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We live in a world that recycles almost everything from aluminum cans to plastic milk jugs. The discarded, rejected, and unwanted are transformed, restored, and made new again. The discards are reemployed for good. Our willingness to accept and be reborn in Christ is a recycling, in a manner of speaking, from the ranks of the lost and searching into disciples of the Living Lord Jesus. As children many of us learned the words “Jesus loves me this I know”1 but sometimes along the way we may forget we are children of a loving God. And unfortunately, there are those growing up today who have not been introduced to the love of Jesus. God invites all His children to a life in Christ. God called the teenage Jeremiah explaining that He knew him before birth and formed him in the womb. God knows your name. 

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I
consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:5.

In September of 2016 CBS News aired a segment on an unlikely youth orchestra composed of young people from the slums of Cateura, Paraguay. Cateura is a small village of 2,500 families located on the outskirts of Asunción erected around a municipal landfill where the residents, pickers, sift through the tons of garbage for recyclable and saleable items.2

God prepares and sends His disciples to find the lost and the unwanted. Fabio Chavez is an environmental engineer with a graduate degree in Human Ecology. His first job was as a technician in the Cateura Landfill serving as an educator for recycling programs. Chavez grew up in a modest family in Carapeguá, Paraguay. He learned guitar at eleven and by his teenage years served as the music director in his church.

While serving at the Cateura Landfill, Favio was moved by the cycle of poverty impacting the children and launched a crazy idea to teach music to the children of the village in the junkyards surrounding the landfill. Because musical instruments were impossible to obtain, he teamed  with Nicolás Gómez, a local carpenter and trash picker, to construct violins, guitars, cellos, and a host of wind instruments from barrels, tin cans, pipes, tubing, recovered wood, and  miscellaneous parts. He invited a small group of interested children from the village teaching them music theory, fundamentals of musical instruments, and classical music. This youth ensemble is known today as the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura performing classical and Broadway favorites in South America, the US, and Europe. The original 30 student ensemble evolved into a comprehensive music school serving over 300 students with 28 teachers by 2024.3

Jesus called and developed Favio Chavez to give hope and a pathway out of poverty for the children of Cateura.  Chavez explained, “The world gives us trash; and we give them back music.”4     I can only imagine the prayers of the parents and grandparents for the forgotten children in a village living on the refuse of a landfill.  Jesus loves me this I know.

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,  will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:37-39.

There is a waiting invitation from Jesus that is extended to each of us…. He invites us regardless of whether we have fallen away from Him, denied Him, or we don’t believe we are worthy. Nothing can separate us from His love which includes His mercy, forgiveness, grace, and redemption.  All of us can be recycled for the ministry of Jesus.

Prayer: Father, we give thanks and praise for all your gifts and blessings. Recycle us Father into disciples for the Living Jesus. Refocus our lives on the people around us inspiring us to love without bounds and care without limits in tireless service to Christ. We make this prayer in the of our Lord Jesus. Amen.

1 Jesus Loves Me (Children’s hymn) by Anna Bartlett Warner, Philip Percival, and William Batchelder Bradbury, 1861.
2 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/landfill-harmonic-documentary-paraguay-young-musicians-music-instruments-made-of-trash/.

3 https://grokipedia.com/page/favio_chavez.
4 Stories for Your Soul: Ordinary People, Extraordinary God by Max Lucado, Thomas Nelson, 2024, Page 50.

The Wesleyan Bridge is written by K.B. Kelly with the Reverend Valerie Mireb and Pastor Hank Brooks as Theological Editors with Debbie Kelly as Text and Content Editor.