My husband Tim and I and two others from St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Martin Thorne and Darrell Hancock, had gone there to assess the needs with a group from Food for the Poor, an interdenominational, nonprofit agency that operates in the Third World countries of the Caribbean and Central America.

The destitution and sorrow we saw there made it hard to return to normal life here. But St. Luke’s had committed $20,000 to make a difference, and later added another $20,000. On our return four-day trip this March, Tim, Dr. Dick Martin and I, with a group from Food for the Poor, saw firsthand what those gifts have done.

This time we saw hope instead of hopelessness and unimaginable bleakness, families whose prayers have been answered because of help like St. Luke’s.

Both trips gave me great admiration for the people. I saw grace and kindness in circumstances I could bear for only a short time. Their faith and trust in God is phenomenal, so for me, this was a trip of spiritual healing.

We started at two homes for those afflicted with AIDS, old age, mental and physical handicaps and other ailments that would cause them to be a burden to their families. In the Third World, where survival of the fittest is a way of life, the weak, the sick and the elderly are abandoned on the streets at a staggering rate.

The residents of The Lord’s House were dirty, soiled with feces, lying in filth. The smell permeated the complex, assaulting us with its pungency. The residents clung to us with sad and longing eyes. I held an elderly lady’s hand as she prayed, thanking God for my presence. In the quiet hush of that prayer, I looked into her beautiful blue eyes and saw my grandmother. A small, black Jamaican woman, her blue eyes delivered a powerful message — “I could be any one of you.”

Across the street, the Christian Care Center, a crumbling Food for the Poor project, was being torn down. Behind it was a new, clean building staffed with nurses and competent caretakers. The residents were well cared for, well fed and the home was spotless.

The contrast between the two was heartbreaking. As a result of our visit, things will change for the adults and children at The Lord’s House. Food for the Poor will pay for staff and management to bring the facility up to a basic level of human decency.

Fifteen hundred men live in the General Penitentiary. The stone cell blocks were built 150 years ago by the British. Each cell is about four by seven feet, with no windows, a solid wooden door bolted shut at night and a small transom for ventilation.

Some cells house up to four men, who sleep stacked one over another in hammocks made from whatever they can scavenge. Two outdoor showers serve everyone. There is no medical care or medicine for these men, so Food for the Poor is funding a clinic that is currently being built to treat mental and physical illnesses. Plans also call for sanitation facilities soon.

Some of these men turned to stealing to feed their starving children, used drugs to escape the squalor and killed out of despair and frustration. They are caged like animals, thrown away by a government which sees no value in the destitute. Fortunately, the government was gracious and kind to Food for the Poor, the only source of hope for a humane existence for these men.

Sprawling Majesty Gardens, one of many slum neighborhoods, sits squalid and dusty in the Jamaican heat. Winding through the rotting shanties, we retraced our steps of 1998. The tropical sun baked relentlessly, the breeze unable to find its way through the labyrinth of walkways.

Not much had changed here, yet everything had changed. The ditches were being shoveled of their witches brew of raw sewage and rainwater. Ahead, rising on a small hill as if on a pedestal, were blocks of new toilets and showers. Huge plaques on the building proclaim “This facility is given to the glory of God by the Parish of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Luke’s Foundation, Salisbury, N.C.”

I wept tears of joy in that human hell as people gathered to send messages of thanks to St. Luke’s through us. The Foundation’s gift of $40,000 returned dignity to this neighborhood. No longer do men, women and children have to stand naked and vulnerable in the open air as they try to wash away the dirt of poverty. The church has truly made a priceless difference.

Next we revisited McCoy Lane and the Bellrock neighborhoods. Three dilapidated buildings had been torn down, replaced by new homes for 54 families. Six more buildings have been slated for demolition, where adequate housing will be provided for 200 more families. Children go to a new school now, and white picket fences replace the rusty corrugated zinc enclosures. For these families, pride has melted the misery and despair.

