many people ask me what our trip was like in Guatemala, this is just a small portion of what we experienced. i worte this a few days after we visited La Basurero (trash can). it is a portion of Guatemala city that has the poorest people in town. to make ends meat they dig in the city dump, risking death inorder to feed their family. in two years the dump will be full and the 11,000 people are beginnig to panic, their way of living is coming to an end. within this area there are churchs, but their ultra-legalistism is doing more harm than good, but there is one lady that has a dream to show grace to here people, this is my experiance in La Basurero.
La Basurero
Hope is the sort of thing that drives us towards something better. It is the knowing without a doubt that better times are coming.
Imagine the stench of rotting garbage. Fly infested houses, filled with children, malnourished and looking upon you, an American as if the expect something out of you.
On their faces they have that look of desperation mixed fatigue, the same sort of look that one gets when they hear death rapping at their door. Outside the fly infested house filled with the more than desperate children, stand their parents; filled with anxiety, worry and doubt because they don’t know how to feed their starving children. Houses four feet apart, dirt encompassing your clean shoes and flies following you fresh unfamiliar scent; like a greyhound tracking its next prey.
As an American that has to much for your own good you have compassion. The same sort of compassion you have on every trip. You know the kind, the one where you truly feel for these kids, but it disappears in a few weeks due to time passing and your ‘to busy for anyone; attitude. But right now that compassion is real, as real as it gets eating away at your heart placing the same burden that everyone feels when they visit the garbage people.
As you slowly walk observing tattered shack after tattered shack you think to yourself, “why is life this way?” but in reality you already know the answer. It’s society’s fault. They place this burden upon them, leaving them hopeless and full of the same insecurities day after day.
The man guiding through the city tells you countless tales and facts of this 11,000 strong city set aside as outcasts by their own people.
“Desperate, alone and without a prayer these people are left to scrounge around the city dump to make a small amount of money to feed their families,” the man tells you with a unusual look of confidence and determination on his face. That look, as unfamiliar as it is inspires you the same way, but is yet to reveal itself.
A few yards into the compound the city not only traps it’s people like caged animals, but the trap has caught you into a paradox feeling beyond reality that such a paradigm might posses.
The group slowly walks passing shack after shack until they arrive at a local store. It looks like any other shack but for some strange unforeseen reason this store is filled with something unusual. It’s as if the store is a light house sending a beacon of light into a dreary darkness. Hear standing at the back due to the feeling that captures your very being. Assign through your skin, bones and soul; this mystery intrigues you. Therefore you continue to walk with your heart skipping beats and your mind racing.
Entering the store you fell some sort of compassion, compassion for the owners, the people, and the country. Here, something is here, but yet again you don’t recognize it, placing your finger on it isn’t quite possible.
What, what is it!? Your guide, the man with the unusual determined face instructs you to move up stairs. At first glance the concrete abnormal stairs are daunting, but courage takes control of your lifeless legs, and you move on.
The above the impoverished store is plain, distant and seemingly cold, but this is the contrary. Within these concrete walls dwells a family with the same substance on the guide’s face, and the mysterious emotion you have.
Then, a women, average in Latina height walks up the stairs carrying a child. Normal in stature she seems nothing less than an average woman.
The conversation begins.
For the next forty-five minutes she shares her story. Drugs, alcohol, pain, abuse, forgiveness, grace, change, blessing; the story is nothing less than an “average testimony”, but this tale of redemption imposes on you something special.
Something with a different familiarity, a presence. The same presence that you haven’t felt since that night you rejected it two months earlier. The women’s story sparked a fire you couldn’t ignite for the life of you. Now the presence is moving across your soul, you weep for the women. Tears flow down your face not of sadness but of joy.
At the conclusion of the story, you realize that this women and her family are bringing hope to her people. The light house centered in darkness is sending out this beacon of hope, this hope that only comes from Jesus Christ.
The mysterious feeling that you felt moments ago is now bull rushing with this single word-hope. Hope that inspires it’s captives for something more. Hidden and yet to be made known, it drives on to ask questions and look for answers.
This is what the average Latina women hands out freely. She shares her life with her neighbors, living with them and remaining an “undesirable person. She chooses to live with her people rather than use some other less effective way. She is the living example of incarnational ministry, living with her people just as Christ lived with his.
Eureka, you found it! The source of the determined man’s face. This source of determination is now yours. The hope that this women is handing out freely is from Jesus Christ. This source for determination to reach these people is the source of the powerful presence. This source is brilliantly glowing on the face of the man, the women, and you; it is the living presence in us all.
Now what? Now that you have received this insight of hope, what is next? This hope that has now been made known requires of you change. What change? That is up to you. But as things come and go, as relationships fade and as time ticks on, one thing remains in you, hope. | 
