Category Archives: God At Work Among Us

Community Life, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection, Teaching

The Great Sex Education Round-Up

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Last Thursday I bumped and jumbled along the rocky roads of our little town with one goal in mind: finding young women whom I would convince to attend our first sex education class.

Sure, I had posted flyers all over town during the several weeks leading up to the event – in the local grocery store, at the bus stop, outside of several little corner stores, at the local nurse’s clinic, etc — and even went walking house to house, visiting roughly 40 houses personally to make the invitation to the event, but, in Honduras, very few people will take the initiative to attend unless they are cornered and cajoled into doing so at the last minute possible, even if attending might save them from a lifetime of ignorance, suffering, and unwanted pregnancies.

So, playing by Honduran rules, at 9:00am, exactly one hour before the event was scheduled to start, I mounted our 2001 cab-and-a-half truck, rolled the windows down, and went to search the streets for the same young women who had probably seen my flyers everywhere and had even received a face-to-face invitation but for whatever reason would not make the effort to come on their own.

My husband Darwin accompanied me and, literally, when I spotted a group of three teenage girls whom I had never seen before in my life standing idly along the main road of our town, I shouted excitedly to no one in particular, “Teenage girls!”, convinced God had put them there for me to find them, put the car in park in the middle of the gravel road, and ran over to invite them to the event that was about to start in less than 45 minutes. Of course they were surprised, but their mom – who happened to be sitting nearby — urged them to go, so they ran in their house, combed their hair and put on skirts, and hopped in our truckbed as I promised the mother to return them to her in roughly three hours.

That was basically how the round-up went, and by the time we drove in through our front gate at 9:55am, there were 16 young women between the ages of 10-32 who were sitting around me in chairs, on a sofa, and on a couple wooden benches under the shade of our porch. Three of them had received a house-visit invitation the day prior and took the initiative to walk up the long, solitary road to our home while the rest were found and brought via my Toyota street-search during the hour before the class was to begin.

Although I was nervous at first, my voice and dry erase marker shaky as all 16 pairs of eyes were on me to explain what most parents here shy away from teaching their own daughters (or simply don’t have the knowledge to do so even if they wanted to), we ended up persevering through a wonderfully rich teaching-discussion of two hours as we discussed both the scientific and emotional/relational/spiritual aspects of sex, menstruation (most women here literally do not know what menstruation is or what it signals even if they have been menstruating their whole adult life), masturbation, men, birth control, pregnancy, virginity and the loss thereof, menopause, and the different stages of life and what they imply.

Towards the end of the discussion, a beautiful 15-year-old asked innocently, laughing self-consciously, “This might be a silly question, but…men can’t get pregnant, then, right?” Pointing toward my drawings of the male and female reproductive systems on the white board in front of us that we had discussed in detail, she said, “I mean, they don’t have the parts…”

Another young woman, at the beginning of the class as I was preparing to draw the illustrations on the board, asked innocently what a vagina is and where it is found. When I explained it to her, her eyes grew wide.

Luckily, these young women are still in school and have not gotten pregnant yet, but many more like them who are only 12- and 13-years old in our neighborhood are already sexually active, and some have already given birth to a child they never were prepared to take care of. In attendance were two single moms: a 21-year-old and a 32-year-old, both of which admitted to having their eyes opened during our two-hour class to many basic details about their body, men, etc, that had previously been mysteries to them even after having travelled the hard road of experience.

For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law that binds her to him. So then, if she has sexual relations with another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress if she marries another man. — Romans 7:2-3

At the end of the meeting we all stood, hand-in-hand, and prayed both for men in general – for strength in their temptations, for their purity, and for our wise and supportive interactions with them – and for us women. Before I drove everyone home, many of the women suggested doing a brainstorm on the white board of future teachings they would like us to organize, including dating, the good/bad uses of technology, and forgiveness/healing, among others.

Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised. — Proverbs 31:30

After about a year-and-a-half or two of sensing that Biblically-based sexual education was something the Lord wanted us to become involved in (rather than merely rescuing unwanted children — the products — of sexual sin and ignorance), we finally took the big first step, which tends to make the steps that follow more forthcoming. Please pray for us in this new initiative, both for the young women who attended the first meeting and for those in our neighborhood who we hope to reach in the coming months and years.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. — 1 Corinthians 6:15-20

Family, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Marriage, Personal Reflection

Sanitary Pads, Flirting and Ballet Flats: The Fear-Inspiring Task of Parenting a Teenager

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The eldest of the seven children the Lord has put in our household to care for as sons and daughters will turn 15 years old in less than three weeks and, honestly, I’m scared to death.

I sit here, reading and re-reading parenting books — entirely skipping over the baby and toddler sections and heading straight for the chapters on adolescence, on how to love and guide someone who is no longer a child — looking to glean bits of wisdom for a journey that instills fear in the hearts of even those parents who have been raising their own child since the day of its birth.

She moved into our home with her two younger siblings exactly 4 months and 8 days after my husband and I were married. I was 23 and she was 13, although I very well might have felt like I was 13 while she may have felt 23. I will never forget the day we met her at the Honduras government’s Child Services office among dozens of other children — as Darwin and I walked up, not knowing the exact ages or genders of the sibling group of three that we would be meeting and possibly inviting to move in with us, I made eye contact with her and the Lord spoke to my heart, “She will be your daughter.” When I asked her age and she innocently answered, “13,” I literally almost passed out.

That raw fear, that trembling sense of awe I felt upon meeting her for the first time has accompanied me every single day since. Many young Honduran women — especially those in rural areas or those affected by poverty — get ‘married’ and/or pregnant by 11 or 12 years old, so to take in a 13-year-old girl who comes from a tragic childhood is to commit oneself to what promises to be a grueling  uphill battle with possibly devastating results despite your best efforts.

A gripping sense of being unprepared, of even being the wrong person for the job, often threatens to spook me out of the gargantuan task before Darwin and me. I do puzzles with the younger ones, give piggy-back rides and console those who scrape their knees — but her? What do I do with a young woman who now wears the same bra size I do and who lends me a sanitary pad when I forget to go to the store to buy more?

She calls Darwin and me “Pa” and “Ma,” and we have plans to begin the legal adoption process with her and her siblings in June of next year once we hit our 3-year wedding anniversary and become legally capable of adoption, although she very well might be 17 or 18 by the time all the paperwork gets processed.

So I applied calamine lotion to her spots when she had chicken pox and help with fun hairdos for her different outings. We have long talks with her about decision-making, pray with her for her sexual purity, confront her on her sin as she does on ours, and we resolutely move on after asking for forgiveness and forgiving, trusting in God to work out the great redemption. She flirts with boys and thinks we don’t notice, and Darwin and I stay up late praying for her, discussing her growth, and grabbing at any scrap of wisdom the Lord tosses us on how to raise this young woman according to His will. She oftentimes asks me to put her to sleep at night, and there we have long conversations tinged with a maturity and openness that the younger ones don’t yet have. From there I sing lullabies and songs of praise and give a foot massage, stroking her hair as she drifts off to sleep, sending desperate prayers up to God that our imperfect, late-in-the-game efforts will be enough and that He’ll do the rest.

A couple weeks after she moved into our home in 2013 I was reading the Bible passage to her and her little sister at bedtime about when Jesus says that familial blood ties are not as important as those who, by obeying God, are united in one eternal family. She sat up in her top bunk and said that she wanted to join that family. We talked further, prayed together, and although we have never shared blood ties here on earth, she and I are now united by the blood of Christ and obedience to our Father.

So she plays on the girls’ basketball team I coach and is our faithful, enthusiastic participant in the various Bible studies and classes we teach. She fills the role of Darwin’s teaching assistant in the choirs and music lessons he directs and is even studying at a local university on Saturdays to learn English. She struggles to tell the truth in a culture of lies, fights with ego as I do, tries to make sense of her past, and accepts many changes around her as new siblings arrive and others go. She feels that Darwin and I don’t always understand her, and we put up with her frustrated glances and mood-swings. At times we have wild, joyful tickle fights as she chases us or we chase her around our front yard while on other occasions we endure her chilly silence, not knowing exactly how she is or what she’s struggling with. I desire to be her confidant, to share stories and feelings for hours on end as we both sit cross-legged on her bed, but in reality I don’t have the time to do so nor is that the role the Lord has given me to fill. Sometimes she and I are both in and out so much that a couple days pass before we really sit down and have a good conversation, but what she doesn’t know is that she’s always on my heart, never far from my thoughts and prayers.

