El Faro

In English, El Faro means the lighthouse. When I was studying abroad in Costa Rica, my group went to Nicaragua for six days. Of the many things I saw and learned, my experience with El Faro is the most etched into my thoughts. El Faro was the name of church located in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital and largest city. Managua is home to a place called “La Chureca,” the largest municipal dump in all of Central America containing the trash of some 1.3 million inhabitants. 2,000 Nicaraguans live inside the dump, subsiding on the money they make from going through the trash and finding bottles and other items that can be recycled and frequently eating any food scraps they find amongst the refuse. Food is in desperately short supply, as evidenced by the tragic story that took place a few weeks before the day we came. Three kids had been searching for food and ingested rat poison thinking it was food and died.

                In the midst of this incredible suffering and pain stands the lighthouse, El Faro church. El Faro runs an elementary school for the kids who live in the dump and feeds them each day. El Faro has several other programs in place to help the people of La Chureca. The church even started holding its church services in La Chureca so that the people there could come to church. I find El Faro to be one of the truest pictures of what the Church is called to be: Christ’s Body. In 1^st Corinthians 12, Paul calls the members of the church “the body of Christ.” We fulfill this calling by going out to a world in need and loving and serving the people around us. Christ’s body the Church exists not solely for itself, but for presently outside of the body. This is the way Christ lived (just read the Gospels).

The Gospel of John makes the analogy of Jesus as light, the light of the world. John 1:5 refers to Jesus, saying “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” And just as Jesus shone in the darkness, we are his followers and collectively as his Body the Church are called to shine in the darkness of this sin and suffering infected world. Maybe that is why in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says this “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (5:14-16).

My experience with El Faro church really brought this call into focus for me. My prayer is that we may all find our “La Churecas,” that we would follow our call to be Christ’s body and to be his lighthouses in this world filled with so much darkness.