The Need for Nursery

This week, I saw some things that I have had trouble getting out of my head. Since I spent so much time in the garbage dump, I have noticed things I had not notice when I would come up twice a year. One of the issues that stands out is the surprising number of small children who just hang out up in the garbage dump. These are newborn babies to about 4 years old. They are not old enough to work but they don’t really have any place to go. The parents just take them up to the garbage dump with them.

Last week I met David, a 3 year old boy who was with his mom and dad. Little David was sitting in a old sombrero and covered in dirt. He had young parents who were collecting paper products. They would come and check in with David every 10 to 15 minutes. Next to David was another family babysitting a 6 month old baby. It was a baby girl named Juliet. Her mother is 16 year old Carla, a girl who used to come to AFE but is no longer attending. Carla’s Grandmother is in her 30’s and was watching the 6 month old baby full time. Juliet was covered in black soot from all the smoke in the air. I asked her why she doesn’t bring her to our nursery but the baby is still breast feeding. The same is true of two other babies I met. Then I asked if once the baby had been weaned, if she would bring her to the nursery but she did not give me an answer.

Although Washington Cathedral has provided for a nursery, we still do not have the staff to run the nursery. We need the funds to pay a salary and the right worker. Then we need to persuade some of the mothers of the value of keeping their children in a safe and sanitary location. Many of the mothers do not understand why they would need to take their babies to a nursery if they could just stay with them. Please keep these issues in your prayers as we seek the right solution.

Mother's Day in the Garbage Dump

Thanks to Washington Cathedral, Orphan Outreach, and Project Transformation we were able to have a Mother’s Day celebration where we honored over 200 mothers who work in the garbage dump. It was nothing short of a miracle.

All week long, I went up to the garbage dump to invite the mother’s and let them know all the details of the celebration. Although I invited mother’s everyday, it was hard to guess how many would show up. Friday morning, we rented a bus that I took into the garbage dump to bring the woman to the school. My jaw dropped when I saw over 200 women ready to get on the bus. We squished in all the women with their small children, and then headed down to the soccer field in front of the school. We had beautiful set up for the mothers where they could sit in the shade during the children’s presentation and then eat peacefully. The mother’s ate among friends while Jeony encouraged them to keep their heads up. They were also given vouchers to pick up some clothes.

Our main agenda was to share God’s love with these mothers so that they felt honored. But we did have another agenda. Most of these mother’s do not have their children in a school but have them work alongside them. Our prayer was to use this event to showcase the children’s progress so that the mother’s would be inspired to allow their children to come to school. So far I have spoken with several mothers who plan on registering their children this week. We are so excited. I have come to realize the importance of reaching the future generation of garbage workers before their identity becomes engrained with the garbage dump culture.

A typical Honduras tradition for Mother’s Day is to present mothers with a basket that has the essentials for the home such as a rice, beans, eggs, soap, etc. These baskets cost about $15 and are nothing but a dream to the mother’s who work in the garbage dump. It would take them about 15 days to save up to buy one but that would mean not eating anything for the family during those 15 days. Clearly impossible. Yet, thanks to all you readers, we were able to sponsor 48 baskets! During the celebration 48 families received the gift of a lifetime. I wish you could have seen the faces of the mothers who would cry with joy over their baskets. It was beautiful.

Please pray for these mothers who each represent a family working and living in the garbage dump. Also pray that we could use the momentum of this amazing event to continue towards transformation.

Teaming Tegus

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning
as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” - Romans 8:22

Tegucigalpa’s groans are louder and less subtle than those I have heard in the states. They rise to a crescendo in the streets – the blast of cars, horns, and murmuring crowds in a city teaming with an ever-growing population.

A recent conference on “Child Advocacy[1]” gave numbers to the facts that Rey and I witness every day. Over half of the 7,500,000 people in Honduras are under 20 years old. The average family has five kids and many of them spend their days working to supplement the combined family income of $77 a month.

Poverty, here, is described as not having sufficient resources for the basics: clothes, a balanced diet, school, and safe place to live. Extreme poverty occurs when people do not have enough even to eat and are starving and malnourished. In Honduras, the most recent data (2004) shows that 64.2% live in poverty while 44.6% suffer from extreme poverty. 38.4% of families in Honduras live on less than a $1 a day!

What this means for us is that as we are stopped in traffic young boys come up to our car to ask for handouts. Young girls begin wiping our windshields. Getting kids to leave the dump to come to school is getting harder and harder. And we are down on our knees in prayer every night.
[1] The conference was put on by “Alcanzar – IESH” (the social arm of the Santidad denomination here in Honduras) and Compassion International. It took place on April 25th, 2008.