Guatemala City lays claim to the largest landfill site in Central America. It sits forty acres in size, or the equivalent to forty football fields. This summer marked the first service journey for our Arts N’ The Hood fine arts camp to this region. We took thirteen team members by invitation from CTM to see God at work in hard places and bring our camp along for the ride. We were privileged to serve with Potter’s House, a ministry that has come alongside the communities around the dump for more than twenty years, at their school located just one hundred and fifty feet from the dump. We spent an entire week doing hip-hop routines, photography classes, salsa steps, art drawings, drama skits, choir practices, and ended our week with a big show for the community to watch.

For our entire team the largest challenge was to connect, make sense of, or merely acknowledge respectfully the children we served and the world they lived in. The world we glimpsed from atop of the ravine. During the week as we walked through the dumpsite communities, heard from and prayed with the leaders of those communities, and then toured the seven to ten block radius around the dump that house ten thousand people, I can recall being overwhelmed, but not entirely awestruck…not yet. That moment happened on the ravine. I am still processing the event, the entire trip actually, but I will never forget the sense of dumbfoundedness that came upon me as I viewed the immense suffering below. We could have stared for hours at the trash and continued to be surprised by how much of the trash was actually people working. They seemingly morphed with the trash.

I was speechless. The world around me became silent. With thousands of vultures hovering over the dumpsite waiting for something, for anything, I felt as if I too could fly into the heat, or above the stench, even high into the air above and just forget I was a human being. I close my eyes right now and weep at the enormity of the dumpsite that has bred life to generations after generations for over sixty years. The sounds still echo in my ears of hundreds of dump trucks that make their way into these forty acres daily bringing trash and income, from whatever is salvageable for sale, to the parents of the children we asked to sing joyful songs about God’s love earlier that morning, and would ask them to sing more that day as well.

As I looked out into the dump and closed my eyes my soul paused and asked my heart, “How do we sing the Lord’s song in this strange land?” Or more appropriate, “What is the Lord’s song?” Deep from the tension within me, I wanted to sing the song, “God is so good, God is so good, He’s so good to me.” I wanted to reach for something that could prove to me that God cared, that he gave shit about what I was seeing. I wanted to demand justice. I wanted to let go. I wanted to disappear into the mountains of rubbish myself. I did none of that. Our group was at a loss what to do.

With many different interpretations of what we saw atop of that ravine, we left and headed back to the school beside the dump to continue our camp with beautiful children. Children who we saw fight with one another like their life depended on it, cough up blood like they were seriously sick, be creative like we couldn’t believe, dance like they were born to music, and not finish their food because of the tremendously rotten teeth that pained them. It was a long and powerful week for us all.

At the end of the week with the big show at hand and many parents, who work the dump while their kids are in school, waiting to see their kids perform something spectacular, we knew the best part had come. The parents and kids were entirely grateful for the new experience we brought through our camp. We were blessed to be able to serve them and wrestle with the world they live in. From that experience we continue to ask God to give us the courage to celebrate the goodness he creates in hard places, and lament over the suffering people endure when it seems his only presence is that he simply chooses to suffer with them.

...with Wilson, a young friend from Potter's House

Sam Trujillo
spent the summer in Guatemala
father of six children
uncontrollable need to ask questions
tricked my wife into marrying me!