On the Rubbish Dump

Part 1 of 2
by Ray Saunders

This article first appeared as Chapter 8, "On the Rubbish Dump" in Lord of the Abandoned, a biography by Ray Saunders describing his family's work with abandoned children in the rubbish dumps of São Paulo, Brazil.

And if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
Isaiah 58:10

About 45 miles north of São Paulo is a small town set like a precious jewel among emeralds. Because of its excellent climate and scenic attractions, Atibaia is a popular tourist resort, frequented by both national and international visitors.

In December 1980, our prayers for ministry were answered at last! We were invited by a Brazilian missionary organization based in Atibaia to help realize their vision for abandoned children: construction of single-unit homes where Christian families could adopt up to ten children.

When the first house was completed, we moved in. Compared to the cramped little apartment in which we had lived for three years, this house at Recanto, seven miles from the town, was a mansion. We looked out over sculptured hills, lush and undulating in the hot Brazilian sun and studded with orange groves, banana plantations and palm trees.

It was an ideal location for a work with children, and we were overwhelmed with the Lord's generosity. We were doubly grateful because we knew this was but another example of His perfect timing and provision. Many times over the previous four years, He had given the promise "Those who wait for me shall never be ashamed" (Isaiah 49:23, LB), but we were staggered by the bounty of His supply when it came.

Waiting is not easy for any of us, but in God's purposes, it is essential in order to test our call, our motives and our abandonment to Him. When these have been purified by the test of time, the Lord will open the door of His appointment. And it will be thrilling!

We soon discovered, however, that there were drawbacks to living in such splendid isolation. One of them was a very practical matter: There was no weekly garbage collection by the local authorities. We had to dispose of all our garbage either by digging a pit and burying it, or by putting it into sacks and transporting it ourselves into the town.

We tried the first method for a week, only to find that a pack of hungry dogs unearthed the buried rubbish during the night and scattered it all over the garden.

I asked our friend Roger, who lived on a nearby estancia, where I might leave our sacks of rubbish in Atibaia. He directed me to a market at the entrance to the town, where I should find large metal drums in which to place the sacks. I set off, confident that I had solved a major domestic problem.

Arriving at the marketplace I searched for the drums. Not one could be found. Though I walked the entire length of the market, I could not find a single drum or bin anywhere. Discouraged, I slumped into the driver's seat of our kombi and started the engine. Even though the kombi is large enough to seat ten people, six sacks of smelly garbage more than filled the space inside.

Noticing a scruffy-looking man with a broad grin on his face, I called to him, "Is there a place near here where I can deposit rubbish?"

"Oh, you want the dump!" he exclaimed. "It's that way." With a nod of his head and a flick of his thumb, he indicated the main highway that ran from São Paulo to Belo Horizonte. "Just across that road you'll see a narrow track. It leads straight to the rubbish dump."

With renewed hope, I turned the car in that direction. Following the dirt road, which led first to a brick factory, I drove tentatively over the rough terrain behind some bushes until, rounding a bend, the road opened out onto a huge area littered with trash.

There seemed to be three levels to the dump. The lower level was boggy and marshy where a nearby river had overflowed its banks during recent heavy rains. The middle layer had been bulldozed, obviously in an effort to cover mounds of rubbish deposited by lorries from Atibaia and neighboring communities. The top layer, which contained huge piles of soil, was covered with a variety of trash.

As I approached this top level by means of a muddy track, I could see women and children and lots of dogs scavenging through the filth of rotting food, torn wrappings, broken bottles and twisted metal.

Some scantily clad boys no more than ten years of age turned and stared at me when I stopped the kombi about twenty meters from them. As soon as I jumped out and turned toward the rear door to pull out the sacks, they whooped with delight and ran straight for me like savages.

Almost before the door was open, they had grabbed the six sacks and torn them open. Each one plucked some "treasure" out of the decaying rubbish and went scurrying off to show their less adventurous friends who were still sizing up the stranger to their territory.

I climbed back into the driver's seat in disbelief. I could see one boy eating a piece of stale bread he had picked out of the sack. Another was clutching a broken plastic car and still another was holding up to his chest an old T-shirt several sizes too small for him. A fourth boy was looking at me with a shy smile and waving, as if to say, "Please come back!"

And I did go back. But not until I had spent some time in prayer, asking the Lord what He was expecting of me regarding this motley group of very needy people.

