Stories from the Amazon - Trash Dump People

 This is the story of the Trash Dump People. People who live in the trash dump, building their houses out of pieces of trash, digging through the trash to find enough barely edible bits of who knows what to eat. Sorting the trash and collecting the recycle items, or things that could be used or fixed or sold. This is how they survived. 

This story happened when I was working in southern Brazil as a missionary with Youth With a Mission, (YWAM). Our mission base was in a large, well populated city. Our base director found out that there was a group of people living in the trash dump and we started an outreach to them. He asked for volunteers to go work with these people and I felt God leading me to be one of the volunteers. Somehow we got large donations of food that was still in great condition but the local supermarkets couldn't sell anymore. I was in charge of once a week cooking a huge pot of food for the trash dump people. And when I say huge I don't mean your biggest pot you have at home. It was the biggest pot I'd ever had to cook anything in. It barely fit in the back of the car! We worked together to chop up onions, garlic, vegetables, rice and whatever meat we could find and cooked a big pot of it. Honestly it looked pretty bad but actually tasted great. We hauled that hot pot of food in the back of the car and pulled up to the trash dump every week. After a short time all the trash dump people knew the day we'd show up and were there lined up with their plates and bowls to get a fresh hot meal of decent non trash food. We got to know the people. There were moms with babies, small kids, teenagers, all ages of people in this community making their living digging through trash. 

One day we went out there and there was a buzzard walking around near the people. I thought that was rather unusual so I asked and they told me that it was their pet. They had rescued it when it fell out of the nest or something and the buzzard seemed to think it was a pet dog. It followed them everywhere, never flew and ate beans and rice (which is the staple diet of Brazilians) The buzzard's name was Negao which means Big Black. I remember thinking how funny it was to keep a buzzard as a pet. The lady who sort of owned it was very proud of her pet!

There were some kids there living in the dump who had their own little house shacks, and they were so tickled that we were interested in them and they were eager to show us their "spot" and their tiny collection of recyclables they had gathered that day. One of them had a horrible cut on his foot that he had gotten from walking around in the trash basically barefoot. We told them about the love of God and tended their wounds and fed them, read God's word to them and prayed with them. I don't think I'll ever forget that time with the trash dump people.

As we live our lives in comfort and think we have things hard or bad, I often think of the trash dump people. Most of them were pretty content with their tiny shacks made of trash and their meager existence. I think about how God cares about each person on earth, no matter their status or situation. Doesn't matter if you have enough or not enough or if you live in a good house or a trash shack, God still cares and loves you and in the case of the trash dump people, God sent to them a bunch of young missionaries with a heart to serve and encourage them and hopefully show them the love and light of Jesus. I hope that those people were able to feel God's love through our actions.