look beautiful on the other…
