This is from David Servant's book "The Great gospel deception"

I want to share with you a touching interview of a poor Christian man named Pablito, who lived with his family on the edge of a large public dump in Manila, Philippines. This interview was originally published in Christian Aid’s quarterly magazine, Christian Mission, along with the following editor’s note: In 1985 the Association of Philippine Churches (APC) sent a young missionary couple, Nemuel and Ruth Palma, to the poorest of the poor, Manila’s dump dwellers. Here hundreds of families live in rows of hovels stacked up like matchboxes, with dirty plastic sheets or pieces of flattened tin cans for roofs, and sackcloth and cardboard milkboxes for walls. An average family of seven lives in a structure no better than a pig sty, and no bigger than a full-sized bed!

The terrible stench, the utter filthiness, the continual burning of garbage, the presence of dens of thieves and hoodlums, prompted one APC worker to describe it as “man’s version of hell, where the worms do not die, and the fire is everlasting.” It is a place where rats outnumber children by the thousands, and flies outnumber the rats by the millions.

The Interview of Pablito
Q. When did you come to know the Lord Jesus? A. I received the Lord as my Savior through the witness of an APC worker five years ago. But my faith has been greatly strengthened through the testimony of my three little children.
At the time when I came to Christ, I was a street vendor selling smuggled cigarettes. I immediately realized that this was not consistent with my Christian faith, so I stopped peddling cigarettes and started selling local newspapers and magazines on the sidewalks.
But though I was selling a lot and making more profit, I did not stay long in this business either because I found out that they contained dirty pictures and pornographic stories.

Q. How did you become a garbage scavenger? A. I really wanted to live the life of a true Christian. So I built a small wooden pushcart and went around Manila’s public markets scavenging the garbage dumps for food leftovers, used bottles and tin cans which I sell for recycling.
Compared to cigarette and newspaper vending, it is very hard and dirty work. I am always tired after a day’s work and I smell terrible. But I feel clean inside, and that is what is important to myself and my family. We want to have clean hearts and minds before the Lord.

Q. How was your life affected when your children received Christ? A. My family and I have a small home at the south corner of the dump. It is only a shanty built with things I found in the dump, but it is a home full of joy because we all love the Lord. We have family devotions every evening. Our daughters are always singing songs they have learned at Bible classes. How I love to hear them sing! They are the sunshine of my life.
My daughters’ enthusiasm for attending church and Sunday school, and praying, has greatly affected my wife and me. In the Palma’s classes they are taught about hygiene, so my daughters want to wear clean clothes all the time.

They also urge my wife and me to wear clean clothes when we are not scavenging. As a result, our family seems to stand out here in the neighborhood. Our neighbors tease me when I wear my Sunday best by calling me “Mr. Lawyer.” I just smile at this, because I know deep inside they, too, want to be clean—both inside and out. ~to be continued

The wealth of Pablito - Part 2 of 2

Q. How do you grow in the Lord?

A. Our three little girls attend the feeding and educational program conducted by Nemuel and Ruth Palma. My wife and I attend the weekly Bible study for parents held by the Palmas at the dump.


I feel grateful to the Lord for making our lives happy despite our poverty. So much so that I find myself sharing this joy with my fellow scavengers. I hold a Bible study for my neighbors, and have started another Bible study for 12 people living on the west side of the dump. But we need more Bibles here. Bibles are one thing that we can’t get from the garbage because they are never thrown away. But they are expensive. (Note: Bibles in the Philippine language cost about $4.00 each.)


Q. How do you make ends meet with scavenging as your means of livelihood?

A. Scavenging does not earn much. One earns 20 to 30 pesos (around $1.50) per day. But the Lord has provided for us very well from the garbage dump. See this pair of pants I’m wearing? They look good, don’t they? I got them from the dump.


Some months ago I found out that I needed reading glasses. I prayed to the Lord, and a few days later I found these! (Pablito points to a pair of glasses he is wearing, attached to his ears by a piece of string). I found them in a pile of freshly dumped garbage. And they were the exact power of lens for my eyes!


Almost everything we have and use, from my belt to our little daughters’ shoes and toys, we found at the dump. God knows our small needs, so whatever we need is provided by Him just a stone’s throw away from us.

Q. What other important changes have happened in your life?

A. With Jesus in our hearts, Rosita and I have learned to accept the hardships of life with a smile. We stopped using foul language, and I learned to love my neighbors and to forgive quickly.


Do you know why I do not have a pair of shoes? Yesterday was Sunday, and I planned to be in church early for prayer. I put my best clothes on and my only pair of shoes, which I had found at the dump. I wanted to really look nice for the Lord because it was only two days after my forty-eighth birthday. So I convinced myself to spend five pesos to have my shoes shined by a bootblack. The bootblack took my shoes off to shine them, and I stood nearby.


Then I noticed a small flower stand just across the street, and I thought of buying the Lord a bunch of yellow flowers. I hurriedly crossed the street and bought them, but when I returned to the bootblack’s stand, he had run away with my shoes!


I almost wanted to cry! I was not surprised that I didn’t get angry, though I admit I was a bit self-conscious when I walked back home in my Sunday best, barefoot, with a bouquet of yellow flowers clutched in my hand. What a time my neighbors had in teasing me! And I was late for the morning service.


But when I prayed in church that day I knew that one day I will find a new pair of shoes, and unlike the old pair, they will be a perfect match.

Several months after the above interview, a correspondent from Christian Aid visited Pablito and found that he was no longer scavenging for a living. Rather, he was drawing water in four-gallon plastic cans from a private faucet a kilometer away, and selling the water to fellow dump-dwellers for six cents a can. He was paying the owner of the faucet about one cent per can, and was thus able to earn $1.50 on a good day. However, Pablito worked only in the mornings on four of his six weekly workdays in order to conduct Bible studies for his fellow dump-dwellers in the afternoons and evenings. Pablito admitted to the correspondent that he often gave half of his earnings to “the poor.” The end. From www.sermonindex.net

















"In every generation the number of the righteous is small. Be sure you are among them." ~A. W. Tozer

LL how does the story tie in with the book, 'the great gospel deception'. What is the book about?

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