We woke up this morning for a church service at the Methodist Church for the dumpsite workers. The church has been there 10-15 years, but the Methodist pastor has been appointed there for two years. Some 30 adults usually worship in their open air pavilion on Sunday mornings. Approximately 50 children attend in the afternoon. The pastor who has a wife and two young daughters lives at the site. There is also a school for children 3-8 with 33 students currently enrolled. The lunch they receive at school is their substantial meal of the day. The pastor started a community soccer program, which has improved neighborhood relations and increased church participation by giving the surrounding community a sense of ownership and pride in the church.
The worship service lasted 2 hours and included praise music with English and Khmer (the Cambodian language) up on a screen, an introduction of our team, a report from the three youth that the church sponsored for our camp, a song which we performed for them, several testimonies including Becca from our team, Scripture reading, a sermon, announcements, a regular offering and a special soccer league offering. Luckily, we had one of our GBGM missionaries along to translate everything.
We had lunch at Hagar, a restaurant begun by an Australian man who rescues at risk women and children and teaches them the restaurant business, so they are employed in a safe and legitimate environment. The food and service there was excellent and a welcome relief from the communal camp food.
We went to the acutal dumpsite associated with this church to run a VBS for the children at the school there. There were only 60 children instead of the usual 300 because it was Sunday.
We divided them into four teams and rotated them through a music session, a Bible story lesson/drama, a craft session, and a games session. God in his goodness provided a nice breeze. We walked a short way into the actual dump following this time with the children.
The government recently stopped dumping garbage there. Some people were able to move to the new dumpsite, and some of the workers take public transportation to the new dumpsite to sift through it, but the transport costs money, cutting down on their very meager earnings. However, many people still live there in ramshackle houses and sift through the garbage looking for anything they can sell. Since there is no new trash being added, these people have to dig through hills of old garbage with picks.
As we were leaving, we saw two 12-year-old girls in a fly-infested dumpster digging for recyclables. In fact one of our team Kevin had talked to one of the girls while we were working at the school. Kevin had asked this girl why she wasn’t playing at the school and she had replied that she had to work for food for her family. For this girl education is not an option, there are no other options; she must dig in trash so she and her family can survive. This really polarized our outlook on the rest of the kids we had met at the school. The church has sponsors paying a mere $5 a month to allow the kids at this school to afford uniforms, books, and teachers. Public school is not even available to these children. Those who have been provided with transportation to other schools have been ostracized by the other students. Without this dumpsite mission school, all those smiling, and even clean in comparison, faces would have been in that dumpster or out in the mountains of trash. Yet, as we left even the kids who were digging in trash and not in school gave us smiles and high fives. I know that God is at work in their lives even in their suffering and poverty, because of the love that outpours from that school into the surrounding community.
We took a short visit to another part of town to visit an orphanage. Recently, the government has been constructing several new and nicer buildings for the orphanage, replacing the brick and wooden huts. The children enjoyed interacting with us—having their picture taken and seeing themselves on the small screen, usually with smiles and giggles. They loved having the tall guys lift them high in the air and giving them high-fives. They performed music for us and demonstrated their local dancing between moving horizontal bamboo poles. Several of our youth then joined in and danced. They proudly told us “Good-bye” and followed us out with waves and smiles.
-Diane and Seth
Thank you for your presence at the dump site and orphange. Encouragement and prayer go out to you and the children.