The Children of the Landfill

This is my fifth day being back in the United States. I was only there two weeks, but it was long enough. There was enough time to fall in love with the kids from the streets. Long enough to develop relationships with the kids in the Manuelito Project. Long enough to see the needs and long enough to have the faces at the landfill burned into my mind. I still feel like what I saw was a dream, I have to force myself to believe that it is happening this very moment, the sight is that unbelievable. Imagine that you are ten years old. You have never heard the term baseball, and you have never owned your own stuffed animal. You do not have time to worry about that, you have to help feed your family, you have to feed yourself. You make money by scrounging through a city landfill, finding something that you can recycle, sell, or even eat. The trucks come and back into the large landfill, not even pausing for you to get out of the way. They dump the trash and you dig your little ten-year-old hands through the waste. You have to fight to get anything of value from the crowed that has now surrounded the newest delivery. You pick through sharp glass and rotten food, the smell no longer bothers you, you have grown up in this landfill. You have picked through trash only to uncover parts of aborted babies, been pricked by used hospital needles, and seen people run over by garbage trucks. I do not pretend to even have an idea of what it is like to live by picking through trash, making if lucky 40 cents a day. I only can imagine from the stories I have heard what the experience would be like for a child. Fortunately, there is something that you and I can do?
Check out the World Gospel Mission video on the ministry at http://www.wgm.org/cms/story/Story.asp?tid=3&did=675&pid=1846#top