On the airplane this June after having attended the wedding of a dear friend of mine who maintained sexually pure until the day of her wedding, I wrote through tears a letter to Dayana, recounting the beautiful details of the wedding and reminding her that I want to be able to rejoice with her, too, someday, as she walks in all white down the aisle to be wed to a man of God. Upon giving her the letter (bundled up with several others I had written her during the time I was away from home), she later told me that she, too, cried upon reading it and hopes by God’s grace that she may be able to walk in such a way.

So she faces adolescent temptations but still enjoys a wild go-around of hide-and-go-seek every once in a while, likes to wear ballet flats even though we live in the country, gets fed up on occasion with her younger siblings, and is in the beginning stages of searching out her identity in the adult realm, the specific purpose and path the Lord would have for her to take. We pay for her art classes, spend evenings hacking through her math homework assignments together, and invite her friends over for movies and popcorn. We laugh that we will be old women together one day, and Darwin and I remind her again of our expectations and hopes for her as God’s child. So I hug her goodnight and she says, “Thanks, Ma, for everything,” and in the depth of my heart I wonder if she means it or if she really resents us and is on the verge of self-destruction. I call my own mom asking desperately for parenting advice, and then, because the electricity has gone out once again, I talk with Dayana by flashlight about my own inadequacies, struggles and faith.

From my limited experience, parenting a teenager seems almost like learning how to cultivate a mentoring relationship with someone who is suddenly joining you and your husband as the third adult in the household. Strict bedtimes no longer seem realistic or necessary, and discipline that works for the younger ones just isn’t appropriate with her anymore. It is a season of learning all over again what it means to trust in God’s grace, to release our grip on control and, rather than turn our knuckles blue with worry or seek to control every move she makes for fear of her failure or humiliation (or ours), we entrust her to the Lord anew, recognizing that she was His all along.

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Dayana (age 13) in December 2013, roughly a month after moving in with us
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Dayana in August 2015, nearing her 15th birthday and her two-year anniversary with us

 

A compelling excerpt from Mike Mason’s book The Mystery of Children in a chapter on adolescence:

Every once in a while in the midst of this darkness [the author’s teenage daughter’s struggles with adolescence], a dim light would flash and I’d hear the words, “This is a spiritual battle. Pray for her.” But prayer is the last thing anyone wants to do in a crisis. Sure, you pray, but it’s not where your main energy goes. Your main energy goes into worrying, fearing, plotting, strategizing. Your imagination paints lurid scenarios and your brain works overtime, spewing out plan after plan to stave off encroaching doom…Meanwhile there’s this gnat buzzing around your head, whispering, “Pray for her. She needs your prayers. I’m her Father. Give her up to Me. Trust Me and pray.” How hard this is! We don’t mind praying so long as we can keep on worrying too. We Christian parents would not be caught bowing down before a pagan shrine, but night after night we kneel and worry beside our children’s beds. We think we are praying, but we are not. There is nothing godly, virtuous, or even practical about worry. Worry is not prayer to God, it is prayer to the person we are worried about…We’re looking to our children to bestow grace upon us. Our peace of mind depends upon their every move…Finally, as a last resort, I let go of my guilt and shame long enough to pray for Heather. That New Year’s Eve I breathed a prayer I knew was right: a clean, clear, humble, bold prayer for the darkness around my daughter to be driven back and for God’s light to fill her heart.

 

Community Life, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection

For They are All the Work of His Hands

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2:39pm Wednesday, September 2, 2015: Less than an hour ago we finished studying God’s Word with our neighbors as we all sat around in an oblong rectangle of chairs, stools and wooden benches in our dining room. It is now what we do every Wednesday afternoon, and many of the same people are coming week after week.

As the time was nearing for the Bible study to start earlier this afternoon, one of our young dogs vomited for the fourth or fifth time today as he lay nearly motionless, skin and bones after struggling with a devastating virus during these last three weeks even while receiving veterinary treatment. As I entered the kitchen, frazzled, the music coming from the little CD player seemed way too loud, and everyone seemed to want to tell me something or ask for help all at once. Large drops of sweat began rolling down my temples as my fever broke. Again. I had not slept last night and therefore felt like everything got on my nerves, and I snapped as kids and teens came strolling in too late to eat after having sacrificed the hour that is designated for eating in order to play soccer in our front yard. No one had moved the tables and benches, and as I began to somewhat frantically (although I tried to appear calm) sweep out all the dust, dropped bits of sticky rice and other mysterious particles from our large concrete dining room floor, I think everyone was very purposefully (and wisely) trying to stay out of my way. And the bad news: I, the Big Grump, would be leading the Bible study in less than five minutes!

As we sat down to begin the study, I sensed that several of the kids/teens whose food I took away for having arrived late had become bitter toward me and that everyone was probably wondering why I looked so stressed. So, with gritted teeth, I asked for forgiveness for my bad attitude in front of everyone and quickly blamed my insomnia before proceeding on with the teaching.

The marvelous part about all of this is not that I did not particularly want to be present and, much less, be the one designated to impart God’s Word to the 25 people all looking at me, but that even in the midst of my terrible attitude, near nervous breakdown, and general exhaustion, God’s Word came through without folly.

This week’s discussion centered around the question: How does the World treat the poor, the widows and the orphans? And, once everyone’s faces and general morale dropped as person after person shared how they themselves or people they know have suffered mistreatment, been taken advantage of, and generally been overlooked in society, we turned to God’s Word to answer the question: How does God treat the poor, the widows and the orphans?

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows,
is God in his holy dwelling. Psalm 68:5

 

Each week thus far we have taken a theme – be it injustice-Justice, lies-Truth, or change-Constant to compare how the World is with how God is.

Many of our neighbors have no concept of who God is, and if they don’t understand who He is – compassionate, just, good, true, loving – they will not even have the first notion of wanting to hear His Word or know Him.

My whole being will exclaim,
    “Who is like you, Lord?
You rescue the poor from those too strong for them,
    the poor and needy from those who rob them.” Psalm 35:10

 

Our mentor Larry has taught many times that Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s first command in the garden of Eden because they doubted His goodness. God gave the command out of love: “Do not eat from said tree.” Then the serpent came, calling God a liar and proposing to the humans that they do exactly what their Creator God warned them against. In believing the serpent (the liar), they evidently felt him to be more trustworthy than God, somewhere deep down feeling that God didn’t have their best intentions at heart, and therefore disobeyed.

[He] who shows no partiality to princes
    and does not favor the rich over the poor,
    for they are all the work of his hands… Job 34:19

 

If I think (wrongly) that God just wants to control me, is content with all the pain and suffering in the world, takes the side of the bad guys or better yet just ignores humanity, and doesn’t want me to enjoy life, why would I even have the slimmest desire to know and, much less, serve Him?

The poor will see and be glad—
    you who seek God, may your hearts live!
The Lord hears the needy
    and does not despise his captive people. Psalm 69:32-33

 

So we are, with the little pinches of wisdom that God grants us, trying to disarm the Garden-of-Eden mentality. We ask: What are some of the lies or instances of trickery or unfilled promises in our world? Everyone, obviously, has a lot to say, from false advertising in the marketplace to corrupt government leaders to infidelity among spouses and so on. We then assert: It is impossible for God to lie, and He always fulfills His promises.

On the topic of ‘change,’ we brainstorm: everything – our own bodies, time itself, buildings, relationships, plants – changes in our world. On the contrary: God does not change; He is the only constant that exists.

What are some of the injustices that we see or experience in our world, our neighborhood, our own lives? Another long, long list is shared as everyone in the oblong rectangle of chairs, stools and benches pipes in. But God? He is absolutely just and loves justice.

Who is like the Lord our God,
    the One who sits enthroned on high,
who stoops down to look
    on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
he seats them with princes,
    with the princes of his people.
Psalm 113:5-9

 

So today we discussed how the World treats the poor, widows and orphans. And, with many of the people present themselves being poor and/or orphans, it almost seemed like too-touchy of a subject. Literally their faces fell as person after person spoke the truth: in general, the World does not place a high value on the marginalized. I assume many thought the discussion would end there; a sad summary of the suffering and shame they already know too well.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 5:3

 

But as we remembered that each week we a take a contrast (how the world is versus how God is), the despair painted on their faces was literally turned to a visible joy-surprise as we read Bible verse after Bible verse about God’s heart for the poor, the widow and the orphan and his desire for justice for them. As several people took turns reading the verses out loud, person after person read words of truth about God’s prophetic promises to bring justice to the wronged, to comfort and protect the widow, to be the father to the fatherless. Jesus Christ’s own personal statement about his purpose in the world includes pronouncing good news to the poor, declaring freedom to the captives and giving sight to the blind!

