Maureen Hodge drove up a winding road, slick with mud from a recent rain. She and her five passengers were headed to one of Honduras’s city dumps—home to teen prostitutes who work for 50 cents, drug addicts, and ex-prisoners. But when they arrived, Hodge could not get out of the car.

“For the first time in a long time,” she said, “I didn’t know if I could get out of the car and face the poor before me. The heaps of rotting trash, hundreds of vultures flying overhead, the horrible mud, and people everywhere scavenging like ants were more than I thought I could take.”

When she finally stepped out of the truck, Hodge saw two men fight for a piece of plastic they could recycle for money, only to have a vulture swipe it.

Hodge sighed, horrified by the scene, and looked up the mountain. She saw a girl staring down at her from atop a heap of trash. “She was about five years old and looked like a princess in her pink shirt and torn jeans,” Hodge said. “Her mom’s back was turned to me and I couldn’t see her face. ‘Would you like water for you and your daughter?’ I called. As she turned around I noticed that she was no more than 14 or 15 years old. I thought, ‘Jesus, how can you allow this?’”

At that moment Hodge remembered her traveling companion—the pastor who had built a school for these forgotten children. “He has been a light on the hill bringing hope and love to literally the poorest of the poor,” she said. “For me the greatest hopelessness is when there is no hope that God can make a better way. If we stop believing that the King has stopped caring for someone like the princess at the dump, then we stop believing that God really loves us and can change things.”

Click here to read more about AFE (Love, Faith and Hope) School in Honduras that is educating and ministering to the children living in the dump.