Here´s another blog about the dump. It´s intense enough to warrant 2. Sorry if it comes out kind of scattered and all over the place.
There are two little girls there who have just totally stolen my heart. They´re sisters: Marlene is one year old, and Maria Feli is six. Marlene is precious. She has huge brown eyes and precious moments curls, and she´s still chunky from baby fat. She doesn´t wear diapers, and her clothes are always urine-soaked. Her feet, like Maria Feli´s are so dirt-covered and stained from living barefoot in filth that they´re several shades darker than the rest of her body.
Maria Feli is gorgeous. She has this long brown that´s been highlighted by the sun and malnutrition – it looks fine and soft, but it´s so coated in dirt and filth that it´s crunchy to the touch. She and Marlene are both extremely, extremely shy. We´ve been going to the dump for two months, and I could barely get Maria Feli to meet my eyees, and Marlene would cry every time I tried to hold her. Until this week. This week, we had a breakthrough. Marlene let me hold her for like 20 minutes, and she even smiled at me. When I told Maria Feli goodbye, she gave me a hug. Voluntarily. That´s huge.
On one hand, I am so so excited and happy that they´re finally opening up and letting me love them, but on the other hand, it breaks my heart, because I´ll only see them 3 more times. Then I´m going to leave them in that craphole and go back to my life.
There´s this mall in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. It´s big and nice and airconditioned. Most of the stuff in it is imported from the U.S. or Europe, so it´s freakin´ expensive. The people in that mall got money. Half a mile from it, there are people living in plastic houses. An hour´s drive from it, there are two little girls wearing filthy clothes and no shoes living in garbage. I hate that mall. And I hate it with the full knowledge that doing so makes me a hypocrite, because how am I different? My whole country is like that mall. We have so much stuff. And there are people everywhere who have nothing while I chill out in my bubble with my stuff.
I´m not sure I want to spend my life in the States. I don´t know where Jesus wants me. I do know, though, that wherever I end up, I´m called to love peple. I think that´s my life purpose, just to love people. So. We´ll see where that takes me.
I couldn´t decide which verse I liked more, so here´s three.
´But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.´-Psalm 39:7
´Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.´- Psalm 63: 7-8
´I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirite, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.´-Isaiah 57:15
