First Update of the New Year (2020)

Greetings to all from our ministry homestead in rural Honduras! We send you our photo updates from these past couple months of life and service. To God be all the glory!

Over the December-January traditional Honduran school vacation, my husband Darwin put in a lot of agricultural work hours alongside our foster children to improve/take care of our 17-acre property.

Right near our front door, we’ve got quite the line-up of rubber boots for agricultural work days! What a blessing to have so many precious lives entrusted to us!

Over the Christmas holidays, some of our foster children had visits with biological siblings and other blood family members. (Here one of our daughters is enjoying a trip to the park with her two biological brothers who live a couple hours away.)

A couple days after Christmas my husband, several of our foster children/students and I were invited to sing, play music and share our faith in Christ on a local television station. There’s a first time for everything!

For two weeks over the Christmas holidays, all of our foster children went to stay with trusted family friends of ours in order to further expose them to new experiences in addition to granting my husband and I a much-needed respite!

Here we are at a local bus station a few days before New Years ready to say our temporary good-byes as our kids were off to their various homestays!

This is our pit bull Thor, one of our trusty guard dogs! He is playful with our family but very aggressive towards outsiders. He has a very important job here in Honduras where there tend to be high crime rates!

This was a short nature hike around our rural ministry property during one of our family orientation days in January.

Here are more fun family bonding activities during one of our family orientation days. Participation in one of these events was a new prerequisite for all the local youth who aspired to enroll at the Living Waters Ranch school this year, and we thank God for experiencing great success in this endeavor. (It gave us a chance to get more hands-on contact with the parents and be able to involve the entire family unit.)

Here is my husband Darwin teaching a group of parents and future students how to sing in choir class at a family orientation day.

Here are more fun competitions during a family orientation day in January.

More silly competitions and teamwork activities as we get to know our new students and their families!

This is Reina, one of our local Honduran missionary-teachers who shared her testimony of faith in Christ to all those in attendance at family orientation.

Everyone loves pulling up weeds in the hot Honduran sun on family orientation day! (I’m the one bent over in the pink tennis shoes.) It’s important to give the parents and family members a taste of what our students do here in organic agriculture class on a weekly basis!

More of the same! Talk about character development for the parents!

In January we invested in the upkeep of the four little cinderblock buildings on our property by re-painting them bright, joyful colors and doing a few general repairs. This is Yeri (pronounced “Jerry”), one of our students who is currently in his fourth year of full-time involvement at the Living Waters Ranch. He is highly gifted artistically, and we hired him to help with a good portion of the painting, thus providing him with the financial means to purchase his school uniform and materials to begin school in early February.

Gleny, one of our foster daughters who has lived in our home over six years now, is also a passionate painter and volunteered her painting expertise for nearly two weeks of her school vacation time in order to help see the project through.

Here I am with Paola, one of our precious foster daughters who has been with us now for several years. I have lately begun spending more personal time training musically (something I didn’t begin until age 22), and several of our daughters have enjoyed practicing with me and learning new pieces together as we develop our talents for God’s glory.

This is our family’s cozy living room in our cinderblock home on ministry property. During my Dad’s recent visit from Texas, he helped us paint the room bright purple! In Honduras we love to paint our homes bright colors, inside and out!

These are a few of the cows from our small herd that we maintain on our rural ministry property. The milking females provide fresh milk daily for our watchman’s family and ours, and the males are eventually sold for beef. This provides a small periodic income for the ministry and serves as our emergency fund.

One of our teenage foster daughters found these beautiful little flowers growing spontaneously in our front lawn.

Each year we create a lot of fond memories through our intensive P.E. classes with our staff and foster kids during our January school prep. We want to keep our bodies in good shape and our minds sharp in order to serve God with excellence this year!

This is my husband Darwin during a hilarious round of blindfolded tag with our staff and foster kids during one of our riotous P.E. classes.

In rural Honduras there are always many weeds to be pulled up! In January after P.E. class one day we dedicated time as a team with our staff to tidy up our ministry grounds’ front lawn. Our foster kids were there to help too!

Last week classes began as we undertake a new year of Christian discipleship, academic pursuits and integral development! This is one of our local teenage tutors who has been faithfully involved under our tutelage for five years teaching our small group of fifth graders on one of our porches.

This is Erick, one of our local missionary-teachers, with a local young man who is entering his second year of full-time involvement at the Living Waters Ranch. Last year his involvement as a student here allowed him to be mentored and discipled beyond the traditional classroom walls. He came to put his faith in Christ and was baptized several months ago, and this year he has returned to continue his integral education and Christian formation under our tutelage. Praise God!

I want to send our sincere thanks to all who responded to my last blog post in early December about our tight financial situation. I am relieved to inform you that we are now back on track financially thanks to God’s provision through all those who responded and donated. Thank you!

Sincerely in Christ, Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission

One thought on “First Update of the New Year (2020)”

I soooo enjoyed all the photos of everybody! The colors you pained the buildings are so cheerful and fun! Good for you for taking time to practice playing the piano—your Nanna would have been thrilled to see you play! We soooo look forward to seeing everyone in person sooooon!!!!!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