Sought After

About the Book

In Guatemala City, an old riverbed cuts through part of the city. No longer filled with water, the 200-foot-deep ravine now houses the city dump. Section by section, garbage trucks fill up the riverbed with the city’s refuse. When a substantial section of the riverbed is filled to the top, city workers build roads and communities on top of the trash. More than 10,000 people make their home in the Guatemala City dump and the surrounding impoverished neighborhoods. Most are scavengers who spend long days in the hot sun or pouring rain digging through the trash. They look for anything recyclable or resalable—anything that will bring them a few coins for dinner.

Sarah Lambrecht’s book Sought After provides a penetrating look into the lives of the children who live and scavenge in the Guatemala City dump. The book is a collection of short stories, poems, and personal reflections based on interviews Ms. Lambrecht conducted during a 3-month internship with Potter’s House. Potter’s House is a Christian mission organization that serves the scavengers of the dump. By talking extensively with the children and participating in their tutoring classes and Saturday morning Kids’ Club activities, Ms. Lambrecht gained unique insight into the lives of the scavenger children. Despite their extreme poverty, these children showed ingenuity, faith, and a great zeal for life. In this book Ms. Lambrecht shares fictionalized yet accurate accounts of all aspects of these children’s lives: school, home, church, work, and play.

From lighthearted stories to sobering reflections on living in a developing country, this book seeks to bridge the cultural and economic divide between the subject and the reader. The pictures throughout the book help the reader understand the context of poverty in which these children live. In these pages you will find the stories of children who scavenge for a living, searching for any small item of value, searching for their place in society, searching for love. They desperately hope to find enough to sustain them through one more day—perhaps a few scraps of aluminum in exchange for a plate of beans and rice. And in these pages you will also find the story of a living God who searches for them, whose hand is not too short to reach into the depths of the city dump to find His children.

About the Author

Sarah Lambrecht graduated from Wheaton College with a degree in English and secondary education. During her time at Wheaton, she spent three months interning at Potter’s House near the Guatemala City dump, where she tutored and interviewed the scavenger children. She immediately developed a love of the Guatemalan people and culture. After graduating, she returned to Guatemala to teach English. This book, her first, is based on the stories she gleaned from the scavenger children at Potter’s House. She currently teaches middle school English in Neenah, Wisconsin.