Imagine if that was your life - a life of poverty.
Rummaging through garbage to find something-anything worth selling to help provide for yourself or your family. What if that were your means of survival, a daily routine? How would you cope?
If your income was $1 or $2 a day or less, how would you survive ?
How would you provide for your family on such meager wages? Would your heart not long for more..? A comfortable home, food on the table, clothing and not to mention an education for your children?
All the things we take for granted here.
These people are destitute, they have nothing; and it's all about surviving.Taking what you need to live, to help your family.
I remember the children living in the mountains outside of Tegucigalpa. In the area we were in, three schools were in close vicinity. If it had been safe to, we could have walked from one to the other.
Between these three schools, 1088 children were in attendance. This number does not include the babies, toddlers or children who's parents for whatever reason did not send their children to school.
Many of these kids have never been off the mountain. They have never been to the city. All they know is the life they live...poverty, despair and hopelessness. I have heard that in these mountain areas, physical and sexual abuse runs rampant. Can you imagine if that was all you knew?
In most cases children in public schools only go to grade 6. After that many of these children end up on the streets.
Is 58 :10
Feed the hungry, and help those who are in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon. The Lord will guide you continually, giving you water when you are dry and restoring your strength.
One day when we were in Honduras, we made bologna and frijole sandwiches and juice to and out to the street people; the homeless.
In these areas shoes were strung over hydro wires indicating we were in gang territory and drugs were available here. We saw money being raised up to a window by a rope and by that same rope, drugs being lowered to the street below.
We saw many prostitutes, and people addicted to drugs, and many with bottles of glue under their shirts, vacant eyes.
We went with Alvin who has a real ministry to these people. He was like Jesus with skin on. He knew their name, knew their story. He loved them for who they were, who they could be and where they were at.
They knew he loved them unconditionally and they loved him too. They called him Pappy.
I remember one young woman, I believe she was just 23 years old. She already had two children and was pregnant with her third. She was crippled, could barely walk and yet she had been a prostitute since she was 12 years old. A childhood robbed by the many men who used her and clouded by hopelessness and despair.
In that area a man could buy a woman for the entire night for $5.
Alvin introduced to another young girl; 14 years old. Her mother was a prostitute, her older sister was a prostitute. When she was a little girl she told Pappy Alvin that she would never do the things here mom and sister did, and yet there she was continuing the vicious cycle, her innocence long gone.
Her entire life, that was all she had ever known.
The time in the streets definitely had me out of my comfort zone. At times it was rather scary; especially for someone like me who has lived a rather sheltered life.
Yet inside I felt broken for them- the hopelessness of the situation- the seemingly no way out- no way to break free from the chains that bound them to this lifestyle.
But God!!
Jer 29:11, 12
"For I know the plans I have for you" says the Lord. "they are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In these days when you pray I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me and I will be found by you" says the Lord.
So I ask you to pray for them. Pray that somehow through the acts of kindness and love, they come to truly know the Love of God, that it becomes not just head knowledge but that it is deeply rooted into their heart..and that they would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that through Him there IS hope- a way out of the darkness and the sin that entraps them. He can free them, transform and change them if they turn to Him.
Psalms 72:12-14
He will rescue the poor when they cry out to Him. He will help the oppressed, who have no one to defend them. He feels pity for the weak and the needy and he will rescue them. He will redeem them from oppression and violence for their lives are precious to Him.
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