Guest Blog: A Mission to Remember

Following is excerpt one from my DS 2's recent mission trip to Nicaragua with his church in Gainesville. When I asked him to guest blog, he agreed quickly. When he wrote his words, he said he just wrote and wrote and before he knew it, he was at 2500 words! I've decided to break it up into several segments.

Here's the first one:

On Saturday, March 6th, our group arrived in Nicaragua around 10:30pm. Although it was dark, we could tell that the place that we were staying was very nice. We called it the Garden of Eden. It had a ton of hammocks and palm trees and a monkey. This was a place that people would pay to come on their honeymoon. Our college pastor told us that this place was a lot nicer than he normally takes groups to, but the conditions that we were about to work in were a lot worse than he usually takes groups to. Now, I have been on previous mission trips, but nothing that I had seen or heard could have prepared me for what I was about to see. I knew that we were going to work with the people who lived in the dump, but I had no clue what that meant. I though it meant that people lived around the dump and used the dump as their resources. Boy was I wrong!

These groups of nearly 1000 people, who live in La Chureca, or the city dump, live smack in the center of the dump. These families thrive off of what they find in the city landfill. These people literally run after the dump trucks as they come into the dump and they fight over the trash that is dumped. Each of these families needs to survive and they do so by finding leftover food in the dump and selling bottles that are brought in by the dump trucks.

On the first day of the trip we went to a church that was in the city of Managua, Nicaragua. This church was very different than your normal American church, but it was neat to see how they worshiped. No one was holding back or worried about how their friends viewed them. Everyone was very authentic and worshiped as they pleased.

After the church service we went to the dump for the first time. We were instructed to be silent as we toured the dump and to just take it in silently. This was very difficult for our group. We had never seen anything like this. We had never seen such poverty and despair.

These people literally lived in cardboard houses (shown on the right in the photo above). Raw sewage was running right through the middle of the place we were walking. Many of us were filled with guilt and did not know how we could do anything that would impact these children and families. I mean how are we supposed to tell these kids about a heavenly father who loves them when their earthly father sold them for the rights to an area of trash to dig through? This kind of stuff happens daily in this area. Girls are sold every day for the rights to a piece of the dump.

When we got back to the compound where we were staying, I took my guitar up to the third deck look out and began to play Chris Tomlin’s “God of this City.” This song has never spoken to me as much as it did that night. As I was singing the lyrics I had a peace come over me because I knew that He was not just the God of my city, but He is the God of La Chureca too!

The second day we realized that we are supposed to be the seed that God can water and grow for his kingdom. We were not called to Nicaragua to save these kids and bring them back to the US. We were called to plant the seed and let God do the rest.

We arrived at the school in the dump on Monday and all of our plans went down the drain. We had plans to do a VBS sort of thing, but our plans were thrown down the drain. We began to improvise and just play with the kids. I picked up a soccer ball and began a soccer game in the school yard. I thank God for our plans not working! We had an amazing time just building relationships with these children, and showing them God’s love.

In the afternoon the girls of our group put on a spa day for the girls in the dump.

They painted their fingernails and toenails, and did some face painting as well. While the girls did this, I was in charge of running a soccer camp for the boys of the dump. Now, let me describe the scenery for a second. Remember we are still IN the dump.

The smoke from the burning trash is so thick it is very difficult to breathe or even open your eyes all the way. The smell never goes away, and because it has not rained for FOUR months and won’t rain again until MAY, the dust is very dry and blows in your face constantly! This “field” that we were playing on was a very hard surface with tons of dust and dirt on top. Even though we could barely open our eyes and we were slipping all over the place, we had a great time playing with the kids. I love how soccer is a universal language. I didn’t know everything they were saying because they spoke Spanish, but we didn’t have to. I set the ball down, blew the whistle, and we played!

From Susan: If you have specific questions or comments for DS 2, let me know. He says he could go "on and on" telling stories. I'm sure he'd be happy to expand and/or expound on any portion of their trip or his blog about it. And a big thanks to the girls on the team who took these photos!