Nicaragua:: Day 3

from my journal: December 7, 2011

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband! I'm sad I'm not with him today but I'm having a wonderful experience, one I wish I could share with him.

Today in Nicaragua, the locals are celebrating Mary's birthday. There will be parades, parties, dances & fireworks later this evening, I am told. Hopefully we will have a chance to go down to the local town square to witness this celebration.

This morning's devotional was from Psalm 27 - The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? Also, Ephesians 6:10-19 - Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Today we went to a village that inspired me. These people once lived at the dump. The city of Diriamba sold very small plots of land for dirt cheap to encourage people to move out of the dump. And so they did.

This little village is now called Kilombo. Our church has sent teams down to help build houses. There are now 30 one room houses built out of concrete bricks and they have a solid foundation. The goal is to build 150 more homes. It only costs $1800 to build ONE of these homes in Diriamba. $1800. If you had $1800 dollars what would you do with it? Pay off some student loans? Buy yourself that Christmas present that Santa forgot? Go on a long vacation? This amount of money would buy a family of 4 (possibly more) a home for years to come. Oh, how blessed we are.

Our second stop today was to the dump. I can honestly say I. HAVE. NEVER. I didn't take as many pictures here as I wanted because I just stood in awe and stared for quite some time. For as far as I could see there was trash. The smell was almost unbearable. There was smoke rising from different areas of the dump from burn piles. Looking down under my feet, I realized I was standing on people waste but also people livelihood.
There were men, women, children, mothers & babies all living off the trash of the people of Diriamba. They were thrilled to receive the rice and beans and toys (for the children) we gave them.
My prayer for them is that the people living at the dump will one day have their own Kilombo.