As Christmas approached, I felt sure the Lord was directing me to take food parcels to each family who worked among the rubbish. It seemed that they had made a business of rescuing anything of value - newspaper, plastics, firewood, old toys, clocks, radios and a hundred other items that had lost much of their identity. But there was precious little nutritious food to be found. So the whole family joined me in making up neatly decorated packets of rice, biscuits, soup powder, milk and chocolate.

If ever the words of the Lord Jesus "It is more blessed to give than to receive" were true in my own experience, it was on that Christmas Eve when I visited the rubbish dump. There were looks of awe on the faces of the mothers as they received and opened their parcels, and exclamations of "Graças a Deus!" which I understood immediately as "Thanks be to God!" As I continued to hand out the packets, I was able to tell them simply that it was, indeed, because of God's love that the gifts were given.

I drove back home, feeling a warm glow in my heart and singing at the top of my voice:

"He is Lord, He is Lord, He is risen from the dead and He is Lord. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess That Jesus Christ is Lord!"

In the midst of this private celebration, I heard an unmistakable voice, still and small. And what about tomorrow?

"Excuse me, Lord. Did You say something?"

And what about tomorrow? came an echo.

"Tomorrow, Lord? What about tomorrow?"

What will they do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next?

"Lord!" I exclaimed. "What are You saying?"

He then proceeded to show me. As I thought about that question and all the Scriptures and confirmations He had given us over the past six years since our arrival in Brazil, I knew that He was opening the door of His divine appointment. Even more than a home for abandoned children, the Lord wanted me to minister to these outcasts on the rubbish dump! And thus began a ministry that was to teach me more about prayer and its power for life's nitty-gritty than all of my previous Christian experience put together.

As we learn to live in the presence of the Lord, talking to Him and listening to Him, He will show us His plans so that we can pray for the right things. This is what Jesus meant when He said, "And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it" (John 14:13-14).

In seeking the Lord about the community of poor people living and working on the rubbish dump, He showed me that He wanted His love to be demonstrated to them in two ways: food for the body and then food for the spirit. As a matter of fact, He was very specific. Each time I visited the dump, I was to line up all the children at the door of the kombi and serve each one a cup of milk as he or she repeated a Bible verse.

The day soon came when everything was to be set in motion. The plastic beakers, the milk, the candies (fudge and coconut ice), along with a notebook and pen to record the names of the children, were neatly packed in a large wooden box. These were at my side when I pulled up in front of a group of urchins who were rummaging through a pile of rubbish.

As usual, I got out of the kombi to unload the sacks of domestic trash I had brought from home.

Suddenly I heard a shout in Portuguese: "Look what he's got in here!"

I glanced up toward the front of the vehicle to see a pair of muddy legs sticking out of the window. The rascal had obviously jumped up to see if there was anything of value inside, and decided to help himself to some of the candy in the box.

With a bit of firm discipline, reminiscent of my teaching days, order was soon restored, and the children lined up to receive their milk. The verse they were to repeat was John 14:6: "Jesus disse: Eu sou o caminho, e a verdade, e a vida." ("Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life").

The children repeated the words hesitantly, some with giggles, some with puzzled expressions on their faces. But as they spoke the life-giving words of Jesus, I was interceding for them that God would pour out His love and blessings and anoint the words so they would take root in each childish heart and bear eternal fruit for His glory.

Almost as soon as my work with the needy children on the rubbish dump had commenced, the enemy attempted to destroy it. He used all kinds of tactics, including direct opposition from his own agents, a group of hardened spirit-worshipers who lived there. Sometimes, after I arrived, these people would try to persuade the older boys and girls to stay away from the kombi. Judging by the furtive looks I received from these children while they continued working in the rubbish, I suspected they were being threatened or intimidated.

There were other, more subtle snags in the early days of that work. Some of the older children often used my visits as occasions to demonstrate their anger and frustration against a society in which they had become outcasts. They would shout me down and mimic my mannerisms, developing an infinite variety of techniques designed to harass. There was much muttering and grumbling about their hard life. And occasionally they even tried to damage the kombi as it sat parked near the dump. It was their way of protesting a bleak and hopeless future, which for many of the girls seemed to be prostitution and, for the boys, a life of crime or alcoholism.

But perhaps the most difficult hurdle of all was my own discouragement. Knowing that I would be coming here indefinitely, I was filled with revulsion by the sights and smells. Nothing in my rather reserved upbringing had prepared me for the muck, the filth, the stench that literally nauseated me.