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19

 

As we finished the study, it occurred to me to ask if anyone was hearing this – God’s heart for the poor and outcast – for the first time. To my surprise, almost half of the people present shared through smiles of joy-struck awe that this was, in fact, the first time they had ever heard that God truly loves the poor and desires justice for them.

You have been a refuge for the poor,
    a refuge for the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the storm
    and a shade from the heat… Isaiah 25:4

 

I was astonished as one person after another — several of whom were middle-aged adults — shook their heads in awe and confessed that they literally never knew that God desires to be their refuge, that He commands His people to treat them well for love of Him. One older neighbor of ours, a man in his early sixties who has probably lived his entire life as a poor man, was the first to admit that today was the first time he had ever heard such outlandish Truth.

Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Matthew 19:21

 

So I am encouraged anew to share the good news of the merciful, loving God — the Creator of the universe who favors all equally and offers the same promises to all who choose to repent and follow, the justice-desiring King who cries out to defend those on the margins and who Himself became one on the margins to save many. There are people who have literally never heard!

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Luke 14:12-14

 

Community Life, Family, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission

Life and Ministry Updates: August 2015

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Two New Students Enter Our School

In the past month two new students from our little town have become students in the one-room schoolhouse where we educate several of our children and a handful of our neighbors. Michelle, age 8, and Selbin, age 11, have entered the program at the first-grade level and are participating weekly in agriculture, music, and Bible study along with academic classes. We currently have 6 children/youth from the community in our school along with several of the 7 kids under our full-time care.

[Explanation of the need for our school program]: There are a couple public elementary schools in our area, but the education the students receive is very poor due to lazy and/or absent teachers, sexual abuse that occurs on the playground, and a ridiculous number of ‘holidays’. Many students who are in sixth grade, which is the last year of elementary school according to the Honduran system, cannot even read or write. Even so, many poor families cannot pay the fees for their kids to attend these corrupted government-run schools nor can they purchase the uniform or buy basic school supplies. Thus illiteracy, unemployment and idleness run rampant in our little town, and as more mothers approach us asking if their kids can become students in our school, we sense that this program may grow with time.

Miss Martha’s Daughter Joins Our Team as the Teacher of the Living Waters Ranch School

Miss Martha, our nurse and cook who labors alongside of us Monday-Friday, has a 22-year-old daughter named Isis who this past month began working three days a week with us as the teacher of our school program. She is a fantastic teacher and assigns quite a bit of homework each night! Having her in the school has liberated Darwin and I to plan, work in the office on administration, run errands, and have one morning per week when we can rest together.

Gabriela and Josselyn’s Progress

Gabriela (age 6) and Josselyn (age 10), biological sisters, moved into our home in July of this year and are adjusting very well to life in our family. Gabriela has received her medical exams and psychological evaluation and is all set to enter into a small school geared toward children with traumatic pasts and/or special needs for roughly 5 months to prepare her with basic vocabulary, social skills, and kindergarten-level academic knowledge (the colors, how to hold a pencil, etc) so that she will hopefully be ready in February to enter first grade at the private Christian school where Gleny and Jason attend. Emotionally and behaviorally she has improved leaps and bounds in just seven weeks of living with us, and we are thrilled to see her grow into a young women in conformity with God’s own heart. Josselyn has entered first grade in our homeschool program and is doing very well in all respects.

A New Initiative: Wednesday Bible Study with our Neighbors

Several weeks ago Darwin and I started a Bible study in our dining room for our neighbors and the children/youth in our school program and choir, and we have had between 14-22 people attend each week, not including Darwin, our seven kids, and Miss Martha. Anyone from our neighborhood is invited, and we serve lunch from 12:00-1:00pm, study God’s word together from 1:00-2:00pm, and then have some kind of soccer game with the kids in our front lawn from 2:00-3:00pm. We are excited to see how the Lord will use this time to touch the lives of many of our neighbors with the good news of Jesus Christ.

Local Family Moves to Our Property to Work in Agriculture and Security

A local family who has four of their kids in our school program moved this past week to the little watchman’s house on our property to begin working the land and helping with basic security. We are looking to develop a good relationship with them as we discern how the Lord would have us to love and serve one another for His glory.

 

Community Life, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Marriage, Personal Reflection

When We Become Available

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God has planted a new idea in our hearts, and that is to establish a fixed time each week in which we study the Word of God with our neighbors.

It’s really as simple as deciding to do it and setting a time, so last week Darwin and I went walking around the gravel paths of our neighborhood to pop in and invite about a couple dozen households with which we already have relationships. We didn’t even have any kind of handout or written invitation or really even a developed idea of what the Bible study would look like, so we simply said, “If you want to come to our home tomorrow at noon, we’re going to eat lunch and then study God’s word from 1:00-2:00pm. We’ll be doing this every Wednesday at the same time with whomever has the desire to join us.”

So Tuesday night as Darwin and I were discussing who else we should invite to the Bible study the next day (in Honduras if you invite people one or two weeks ahead of time, they forget and don’t come), before processing the thought, my lips said, “Brayan and Little Darwin.”

Darwin looked at me and let out a sigh-laugh, saying, “This must be from God, because in my flesh I definitely do not want to invite them.” After both got expelled and/or quit voluntarily from homeschool twice in the last year and have since been back only to bully others, steal and cause a ruckus, we haven’t been too keen on having them around our home in the last several weeks. We’ve heard from various sources that they’ve stolen from other neighbors as well, have had sexually errant behavior together in the local river, and are slandering us in the local community.

‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ doesn’t necessarily mean give another undeserved opportunity to someone who’s thrown away the many they’ve had (as in “Come on back to homeschool again” or “That’s okay, you can come eat in our home everyday even though you aren’t currently working or studying and you don’t respect us”), but to us it does mean open up your home to study God’s True Word with anyone and everyone that has a desire to do so, even if they’ve done you wrong, rejected any prior help, or are currently walking the wrong path.

We both agreed to invite them out of obedience to God and then leave it up to them whether or not they came, so the next day we passed by the shanty where Little Darwin lives with his parents and where Brayan is also currently living after his step-mom got fed up with his antics and kicked him out. We breathed deep as several emaciated dogs came charging at us, determined to protect the rocky, muddy, trash- and feces-littered property. A young female relative and Little Darwin’s mom greeted us enthusiastically and invited us inside the fence to talk. As my husband sat on a plastic chair and I sat on a rock beside him, we gave the simple invitation to his mom as she rocked back-and-forth on a threadbare hammock, asking her to pass the message on to Brayan and Little Darwin when they returned home.

As we were getting up to leave, Little Darwin (we call him this only to distinguish him from my husband Darwin, but now that he is 14 or 15 years old he’s not little at all) came walking through the front gate, undoubtedly surprised to see us chit-chatting with his mom. We stood up to greet him, shook his hand, invited him to study God’s Word with us in about an hour-and-a-half (it was already 10:30am), and then left.

Darwin (my husband) and I arrived home, showered, and were finishing the preparations for the Bible study with a lot of anticipation in our hearts to see if any of our neighbors would end up coming. Around 11:45am Darwin walked out front to see how things were coming along, and when he came back to our bedroom I asked him if anyone had come yet.

His answer: “Little Darwin.”

I almost couldn’t believe it (and so punctual!), so I walked out front on my way to the kitchen and, sure enough, Little Darwin, a giant among children, stood somewhat awkwardly but not ashamedly against the wall on the Education House’s porch freshly bathed and in mismatched camoflauge clothing. We smiled when we saw each other and I gave him a big hug, inviting him and several of the other kids to play soccer with me while we waited to see if anyone else was going to arrive.

Well, 17 neighbors ended up coming that first day to study God’s Word with us – some as old as 70-something years and others as young as eight or ten. Several youth from Darwin’s choir came in sibling groups, a couple older men came alone, and one middle-aged neighbor (the one who showed up a few Sunday’s ago with his guns to help trap the teen thieves) came with his wife, their four kids, and a granddaughter. In all, there were 26 people gathered in our dining room – some who steal, others who trap those who do, and others still who get stolen from, all in the same room – united for the sole purpose of learning more about the Living God. Some arrived in cars, others arrived on foot. Some already know the Savior and others might have only come because they know some of His followers. One teenage boy showed up with a notebook and pencil, ready to take notes on the study, and another elderly neighbor told us afterward that he plans on inviting another neighbor of his to our “classes.” Many people prayed, many people shared, and overall I was stunned by what God can do when we simply become available.