In the White Wing neighborhood, Food for the Poor has built sanitation facilities, but housing is dismal. I stood in the home of a Jamaican woman and held her while she wept. All of her family is dead, and she lives alone with holes in the floor, holes in the walls and the blue Caribbean sky peeking through the roof of her one small room. Scars from the sharp, rusty springs of her mattress cover her body. Men who were strangers to her had broken the lock on her door and invaded her home while she slept. She begged me to help her get a house, some place safe and dry. I knew as I held her that our children at St. Luke’s were raising money to build a house, maybe not for her, but for someone very much like her.

Food for the Poor convinced the Jamaican government to deed enough land to build 2,000 houses in 2000. In some places, shanties must be razed to make room. In others, cleared land will be deeded. The residents must agree to help with demolition, garbage removal and construction.

Land ownership has always been a major hurdle in the quest to provide housing, as most of these people are squatters on government land. This gift of land is unprecedented in the Third World. When we asked Food for the Poor founder Ferdinand Mahfood how he convinced the government to do it, he said, “I didn’t. God did.”

The North Street United Church serves the most violent neighborhood in Jamaica. Food for the Poor has been sending aid for housing, day care, job training and schooling for some time. Now, houses have been brightly painted, gardens planted and additions for larger families added. The area is spotless, and pride is like a beacon shining into the surrounding slum. The seed of goodness has come to fruition for these residents.

The next area slated for revitalization is across the street. A 50-year-old building, housing 30 families, lists toward collapsing. Children navigate the condemned interior, stepping over gaping holes in the floor, loose boards and rusty shards of metal. A fall through the floor would drop them into a basement full of filth and rubble, but they have nowhere else to go. The Caribbean rain drains through the roof, as if through a sieve. Inside, though the very structure threatens to fall and crush them, the children have made small sanctuaries away from the violence of the slum closing in around them, which is safer than the streets.

Children in the North Street Daycare were in a clean, safe environment with food and running water, but what suffering do they go home to?

The only way to escape the widespread grip of poverty is through education. Food for the Poor supports schools, work-training programs and libraries throughout Jamaica. Because of the lack of industry, people are encouraged to learn a trade or skill, so they can become self-employed, and ultimately self-sufficient.

Typical is Operation Friendship, a free training program for needy 16- to 19-year-olds who are willing to learn. The classes teach sewing, woodworking, metal working and car repair. Because education is a privilege, not a right in Jamaica, the classes always have a waiting list.

Riverton City squats on the largest garbage dump in Jamaica. The dust, the stench and the smoke from smoldering fires blanket the community. Five thousand men, women and children exist on the waste of the wealthy in the shadow of their mansions on the hill. Garbage trucks crawl in and out of the dump like an endless troop of army ants. Refuse stretches from horizon to horizon, suffocating anything that tries to grow.

And human beings claw and dig through the freshly dumped trash, looking for any treasure they can carry back to the cardboard, tire and burnt-out cars that serve as their shelter. As they foraged, I tasted the dust on the back of my tongue and stood and wept, trying to wash away its misery, but my tears were not nearly enough. Nor can I convey the impact of this surreal scene. I was there, my feet rooted in garbage, and I could not comprehend what I saw.

When Food for the Poor gives animals for someone in the dump, they can’t bring them from the mountains or they will die. They must buy them from someone living in the dump. I’m sure if any one of us were forced to live under those conditions, we, too, would die. These families have lived here for generations, raising their children. The only gift they have to pass on is their immunity to the hazards of the garbage they live on.

The most treasured memories I brought back are the spirituality and beauty of the people. Their faith in God is unwavering in the face of bleakness that few of us could imagine. They have no false Gods to worship, few possessions, no egos. Rather, they have a graciousness and love that transcends poverty.

That they would even speak to a white American as we stood in a garbage dump, I find remarkable. And if we asked, “How are you doing?” they answered, “Not so bad.”