In the mountains outside of Tegucigalpa there is a community that lives among the rats, cows, dogs, gang members, drug addicts, alcoholics, and glue sniffers in the municipal dump. Every day hundreds of trucks dump waste from all corners of the city, and children fight the buzzards for scraps of food, and each other for bits of metal or plastic to recycle for a few lempiras. The scene is almost unimaginable. A man approached us and opened his shirt to show how cancer had eaten away part of his chest; an 8-year-old girl in a camouflage hat was the dirtiest human being I have ever encountered; a young man with a few teeth hanging on giddily played for me the harmonica he just found in the piles of trash.
No human being should ever have to be subjected to this sort of undignified existence.
The hope in the midst of this chaos is a school called Amor, Fe, y Vida -- Love, Faith, and Life. For seven years, Jeony, a mild-mannered Methodist pastor with a huge heart and a head full of dreams, has developed a school for the children who live in and around the dump with hopes of sending them on to something better. The hope is that they will at least graduate from sixth grade, the mandatory level of schooling for Honduran youth. At least a few have graduated from high school and have gone on to technical schools. Jeony hopes many will go on to university and come back to help teach others who call the dump their home. Above all, however, they hope to teach the kids that they are loved by and are dignified through God
There is no way to sum up what we saw today in a few paragraphs. But swirling around in my mind is the haunting call to action Joeny left us with. He said that his years working at the dump have taught him that there is a difference between pity and compassion. Pity means you get back in your car, go home to your warm house and forget what you saw, or consider it a hopeless cause. Compassion means you ask every day, "What more can I do?" If nothing else, there is always prayer. He said that before he started with the people at the dump he didn't have anything to pray for after 15 minutes or so of devotions. Now he has over 1,000 reasons to pray -- all the people who call the dump their home.
Joeny's project is documented here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWn4zkND0mc
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5 comments:
Wow - that is pretty incredible. I'd prefer to believe that people don't really live in those conditions. And yet...
Wow. I can't imagine what that would be like. Kids have it tough enough just being kids.
Hello Andrew and Amanda,
We have really enjoyed reading your blog. We have recently accepted an MCC assignment - will be placed in Teguc. So it was with great interest we read every bit of your blog from beginning to end! Thank you for sharing your journey.
We look forward to hopefully meeting you in August.
(we found your blog via mutual friends Rachel & Joel Jimenez and Ben Hartman).
Its amazing how even those people who go through the most terrible things in their lives can still pick up a harmonica and make some music.
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