I think many times we delay our obedience to God because we are waiting for the perfect time or for the stars to align or for a sickness to pass or for our schedule to clear up.

The only reason we carried through with this initiative last week was because we had determined in our hearts to do so out of obedience, to take the first step and allow God to guide those that follow. I have been struggling with a virus that has had me confined to bed-rest several hours per day for over four weeks now, and as my fever continues on day after day and my body struggles in its weakness, I thought Surely we can delay the Bible Study a couple more weeks until I feel better, but I sensed the Lord was telling me: The time is now. Just become available, and I will do the rest. I can work through your weakness.

So no signs, no music, no frills, and maybe no real energy or health – just a simple spoken invitation in the foothills of the mountains to come study the Word of God with a couple people who themselves still have a whole lot left to learn.

He gives strength to the weary
    and increases the power of the weak.
Even youths grow tired and weary,
    and young men stumble and fall;
but those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:29-31

Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection, Special Needs Kids

Big Soapy Mouth: A Reflection on Eternal Consequences

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5:38pm Friday, August 7, 2015

I just had a very interesting incident with 6-year-old Gabriela who has not yet been with us a full month. I had taken her, her elder sister Josselyn and 7-year-old Josue on a long walk around our neighborhood delivering plates of chocolate cake with encouraging hand-written notes to our neighbors as a goodwill gesture.

Throughout the admittedly long but not too-long hike around our neighborhood, Gabriela and Josue lagged dangerously behind Josselyn and I (and we were not even holding a quick pace), so I thus had to repeatedly tell them to hurry up only to find them lagging behind again. As Gabriela complained loudly (as is her style) and Josue (who does not talk) simply shuffled in his painstakingly slow manner, I told them lovingly that if they truly were that tired that they couldn’t even walk (but interestingly have enough energy to run and play all day at home and just a couple days prior had gone on a long walk with Darwin without any trouble), then they would go right to bed when we got home at 4:45pm so that they could rest their obviously weary bodies.

That sped them up momentarily, but in the end they meandered along in such a manner that their behavior confirmed that they did, in fact, need to go to bed and rest.

As we walked through our gate about fifteen minutes later, Gabriela assured me loudly and repeatedly that she wouldn’t be going to bed and that all she needed was to rest in the hammock. As I’m shuffling keys and water bottles in my hands, sweat pouring down my temples, and our two new puppies are jumping at our feet her incessant voice continued from a couple yards behind me, so I turned and informed her in an even tone, “If you say one more word about how you’re not going to bed, I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.”

She definitely heard what I said, and, without skipping a beat, opened her big mouth again to tell me how she was just going to rest in the hammock.

Her elder sister, who’s mostly got the obedience thing down pat, came up to me, concerned, and said, eyes wide, “Gabriela said something else even after you told her not to.” I laughed and said, “I know,” led Gabriela by the hand to the bathroom as we were all crossing the threshold into our home, and I got the bar of pink soap and told her to open her mouth.

Now here’s the interesting part: Gabriela looked suddenly terrified and surprised and began to cry as if the entire situation had taken a drastic, utterly unexpected turn.

Calmly (by God’s grace), I pried her little teeth open and began cleaning it out with soap for the next minute or so while she bawled and screamed.

Hopefully heard above her ruckus, I said calmly, “This is to show you that I will always fulfill my word with you. I warned you that if you said one more word I would wash your mouth out with soap, you did, and now my word is being fulfilled. We can use our mouths to bless others or to curse, annoy and slander. We’re simply cleaning out all the junk that pours out of your mouth so that it flows blessing rather than evil.”

Her well-behaved older sister stood by as a highly interested witness, her eyes twinkling as if she was observing something almost serene. I imagine she was so enamored by the process because up until then in her life she had probably only witnessed (and experienced) parents who let their kids run wild with zero discipline or who react with over-the-top grab-the-kid-and-beat-the-crap-out-of-him-because-the-parent-waited-too-long-and-everything-is-now-out-of-control. I looked at her and asked, “I did warn her this would happen, right?” And Josselyn smiled and assured me that I hadn’t imagined the whole thing and that I had, in fact, given a clear and fair warning.

After the cleansing, with great strife Gabriela washed out her soapy mouth with water, brushed her teeth, and was off to bed (and not the hammock).

But I write all of this not to recount a simple anecdote of our daily life but to show what we can learn about the Eternal through little 6-year-old girls who have yet to have any real understanding of who God is.

I have both read and heard through various sources recently the message that God’s written word (the Bible) in its entirety serves as a general warning (and instruction book, and source of hope, etc) to humankind. Page after page, time period after time period, God – through His prophets, through Christ, through visions, etc – makes it very clear what He expects of us and the eternal consequences of both obedience and disobedience. In other words, if we spend our lives participating in what angers God and then are condemned to Hell and surprised about it, we have no one to blame but ourselves because the warning was put out there clearly enough. (Oh, but how many times have we heard the warning through various sources and turned a deaf ear, preferring to worship ourselves rather than God?)

In a recent Discipleship Group up in the mountains with our faith community, our mentor and dear friend Larry was explaining that from the get-go at the beginning of time God gives a clear, specific warning to Adam and Eve that they can eat out of any of the multitudes of trees except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and that, if they do, there will be severe consequences (that’s the clear, fair warning, like telling someone, “Don’t put your hand in  the beehive, because, if you, you’ll get stung.”). They decide to believe Satan rather than God (common mistake), disobey, eat the fruit, and then experience the consequences (think what happened today with Gabriela).

To the contrary, if God had not given the warning to Adam and Eve, instead staying quiet and allowing them to eat from the forbidden tree without them having any knowledge that it would bring terrible consequences, how unfair God would have been! But God, in His justice and kindness, gave the warning and then left it up to us (I include all of us in there because we would have done the same thing) to decide whether to trust His word, obey and experience abundant life and freedom or to be deceived, disobey, and then suffer terribly for our own foolishness.

So let’s think of God’s Word as a written warning (and if we have no idea what the warning is or what is warns against, let’s open it up and find out before it’s too late!)

Warning: There is a Righteous, Good God who has understandable wrath against fallen humankind for their sin — for having destroyed His good creation and turned their backs on Him — and His perfect justice will be fulfilled in the right moment, condemning all those guilty to eternal punishment. BUT THERE IS AN OUT: Those who believe upon His son, Jesus Christ, as the deliverer of those who recognize their sin – and thus begin living for Him rather than for themselves – will be allowed a free entrance into His glorious, everlasting Kingdom where He Himself is the Good King, and in which there will be no more death, crying or pain. YOU CHOOSE.

Of course there are many, many more details than that, but that is the general, overall warning of Scripture. So if we live our lives in hot pursuit of money or engrossed in sexual sin or serving only ourselves, ignoring God and the warnings He has given us, arrive at the end of our lives, are judged justly and get condemned to the eternal punishment we deserve, how on earth can we say that God is unfair or unjust or we had not been properly warned?

Warning: “Gabriela, if you open you mouth one more time to say that you’re not going to go to bed, I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.”

Action: She opens her mouth.

Fulfillment of Promised Justice: She gets her mouth washed out with soap but interestingly sees it as unfair.

So in the simple way that I can, via this blog today, I am serving as one of God’s little messengers, reminding all of us that there is a general warning about Life on Earth and that whether we regard or disregard it will ultimately determine our fate. And, as was the case with Adam and Eve long ago and with Gabriela today, we have the power to choose our action, but not the consequence.

Family, God At Work Among Us, Personal Reflection

Gleny’s Sophisticated Thoughts on Riches, the World, and God’s Blessing

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A couple weeks ago Gleny, our 10-year-old pint-sized drama queen, began telling me a story of her life in fourth grade at a small Christian school that she has been attending about five months.

She began flitting and dancing around our living room carefreely as she explained that one of her classmates had noticed her “Frozen” (the movie) school notebook and said (Gleny changing her voice to sound really snobby and flipping her hands about in a prissy manner): “Ohh, your family must be ri-ich if they can buy you a Frooozen notebook.”

I looked at her, raised my eyebrows and asked, “Oh?”

Gleny continued, always in a very exaggerated tone: “And I told her, ‘My family’s not rich. It’s that God blesses me, and that’s it.’”

I laughed out loud, and she continued: “But then I told her, ‘Well, my family is rich – I mean, in God’s Kingdom. But in this world?’” She shrugged her shoulders and said in a matter-of-fact way, “We’re just passing through.”

