If you are a person who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ, we ask that you come alongside of us during this season in prayer for the following needs. There are others that I would like to include in subsequent posts, but for now I will include only the most urgent ones.

• We are currently in a legal battle over the 17-acre property where we live at the Living Waters Ranch. The property is fully paid for and was bought with the full intent of it being used for the purpose it is currently fulfilling, but at the time it was purchased several years ago it was bought under the name of another non-profit organization. As we are currently trying to pass the legal title from that organization to ours, they are pulling out all the stops not to pass the title, and there is suspected foul play involved. Please pray for the physical protection of this mission, and that the hearts of those involved in making the decisions may be attuned to the Lord’s call for justice. We know that ultimately Christ has already won the victory, so we place our faith in the fact that God cares for the widows and orphans and will not leave us without a home for the children under our care.

• We are facing several thousand dollars in upcoming legal fees and fines because the Living Waters Ranch is behind on filing its taxes for 2011, 2012, and 2013. Teresa Devlin, the elderly missionary who was at the helm during 2011 and half of 2012 got behind due to extremely ill health (later passing away in October 2012), and when I arrived in Honduras as a single woman in June 2012 no one taught me the ropes of the Honduran legal system nor advised me that there were certain taxes that needed to be filed in the capital city each year. I did not even find out about these taxes until a few months ago, and now we are facing large government fines plus the overtime salary of our accountant who has been helping to get everything organized and ready to be sent. Please pray that all goes well when we travel to the capital city of Tegucigalpa to submit the forms in the upcoming weeks, because Darwin already traveled over seven hours by bus last month and tried to submit everything, but the government office would not accept any of our paperwork because they said the format needed to be changed along with our board of directors (which is a whole other long and exhausting process that we are currently waist-deep in and that needs to be resolved legally before we can even return to the capital and try to re-submit the tax paperwork). If we do not get everything in by the end of September the government will release a national publication saying that we are no longer allowed to be in operation, meaning that our children would be taken away. Please pray for efficiency and mercy for the government officials involved, and peace over our home during these very uncertain times.

• I have been struggling with intense insomnia for over a year, and although I have improved drastically after having gone to a naturalist doctor weekly for treatments (IV fluids, acupuncture, massage, injections, medications, and other therapies) since March, I am still very weak physically and get fatigued in the daily work we do, spending many nights still struggling to get decent sleep. At my weakest point for about nine months I was spending between five and six nights per week awake the entire night. Due to such poor health I have had to quit my part-time teaching and coaching job, drop out of a private Spanish class, spend much more time resting than I would like, and stop working out (which I previously did about 2-3 hours per day). Physically (and therefore also emotionally) this has been the most difficult year and a half of my life, and I ask that you would pray that the Lord would provide me with healing and that He would reveal the roots – emotional, physical, or spiritual – to this issue. Please also pray for financial provision as we have spent a large portion of our personal savings and income on the ongoing medical visits and treatments for this problem.

• Our children have received many generational curses they have inherited from their biological families, which we face daily in parenting them. Among the many struggles, there is lying, stealing, inappropriate sexual behavior, abnormal fears, personal uncleanliness, hatred, and sloth. Through many hours spent in prayer – individually and with the children – and the help of our Christian psychologist, many victories have already been won, but many remain on the forefront. Please pray that the Lord would strengthen us spiritually so that we may discern what is required to fight these generational curses, and that He may grant us abundant patience and love to always remember that we are not fighting against the children (or even their biological parents), but against unseen powers and principalities.

• There are many changes on the horizon of Honduras’ national child protection agency, which our children are under and with whom we work closely with. There are many rumors going around about possible negative changes, government corruption, and other children’s homes being shut down unexpectedly due to nuances in their paperwork and files. Please pray for justice within the government entity as far as it is possible, and peace, strength, and an eternal gaze for those of us who care for Honduras’ orphaned and abandoned children and are facing many changes that might affect us drastically.

Please understand these photos as a flash of brilliant hope in the midst of very turbulent times. This is the renewed hope that we have in our Savior each and every day, whether we live in poverty or in abundance, whether we are hungry or well-fed. Let us rejoice in His goodness!