Many times in those first few weeks, I returned home feeling overwhelmed. I knew God had called me to the dump, but I had not expected it to be quite so hard. And I had thought that the people would receive me with gratitude, not this overt, sometimes violent rejection.

In retrospect, I suppose I was guilty once more of pride. Being by nature a workaholic, I brought all my best energies to bear on this mission to which the Lord had called me, and in the process, I think His plan became mine.

This sin of pride seems to emerge especially in those of us who have positions of leadership or prominence in God's service. It is so sneaky, creeping in under the carpet, just like the ants, cockroaches, poisonous spiders and scorpions common to Brazil. The answer, I have discovered, is to confess and renounce it as soon as the Holy Spirit brings it to light.

We think we are abandoned to God when we accept His call, and can minister without being tainted by it. Then we say, "Search me, 0 God, test me. See if there is any offensive way in me. " And He exposes this cunning, egotistic tendency of ours to take some of the credit for what He alone has done. How important it is that we watch and pray against pride so that the Lord is not robbed of any of His glory, and so His perfect plans are not hindered by our intervention!

Some of us also fall into the error of praising God's servants for what is so obviously His work. This is a great snare of the enemy, not only for the servant who may be mightily tempted to pride, but also for the onlookers who are doing the devil's work of robbing God of the glory He deserves.

No one would think of applauding a postman, a printer or a bookseller for some great masterpiece of literature that falls into our hands, though each may have been responsible in some way for its safe arrival. The Author of life and of our salvation is the only One worthy of glory and praise for what He is doing in these days of His outpoured Spirit.

One day when I was driving along the dirt road leading from our home to the rubbish dump, black clouds gathered suddenly, as they often do in the hot season. Great masses of darkness billowed against a background of sunlit white clouds.

That's it! I thought. I'm not meant to go today. It's going to pour down! Secretly in my heart, I knew I should be there, rain or shine. But I had grown so discouraged by the outrageous behavior of some of the teenagers that any excuse not to go would do.

As I turned the last bend in the road and saw the high mound of red earth that marked the dump site, my eyes were drawn upward. There in the sky, spanning the whole area of the slum community, was a rainbow. I had never seen one so big, so close, so vivid.

My whole being was overshadowed by the presence of the Lord, and my heart swelled in praise. "Yes, Lord," I whispered. "You are here. You are the Lord of the rainbow, and You are the Lord of this rubbish dump."

From that moment I always referred to the dump as Arco Iris, which is the Portuguese word for "rainbow."

To most people the rainbow is a sign of hope, a promise of better things to come. To the Christian, however, the rainbow has even greater significance. God's throne is surrounded by a rainbow (Revelation 4:3). It is not just a reminder of God's promise that He will never again flood the whole earth, but a sign that He is alive, active and present with us now in our circumstances.

Suddenly all the obstacles and difficulties associated with this mission assumed their proper perspective, including my own role. As the tears came to my eyes on that morning, I drew off to the side of the road and thanked the Lord for revealing Himself to me in that moment of discouragement. I remembered that when He called me to go to the needy folk on the dump, He had not promised it would be easy, but that He would go with me.

Shortly after that experience, I had a dream that completely transformed my attitude toward the work at Arco Iris. In the dream I was visiting a needy family with many children. Hiding behind all the others was one little boy who caught my eye.

Catching a glimpse of his face, I was moved by the sadness I saw there. His eyes were pools of eternal tears. I knew I could not leave until I had spoken to this child.

At first he would not meet my gaze, but eventually he had no choice, for I stood before him and waited. At last he looked up.

"Jesus Christ is alive today!" I told him.

Immediately hope and life returned to those haunting eyes and then I woke up.

The dream had been so vivid I had no doubt it was from the Lord. When I prayed, He revealed its meaning.

This child represents the millions of children throughout the ages who have been without hope, He said. The poor, the oppressed, the sick, the homeless, the lonely, the rejected, the abandoned of this world - all those who have never heard of Jesus.

Many times thereafter, when I looked into the grubby faces of the children who appeared at the door of the kombi to receive their cup of milk, I saw those sad eyes and remembered the dream and its message. And the appalling circumstances of their lives faded as I saw them through the eyes of the Lord.

Go to part 2 of 2 of On the Rubbish Dump

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On the Rubbish Dump

God's Word

Urbana Stories

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December 27-31, 2009