Community Life, Family, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Marriage, Music, Personal Reflection

Justice in a Lawless Land

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This morning at 5:53am as I went rolling down the highway with Jason and Gleny in the backseat on our way to drop them off at school, I whispered a prayer as I looked out over the misty pineapple fields that spawned out to our right under the gaze of the mountain range beyond: Lord, I know Your Word says to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, and even though that doesn’t always make sense to me and right now in my flesh I don’t want to do that, I will trust You and obey, so I pray now for them. Although I don’t know exactly what to pray or what should happen, You do, so I pray that You would see them and be with them. Amen.

Yesterday was my 25th birthday, and while we had planned to spend the entire day celebrating with our faith community about an hour away from our home, my husband Darwin ended up spending just about the entire day in La Ceiba’s police station. That morning we had received a series of phone calls while in our discipleship group informing us that several local youth had broken into our home that morning while it was left unattended, and that numerous key members of our little town had collaborated to respond to the incident.

This was the second robbery in a span of two weeks, and the ump-teenth robbery in two years. But rather than it being a mysterious disappearance of our chickens in the night or finding our fence with a cut-out hole the next morning or wondering who broke the pad-lock off the storage unit to steal the electric generator or where the big sack of rice had gone, this time we caught the thieves in action. After experiencing a clone of the same robbery two Sundays ago, we hired a dear friend of ours to hide out at our home (think some strange breed of guerrilla-warfare) this Sunday while we would be gone, making himself invisible to see who the thieves are. He did just that, and, sure enough, the thieves came, called out to see if anyone was home, and, when no one answered, they hopped the fence and broke into the kitchen, starting to fill several big sacks full of food while two companions kept the look-out on the other side of the fence.

It was then that our friend called the police, who, of course, tragically delayed in their response and arrived on the scene way after-the-fact only after the vice-mayor of the town was called and got involved. But, thankfully, our watchman friend immediately called another neighbor of ours who showed up via the back of our property with his own weapons and, to not go into all the details, trapped the thieves red-handed with the help of two adult men.

Two of the teenage boys who were trapped and sent to the police station (a rare event here – most people are afraid to report robberies because the police fail to take action and then the thieves harm or kill those who reported them) are members of Darwin’s choir and work closely with us in agriculture each week, and the other two are not known personally. After investigation, they all confessed that the other two members of their ‘gang’ who broke in two Sundays ago are Brayan and Little Darwin. Yes, Brayan whom we have loved as a son and Little Darwin who has participated in homeschool, music and agriculture.

So yesterday as I sat on the cool concrete floor in our mentors’ home during discipleship group surrounded by our seven children and numerous brothers and sisters in the faith, Darwin doing the police processing in La Ceiba, I struggled mightily with rage in my heart toward those who only want to kill, steal and destroy, those who can’t just leave us alone to etch out the little living that God has called us to. We have enough problems with our seven kids’ behavior and generational struggles, demanding work from sun-up to sun-down, doing the difficult task of shepherding those who don’t always want to be shepherded, and having to put up with power and water outages all the time without having to deal with all this additional chaos that only distracts, stresses and exhausts.

God’s Word is never far from my thoughts, and as though forming a protective cloud or shield around my anger, God placed His commandment to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us on all sides of my violent mental wanderings. As my thoughts shot off in one direction or another and as I fantasized about how I wished I would have caught them and taken a baseball bat to them or worse, my thoughts could never go too far because, like a ping-pong ball trapped within walls, I always hit up against God’s perfect Word and could go no further. But bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, my anger boiled and ping-ponged around inside of me, always finding God’s command and turning back.

So my question is not Is God just? or Where is God in the midst of so much suffering and chaos? or Why is this happening to us? But rather, trusting all the answers that we already have available to us in Scripture, my prayer – sometimes through tears and sometimes through rage or disappointment, stress or total exhaustion – is for perseverance.

It is not enough to believe God is just in a moment of serene prayer or upon reading a passage from Scripture or after having been encouraged by a dear friend. We must believe He is just every hour of every day until we take our last breath – during seasons of peace and seasons of war, in the midst of betrayals, after great loss and when we find ourselves beaten down by the evil of this world (both within us and without).

It is not enough to read Jesus’ words that call us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us and think among roses that we have none – we must live those words when the times comes when we do, in fact, find evil breathing down our necks.

It is not enough to say that God is good when we have a stable job and a roof over our head and our family members are alive and we’ve eaten today. To believe that God is good is to say it through tears, in despair and confusion, without all the answers and in times of trial in addition to in times of happiness and ease – to know that He is good not because our lives are currently good or the weather is favorable or we got what we wanted but because He never changes and deserves our praise.

So we pray for our dear friend who played ‘watchman’ yesterday, for his protection after he took a rather daring step that almost no one here takes. Last night as our kids lie asleep and Darwin and I sat on a small rug in our bathroom, discussing the events of the day, he told me that our friend asked for Darwin and I to take care of his wife and kids should those same confused thieves or their friends decide to take his life for reporting them. The young robbers are loose once again after the police gave them a slap on the wrist, and we wait for their next strike in this twisted game of cat and mouse, light and darkness.

Oh, and I just received an alarming phone call from our 8-year-old son Jason’s teacher saying that his behavior today has been atrocious, that he is refusing to do his work and is telling his classmates he is going to kill them and cut off their heads. So in the here and now, I can’t really place where it is that light is streaming in on this battlefield of eternal proportions, this fight for justice in a lawless land.

But I can tell you one thing – that whether by the results we can see it seems futile to work for the Good because the forces of darkness win battle after battle in the here and now, the flickering light of Christ waits patiently: God is good, and He is just, and He calls us to persevere until the end, because His perfect, liberating justice will be served in this lawless land.

Family, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection, Teaching

Our Kids´ Reflections and Goals: July 2015

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Yesterday I wrote a few writing assignments geared toward self-examination on the dry-erase board in our living room for our kids to complete during the afternoon. Below you can find some of their answers.

Write a list of at least 5 goals you have for the remainder of the year 2015:

 

(Gleny, 10 years old):

  1. [Keep singing] praises in choir
  2. Love Josselyn and Gabriela more [the two young sisters who arrived this month to our home]
  3. Keep doing well in my studies
  4. Keep having a relationship with God
  5. Concentrate more on the Way of Jesus Christ

 

(Dayana, 14 years old):

  1. Be able to have a good level of music [proficiency], principally in violin
  2. Be able to pass my exams (pass them with effort)
  3. Be able to concentrate on God and have the power to be a teacher [of His Word]
  4. Learn English well
  5. Be able to learn another [musical] instrument
  6. Have a good level [of proficiency] in piano
  7. Be able to do well in all of my classes
  8. Be able to become a positive young woman
  9. Learn more about life
  10. To truly have a good attitude on a heart-level
  11. Be able to be sincere from  the heart
  12. Learn to cook
  13. Learn more from you [Darwin, I and others]
  14. Be able to have more moments with Pa and Ma
  15. Be able to show love and help others

 

Write at least 8 things that you have learned recently (from God’s Word, at school, from another person, in daily life, etc.):

 

(Gleny, 10 years old):

  1. What I learned is that we have a relationship with God and that we can reflect Him.
  2. God gave us a place where we could enjoy Him. [In the Garden of ‘Eden’, which means ‘Pleasure’] He gave us all of our pleasure so that we could eat any fruit from any tree except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
  3. We have the full decision to choose good or evil, but we see choosing evil as being easier.
  4. What I have learned from my daily life is that respect is important among people. To be sincere, sometimes I do not respect my siblings.
  5. Another thing I have learned is sincerity. You always have to be honest with other people so that they believe you.
  6. Honesty is useful to us to be true, sincere and just.
  7. Friendliness is useful to us to be happy and to share with others.
  8. Loving others is important because I believe that if I want others to love me then I should do the same for them.

