Christmas at the Dump

Some of our friends from Tupelo, Mississippis decided they wanted to provie Magi boxes for those people at the dump that exist in such a desperate situation. They had a well thought out plan. They purchased and assembled the boxes and got them to where a container was leaving.
They made plans to come this week so they could be here to personally hand them to the people at the dump.

Best laid plans sometimes do not materialize, especially when anything in Honduras is involved. The container was not ready to ship.

They went and retrieved their boxes, repacked them into bags and put them in suitcases. Five people had their personal luggage and luggage with the gifts totaling fifteen pieces of checked luggage. I am sure that was fun checking that in and clearing customs.

We thought we would also provide a hot meal for the folks at the dump. We had the serving logistics figured out, but we did not have the cooking logistics worked out with the equipment we currently have. Especially since Marc and I were gone all day Tuesday to San Pedro Sula to get the group.

As the normal routine for feeding at the dump is making sandwiches on Wednesday, that is what we did. We provided more fruit than usual.

The people know us well enough now to know that there is always plenty of food. We made a plan to distribute the gift bags with as little chaos as possible.

Like I have already said, the best laid plans don't always work. It had to work better than if we had had no plan. More people than we have ever seen began to show up when the gifts were being distributed. It could have turned into a really bad situation.

After we cried because there were not enough boxes, it was quickly decided to have more boxes this year.

It was better that the children received something and we are sure that all the children did receive a gift bag. I saw little girls, just about our little Camille's size that were so dirty and hungry. We distributed the bags after the food was distributed. I saw little children just rip into their bags. Another little girl that was wearing plastic bags on her feet for shoes, went off by herself and opened her bag. She would take one thing out at a time and look at it and put it back into the bag before taking another item out of the bag. She was protecting her stuff. She knew if she spread it out on the ground, someone might take it from her.

While we know these gifts in no way relieved the misery of the people that live and scavenge in the dump, we hope we brought just a little joy into their lives for one day.

Terri

I know this post deserves some pictures. Right now, our internet is so slow it will not allow us to upload pictures. I will post the pictures later.