“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence …” (1 John 3:17-19, NIV)
The dust blows and twists around your face as you stand on a rutted dirt road and no matter which direction you turn, it stings the eyes. The first smells you sense, seem both sweet and nauseating at the same time. As you take a deeper breath, something more sinister pushes violently against your lungs as they desire better air. Slowly your mind recognizes the repulsive smells of accumulating, lingering and burning refuse in massive amounts.
As you gaze first in one direction and then in another, all you see are people working midst piles of organized and separated reclaimed trash. There are piles of plastic, piles of clothing and cloth, piles of salvaged aluminum, stacks of metal and mountains of unrecognizable stuff. Midst all these accumulations, you notice trucks of every shape and size bringing more and more to this overflowing place of the discarded and reclaimed. Some new trucks and some older trucks all overloaded with waste of every kind. There are sewage trucks and open-backed trucks, covered trucks and compacting trucks, shining trucks and dirty trucks; all delivering more or driving away to gather more. Then there are the trucks of poor. These trucks are smaller and battered beyond description. They are moving the reclaimed and recyclable trash to the buyers to began the process all over again. There will be no new trucks for these purveyors of gathering and selling; only more loads to eke out enough money to buy meager amounts of beans and rice for their family.
Next you notice the endless parade of people. There are people laboring under bags ten times their size and people barely able to walk. In every direction people are moving, weaving and crossing the road, going somewhere. Men and women going to the dump to work for twelve hours or so. They go to rummage and claim enough stuff to put together a dollar’s worth of recyclable goods for their efforts. People with families, women with babies, men maimed by the busyness of the trucks, children dressed for school and children hardly dressed with ragged shirts and tattered over-sized or undersized shoes. Finally along the edges of the broken down shacks are the addicted men, who have rummaged through the garbage to find bottles of liquor to drain of its last ounces or cans of glue and solvents hoping to stay high as if to rise above the squalor of this place. This place is the Guatemala City dump and it is one of the largest dumps in the world.
Yet here in this place of the dirt, filth, cast-offs and hopelessness; smiles persist on the faces of the children and great charity is seen in the efforts of churches, leaders and projects of various kinds and functions. These humans who offer up their energy, heart and time might seem like angels alongside the rest of us but the fact remains; they are just humans who give more than the rest of us.
Behind a huge wall of nondescript fading aqua colored building is a small church with saintly pastor. A pastor who not only cares for the spiritual needs of the people she shepherds but a pastor who feeds the poor because her Savior asks her to love as He loves. Her eyes glint with the loving compassion that her Lord had for the people sitting on a hillside when he sent the loaves and the fishes around to the crowds to satisfy their hunger. The genuine Christian empathy and faith of substance that enables this small demure woman to feed the hundreds of children who come to side of the church each and every day is completely daunting to consider and comprehend. Still there are no cultural or societal awards for this kind of work and sadly there are few outside of this place that even know of her or of her monumental ministry of hope in a hopeless place. Yet as peered into the faces of a few of the hundreds that gather each day to eat, most likely their only meal of the day; I knew I was seeing what faith in a loving God looks like when it is flows out in true love and grace.
In my life … I have met countless pastors and sat in the audience of great spiritual teachers and leaders but I have not been in the presence of anyone so humbly and authentically real in word and deed in their faith. This is real faith, not for a dedicated moment of emotion; but real faith being lived out. It is faith alive as she feeds the spiritually and physically hungry … meal after meal, question after question, need after need. She loves and gives, day after day. This is real faith; not faith for accolades or reward. It is true faith because she knows Jesus Christ as her Lord and she loves Him with abandon because of His love for her. The children in this difficult place cannot keep from running with great big smiles to hug her and just be near her. Their endless expressions of gratitude are what the “Gospel” brings when it is truly lived out. I know somewhere else in a place completely the opposite of this place of want, struggle, tears and pain; there is a Savior who is also smiling as He watches this woman who loving serves Him. Yes, the Risen Christ is smiling; because this faithful servant is living out “Good News.” She is letting the “Good News” of His love and grace shine in this tragic place like the blazing sun for the world to see and find.
May the Lord richly bless you my friend, Pastor Mercedez for all that you do. I know the Lord is well pleased.
(I made a promise to Pastor Mecedez. I promised to try and help her get Bibles to give away to the people and children who come to her for their needs. This will be facilitated through the church at Antelope Hills where I serve as Pastor. If you would like to give to this effort, please contact me about facilitating any contribution you might desire to give towards this effort).