 

(Jackeline, 11 years old):

  1. I learned to love and appreciate others
  2. To pray
  3. To not have hatred or repay evil with evil
  4. To read His Word
  5. To trust
  6. To not have fear
  7. To never give up
  8. To have a good attitude
  9. To have compassion
  10. To have self-control

 

(Dayana, 14 years old):

  1. To not focus on the appearances of others but rather on how they are in their heart
  2. To be firm in my word
  3. To wait for the appropriate time for things to occur (example: get married)
  4. To show who I am without fear
  5. To listen to others
  6. To speak of God with people who need Him without fear
  7. To have love, compassion and hope in this life
  8. To have patience with what I do and have love towards others

 

I will also include 8-year-old Jason’s list of things he has learned recently because it is kind of funny…

  1. To not fight
  2. To not make a ruckus
  3. To not say bad things
  4. To always say “I can”
  5. To not tell others they are ugly
  6. To not laugh while we are praying at church
  7. To not laugh at old people
  8. To not hate other people
Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Music, Special Needs Kids

Life and Ministry Updates: July 2015

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Seasons Change for Missionary Jenae Matikke

Jenae Matikke, our dear sister who has been laboring alongside of us for almost two years, told us recently that after a period of discernment she feels that her time at the Living Waters Ranch has come to a close and will thus be moving to the nearby city of La Ceiba to work alongside of the pastors of her church in various forms of youth outreach. Her last day with us will be August 1, and we will miss her greatly but are grateful for the many ways the Lord taught and encouraged us through her during the time she has lived with us.

JulyUpdate5

Defining Limits and Sharpening Vision

In these past few weeks we have made a few tough decisions as we sensed it was necessary to set more appropriate limits on the children and youth from our neighborhood who visit our home/mission periodically throughout the week. With our open-gate policy, we sensed our hospitality was being taken advantage of as many youth who voluntarily left our homeschool or music programs would still come back at mealtimes to eat, bully others and make a general ruckus. It is a fine line between receiving everyone with open arms and being realistic about how much food we can serve, how well we can invest in each person’s life who comes to us, and whether or not we are simply enabling poor behavior and choices. After a period of prayer and discernment (and after a rather large food robbery from our kitchen), we recently posted a sign on our Education Building’s front door announcing that from now on we will only provide breakfast and lunch to those who are in homeschool and agriculture, and will no longer be receiving guests on Fridays, the day that Darwin and I are away from the property teaching in La Ceiba and therefore only Miss Martha and Jenae (who will soon be leaving) are there to receive, counsel, and love the guests. Our goal is to honor Christ by giving hospitality with excellence, and we hope these decisions will help us to achieve that goal.

JulyUpdate10

Continued Weekly Discipleship

As a family (Darwin and I with our seven kids) we continue to go to our mentors’ home about an hour’s drive away each Sunday to spend the day in a discipleship group, prayer, and fellowship. We are also developing a new routine as a family of going to the local park one afternoon each week and dedicating the first part of our time there to reading the Word before playing, swimming, or collecting fruit fallen from the trees. Four of our seven kids have professed faith in Christ, and we are working closely with them to form a strong foundation of biblical knowledge and Godly virtues as we seek with them God’s will for their lives.

JulyUpdate4

Progress Report: Miss Martha, Our Nurse and Cook

Miss Martha, a local Christian woman in her 50s who began working with us full-time last month, has been and continues to be a tremendous blessing. She manages the kitchen and several basic care-giving duties from 6:30am-3:00pm Monday-Friday, the same hours that we receive youth from our neighborhood for agriculture, music, homeschool, and other activities. She and her family have been very supportive as her husband and adult children have come to visit us and meet our kids, have invited us several times to their home, have prayed and fasted on our behalf, and came to the kids’ music concert last month to encourage Darwin and the kids.

 

Gleny and Jason: Blossoming in Their Christian School

Gleny (age 10, 4th grade) and Jason (age 8, 2nd grade) have now been in their Christian school for five months and are thriving in their new environment. Having them in that school was the original reason we bought our car in December 2014, as we spend over an hour round-trip to school every morning at 5:45am and then again to pick them back up at 2:00pm. Recently, I asked Jason what his favorite thing was about his school. His response: “Everything.” His least favorite thing? “Nothing.”

JulyUpdate

Homeschool: Juggling Nine Students on Six Different Academic Levels

We currently have 5 of our own kids in homeschool (all but Jason and Gleny) plus a sibling group of 4 from our rural neighborhood. It is a demanding job as we juggle 9 students ages 6-15 who are each on very distinct behavioral, academic, spiritual and developmental levels! We see much fruit from this assignment, and we are excited to continue offering these classes from 7:00am-12:00pm three days a week to those who for various reasons do not fit in the normal school environment.

JulyUpdate8

Dayana, the Eldest, Excelling in the Arts

Our eldest daughter, Dayana (14 years old) shares a passion for music with Darwin. She has been taking piano, voice, and recorder lessons for a year and a half, and last month began taking twice-weekly violin lessons at a music school in the nearby city of La Ceiba. During the academic school year she also serves as Darwin’s teaching assistant one day per week in a local high school where he gives beginner music classes, and she has taken a leadership role among the 20+ choir members who come to our home 2-3 times per week. She is also currently enrolled in a local art school two afternoons per week, and last month she was actually invited to show her paintings at a local art exposition in La Ceiba and give an interview on television!

JulyUpdate9

Josue’s Progress in His Special Needs School

Josue, our 7-year-old son who arrived in January of this year with his older sister, has been going twice weekly to his special needs school since early June. The issue of transportation is extremely difficult as we live far removed in the countryside and his school is about 35-40 minutes away, and we are not available to drive him ourselves due to the other commitments we have in our schedules. We currently have a private taxi come out to our property every Tuesday and Thursday to take him to and from his school, but it is costing $50 a week just for this transportation, not including the fees we pay for him to attend the school. Please pray for us as we continue to discern what Josue needs in regards to education and what the most efficient way of providing that would be.

 

A Growing Living-Room Library

One thing almost all of our kids struggle with is reading (as in, they can’t read very well and by their own initiative aren’t too concerned about improving). By Honduran culture, most people are not big readers, the selection of books available for rent or purchase is woefully small, and a good portion of the adult population does not even know how to read or write. One thing that we are really excited about is our growing “living-room library” (that’s not what we call it – I just gave it that name right now because I like the way it sounds). While attending a conference in May in another city in Honduras, Darwin and I happened upon a wonderful Christian bookstore with a fantastic collection of books in Spanish, so we loaded up a big box and brought them home as resources and teaching tools both for us and our kids. On the bookshelf in our living room we now have dozens of books by Christian authors that offer friendship advice, discipleship guidance, biographies, wholesome fiction, etc. The other day I walked into our living room and heard our three oldest girls (Dayana, Jackeline and Gleny) in Dayana’s room taking turns reading out loud from a book geared toward young women who have suffered sexual abuse. Wow!

JulyUpdate3

Building Strong Foundations: A Season of Rapid Change Gives Way to a Season of Rest

Darwin and I sense that the Lord is leading us as a family and mission into a season of rest in the sense that many, many changes have occurred over the last 2-3 years, and right now is a time of settling in, of laying a strong foundation with the children/youth under our care (both in our home and in homeschool, music, etc) before advancing forward with any new projects, initiatives, etc. Everything seems to be tilted up on one end as this calendar year we went from having 3 kids under our full-time care (Dayana, Gleny and Jason, biological siblings) to receiving a sibling group of 2 in January and then another sibling group of 2 this month along with my trip to the States, the pending change of Jenae moving out, many new faces in homeschool and music classes, and the arrival of Miss Martha. Please pray that the Lord may grant us continued wisdom and discernment as we seek His will for our own lives and the many who have been placed under our care/guidance.

JulyUpdate7

Second Milking Cow Gives Birth

After having acquired two young adult milking cows over a year ago, both of them have now given birth to healthy calves, one male and one female. Darwin milks them each morning at 4:30am, and between the two cows there is enough milk for drinking, cooking and making cheese!

JulyUpdate12

My Health

Overall, my health is okay at this point, although last night I was up with a fever, sharp stomach pains and a migraine that have continued this morning. At 6:30am I went to get blood drawn and will have the results early this afternoon. We think it might be Dengue Fever or another virus that is going around right now. Please pray that God is glorified whether I am at full strength or not!

Family, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection

Ramblings on Bedtime Routines, Unborn Twins, Laboring in Vain and God’s Sovereignty

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A couple nights ago as the very wiggly, shaved-headed Gabriela lay on her mattress on our bedroom floor, us ready for her to go to sleep but her not yet convinced, I knelt down, cupped her sweaty, round little face in my hands (a technique I’ve begun using every time I want to get her full attention) and said in a high-pitched playful voice, wanting desperately to remind her how much we adore her even in the midst of so many daily disciplinary procedures and frustrating moments: “We are so content that you are here with us!”

A smile immediately overtook her face, and she asked, “And Jolie too?”

“Jolie” is what she calls her older sister Josselyn, who just arrived to live with us Thursday, exactly one week after the little popcorn kernel did. As with Gabriela, we don’t know her exact age, but are told she is between 10-11 years old. All along (as in, ever since two and a half weeks ago) we were planning on receiving both girls after Honduras’ child protective agency’s lawyer had called us, but the authorities had a hard time finding the elder sister because she was wandering the streets collecting bottles until the wee hours of the morning, so she did not initially arrive when 6- or 7-year-old Gabriela did.

So, to answer Gabriela’s question of whether or not we are happy to have “Jolie” with us too, I said, still holding her face in my palms, “Yes! And Josselyn too! You are both so precious – ”

Her response: “You’re my mom, right?”

I laughed, and, to answer the question that she has asked over 1,245 times since the day she moved in July 9, I said, “By God’s grace, I am now – “ and was prepared to give a much longer explanation, but the stop clock on her attention span reached its limit, and she asked, “Now you’re gonna pray for me, right?”

After I stroked her feet and Darwin and I prayed over her, asking in God’s mercy that she may be liberated from such a devastating chain of sin and evil that has up until this point threatened to strangle her, she sat up on the mattress, a large stuffed animal moose in her arms (which earlier that day had asked me what it was, and, not understanding what a ‘moose’ is, she decided it was a sheep) and said, “Sing me the music!”

So Darwin and I began to sing songs of God’s praise over her for about 20 minutes or so until she finally drifted off into a deep sleep that she would enjoy for the next 11 hours or so.

Loving Gabriela is not always easy. It is not easy when she runs away from me at the bank or at the used clothing shop or when she turns her back to me 97% of the time when I call her name and begins to walk briskly in the other direction. It’s not easy when she disrespects her own older sister, seems to have her own agenda on everything (and somehow we didn’t attend the same planning meeting ahead of time), when she tries to shower and change her clothes 4-5 times a day without permission, and when she takes things which aren’t hers (and sometimes are mine).

Yesterday our little bully was disobeying as usual, turned her back on me, and began to scuttle across the front yard on a mission of her own when suddenly I heard a new kind of cry. It wasn’t Gleny’s cry, nor Jason’s nor Josue’s. I paused and then realized that this new cry, a terrible noise, must be Gabriela. In over a week of being with her, I had yet to hear or see her cry or show any form of weakness. I arrived where she was and bent down, and she looked up at me with these huge crocodile tears in her eyes and the most awful expression on her face (it turned out it was a simple scuffle with Jason and Josue – both her age – and she fell down), and I realized this is Gabriela. This – these terrible bone-chilling shrieks and contorted face – is probably how she spent much of her time in her previous life, being used as her step-father’s sexual plaything, enduring horrors that I cannot – will not — fathom. The little rebel, the independent bully, the sassy, loud-talking, obnoxious, jaded little girl who I had seen up until that point – and after that point – is some pseudo personality that has emerged, like a body armor with large, defensive spikes, to protect a heart that has been laid on the chopping block time and again.

So anyways, now we are a family of nine – five girls, two boys, Pa and Ma.

It is worth mentioning that the biological family that Gabriela and Josselyn come from includes five siblings, of which Josselyn is the eldest, and the mother is currently pregnant with twins without any resources or real desire to care for any of them. As the child protective agency’s lawyer shared this with me – not suggesting or asking if we would take in all the siblings, but rather just sharing the information – I sort of felt like by God’s mysterious providence through us He has rescued these two little girls off a large, sinking ship with several other passengers who for some reason were not chosen. That is not at all a comforting feeling, but rather a too-real nightmare, and it leads to a perpetual wanting to do more and more, ‘rescue’ more and more of Honduras’ forgotten youth who wander the streets after dark collecting bottles or are put to use to satisfy the lusts of some.

Thus, a few days ago I felt quite literally like I was in a dark pit of despair, like we could take in 100 or 1,000 or a million unwanted, mistreated children, and it would never be enough. The unfit mother (who probably herself was a mistreated, uneducated little girl) is pregnant with twins, for heaven’s sake! I sat on our kitchen counter across from Darwin as he cleaned out the large bucket he fills with fresh cows’ milk every morning, and I felt as though I was worlds away, drowning in the pain of those unborn twins along with so many others, wondering what grand difference being family to seven makes when there are so, so many.

I felt a strong pull from the Lord: Come away with me. Come find Me in the middle of what you perceive as despair. Come to Me and I will give you rest.

My thought responses shot off in all directions: No – I need to go clean the toilet! Oh, but I should really sit down with Gleny to discuss such-and-such thing that happened… Ugh! I just, I just – Ay, maybe if only I talk with Darwin more, process things. Where’s Gabriela?!

In the futility of my thoughts I finally I gave up and sat down on our double-sized bed, scrunched up in the corner, hoping to somehow be absorbed into the walls as I pulled my long legs up to my chest. I picked up my Spanish Bible and didn’t know where to start, but somehow I ended up in Isaiah, and I knew that what I found was a direct word from my Father in that moment for me:

He said to me, “You are my servant,
    Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
    I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
    and my reward is with my God.” [Isaiah 49:3-4)

As hard as it may be for some to understand, at the end of it all, it’s not even about the children. It’s not about raising two children with tragic pasts or 13 or none at all; it’s about God’s glory, about light shining in the darkness. As much as I love our son Jason (who just turned eight years old July 17th!), I love him because I love my King, because my King loves him and has called me to love Jason. It’s not about taking kids off the streets and turning them into college graduates; it’s about the Living God entering lives broken by sin and pain and calling them home. It’s about mysteries beyond our understanding being revealed in the life of Jesus Christ as lived through those who carry His Name. It’s about believing that one life being touched with His love is as important to our Father as if a thousand were.

So if one or all of our kids grow up and make terrible choices and fall away from the faith or those twins do, in fact, experience a life of incredible suffering, I still choose to believe that the Lord shines in the darkness, that He will be glorified even in the midst of those who ignore or reject Him, that our small assignment for the King is not in vain, that He has overcome the world and has a sovereign plan.

That in the end, He’s the Savior of the world, not us, and it’s none of my business to worry about results anyway.

Family, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection

The Little Angel in the White Dress

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(Written Saturday, July 11, 2015): Two days ago I found myself signing the now-familiar paperwork in Honduras’ child protection agency after having received an entirely unexpected call from the agency’s lawyer the day prior.

Our 11-year-old daughter Jackeline and our eldest, 14-year-old Dayana, had asked to come along with me for what promised to be a “wild card” event. Jackeline had gone to use the restroom in the child protection agency’s small downtown building after all three of us had been waiting upon the arrival of the newest member of our family in the case worker’s office. As I flipped through the thin manila folder that contained a pending blood test and a typed letter from the Honduran government legally placing the child under our custody along with zero personal or background information, 11-year-old Jackeline suddenly appeared from her trip to the bathroom with somebody quite small connected to her right hand. Jackeline looked close to tears as she told me that while using the bathroom she happened across our new family member in the hallway en route to the room where we waited.

Jackeline, who has only been with us five-and-a-half months and who has not yet been subject to the generally extreme shock waves that come with receiving someone new into the family, looked proud and gentle and sensitively joyful in a way that I had yet seen her. I gazed upon Jackeline, who is quickly becoming a young woman, and smiled in awe of the work God is etching out in her before I crouched before the little angel connected to her arm. We had been told she was seven years old but looked to be more like five or six (the agency later told us that no one knows her real age because she doesn’t have a birth certificate). Before I could say anything, Jackeline bent down and said to the little angel in the white dress, “This is my mom,” pointing up at me. “She will be your mom too.”

Jackeline told me in an urgent whisper that our new little friend was hungry and that Jackeline wanted to walk with her over to the little window shop on the agency’s property to get her a snack. I sensed that this was a beautiful prompting from God in Jackeline’s heart, a simple expression of God’s love flowing through Jackeline as a vessel into the life of an obviously-overwhelmed (and hungry!) little girl, so I gave Jackeline some money and felt a bubbling sense of joy in my chest as they walked off, still hand-in-hand.

Less than two minutes later I found Jackeline without the snack and instead in tears as she squinted her eyes shut and rocked back-and-forth in my embrace, telling me that in the distance of a few dozen yards as she was on her way to the window shop one of the building’s maintenance men or guards had inappropriately approached her. He had worked at the women’s shelter where Jackeline had previously lived with her mom and little brother for a few months, and he had, in Jackeline’s words, “treated [her] mom as a prostitute.”

So that was the beginning of the story that seems to already have so many details even though it is still so overwhelmingly new. For now she sleeps on a mattress on the floor in Darwin’s and my bedroom until things settle down a bit. Every night – for the two nights she’s been here, that is – I sit on the floor next to her mattress in our small bedroom and stroke her head and rub her feet and sing to her about Jesus’ love until she finally dozes off to sleep. And then I climb into bed and pray for her life and listen over-attentively throughout the night at every little sigh or toss or turn or cough or her occasional sleep-talk as she dozes somewhat acrobatically but profoundly on the mattress not six inches from ours.

Because, you see, this angel has not known what it is to be a little girl; thus far in her life she has been used as her stepfather’s sexual plaything and possibly that of other men as well. Our little angel with a shaved head that reveals more than a couple dozen bald spots on her scalp has experienced the same things that a jaded prostitute has.

Height-wise she doesn’t even reach my belly-button.

The first night our new little angel (Gabriela) was in our home, Gleny, our 10-year-old fireball who has been with us almost two years, was saying things that a generally care-free 10-year-old should say as all of us sat around together. Gleny was explaining somewhat dramatically how her nose is the most sensitive part of her body, and if she bonks it on something, her nose will start to bleed. Immediately, smiling and wanting to join in the quite normal conversation, our newest little angel stated simply: “I bleed from down there,” pointing to her vagina.

So she is understandably aggressive and talks way too much and way too loud and doesn’t listen and hasn’t yet learned how to make eye contact. She makes sexual comments in normal conversation, has to be under constant surveillance because she will try to touch the boys and men around her, tried to undress in front of my husband, typically struggles to follow a simple train of thought, takes her clothes off in public, steals and lies.

On her second day here – yesterday — she, our seven-year-old special needs son Josue and I were up early as I swung them back and forth on two of the wooden swings hung from the porch on our property’s Education House. Darwin had already left at 5:30am that morning to head to work as a music teacher in the nearby city of La Ceiba, and I gazed out across our large grassy property as our cows – the second of which gave birth about a week ago – roamed about in the quiet morning hours. I whispered a prayer asking God for strength and couldn’t shake the notion that this would prove to be a grueling day after having slept only three hours that night and less the night before.

Gabriela generally talks on and on to no one in particular and I’m not able to understand most of it because she has a lisp and dreadfully mispronounces a good deal of the words she uses, but this time I realized she was asking me a specific question so I squatted down in front of her and asked her to repeat what she had asked me. “When’s he coming here? Am I goin’ back there next week?” I asked for clarity, and, yes, she was talking about her stepfather. Having to call her focus back to me several times, I told her a couple inches from her face: “You’re not going to see him right now, and he is definitely not coming here. What he did to you was not okay, and I am so sorry. You can rest now because here he cannot touch you.”

She seemed to miraculously follow that train of thought after having always previously answered me with a far-off and really loud, “Huh?!” Whether I had said, “Time for dinner” or “How are you feeling, Gabriela?” or given a slow, thoughtful explanation of what we would be doing next in our schedule, she always seemed to answer with a bewildered, “Huh?!”

But not this time. This time she went on a rant, saying that she’s gonna put him in jail, she’s gonna jail him. Never getting up from my squatted position next to her swing, I apologized again for everything she had been through and told her that she didn’t have to worry about enacting justice because that was not her job, that God would ultimately do justice in the situation, whether that is eternal condemnation or repentance and transformation. We can trust in God because He is just and good.

She continued yelling about putting him in jail, swinging past me back and forth on the front porch swing, and I gently said, “Gabriela, I know you are mad at him, but it is my hope that God will enable you to forgive him. Rather than hating him, we can pray for him.”

Entirely unexpectedly, she put her short legs down to stop the violent back-and-forth of movement, and looked at me, again without a “Huh?!” and simply said, “Ok,” then looking expectant of something.

Caught off guard, I asked, “Ok…? Oh! Do you want us to pray for him right now?”

That was, in fact, what she wanted, so I put my hand on her shoulder and began praying for the Lord to do a work both in her heart and in the life of the man who took what was not his.

About three minutes later, she asked to pray for him again.

So she calls me “Hey you!” whenever she wants to talk to me (which is about 89.73 times per day) and does a guttural shout to get people’s attention in normal conversation. She holds my hand in tender moments at bed-time when every other waking second of the day seems like full-on warfare. Friday I left her side for under 45 seconds to run and get a toilet brush for Jackeline, and when I came back she was manhandling Josue over a petty fight to see who would get the porch swing (and there are two swings). So Darwin and I stay up until past midnight praying together and I tell her about a savior she can’t see and we don’t stop clinging to the belief in a God who makes all things new.

Thursday, her first night here, as she was changing into her pijamas and I stood in the bathroom with her at her request, holding up a towel to give her both privacy and company, she said from the other side of the towel in her usual straight-forward, aggressive tone, “Hey you! Isn’t it right that you like me?”

I laughed and said, “Yes, I really like you, Gabriela.”

She asked abruptly, “I’m leaving here next week, right?”

Me: “No, you’re going to be here for quite some time. We’re your new family, and we’re not going to mistreat you.”

Gabriela: “Oh.” And then, equally abruptly, almost interrogatively: “You’re my mom, right?”

I laughed again and said, “Yes.”

Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Personal Reflection

“Hola Ma.”

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During the few weeks that I was away from home last month visiting the United States, every day as Darwin and I would talk on the phone my thoughts would scream around the one question that I knew I shouldn’t ask, but, even so, I verbalized it on several occasions: “How is Brayan? Have you seen him?”

Brayan, who just turned 15 years old yesterday, is the young man who came into our life and home a year and a half ago as a rejected teen recently orphaned by his father and long abandoned by his mother.

In a dizzying swirl of events we met him as he lazily attended the neighboring cow-herd grazing on our property, heard his story and his step-mom’s plea for him to move in with us, and, determinedly, I sat cross-legged on our double-sized bed night after night passionately convincing my husband that God wanted us to take him in as a son, which would add to the sibling group of three that we at that point had had living with us not even four months.

Darwin protested initially, firm in his conviction that taking on another 13-year-old would push me over the limit with my already very poor health and night after night of laying wide awake coupled with long, exhausting days. I knew he was right, but I fought with a deep conviction that the Lord wanted us to take him in even if none of the ‘normal’ signs seemed to make any sense.

So, after praying together for a few more days, Darwin felt peace and Brayan moved in.

He did not know the alphabet; he did not know how to tell the truth, and he did not know how to look you in the eye when you spoke to him. He did not know what it was to be accepted after having been abandoned by his mother when he was two months old, thus commencing what he recounts as a tragically unbalanced life of bouncing around with his father from one step-mom to another, one of his dad’s lovers after another, until finally his dad — drunk and doing some tight-rope-walking circus routine — fell from a great height and died.

So Brayan moved in, and against all logic we became family to him, loving him into God’ eternal one. He learned to look us in the eye, even when he was mad. He even learned to forgive his parents, visiting his mother’s home with Darwin about an hour-and-a-half’s walk away, and we prayed with him over his dad’s cemetery site in our local town, supporting Brayan through tears as he constructed a little cross out of twigs to place on the mound of dirt covering his dad’s underground casket. I read him and our seven-year-old son Jason bedtime stories. I will never forget a certain evening as the three of us sat on the tile floor in their bedroom as I read a great Lion King picture book. Brayan’s face was alit with wonder as if he were a little boy.

And I learned to love that young man more than I ever thought possible. Every morning, seemingly before anyone else even saw me or had been greeted, I would hear his voice come from somewhere: “Hola Ma” (meaning “Hi Mom.”) Many times he would just walk by my open bedroom door in the late afternoon or as I was cleaning my bathroom and say my name just to make sure I was there.

And then the unthinkable happened. After having lived with us as our son for about eight months, a series of events occurred such that he was choosing to move out, returning to live with his three step-brothers and his poor, incredibly hard-working but maternally burnt-out step-mom, the last of his deceased father’s lovers who lives about a ten-minute walk from our home. All the teeth-grinding progress that we earnestly believed had been etched out in his soul over the previous eight months was seemingly being voluntarily erased, given up on.

So he left, and we embarked on our new relationship with Brayan-our-neighbor-who-we-still-call-a-son-and-who-still-calls-us-his-parents.

And shortly after, he returned to our homeschool program, so he became Brayan-our-son-and-student-who-we-see-everyday-but-who-does-not-live-in-our-home.

Many blurry lines, but it seemed to work. He was still growing and thriving, was still eating almost every meal in our home with us, taking his daily vitamins alongside of our now-five kids who live in our home, enjoying rich companionship — brotherhood — with all of us, and he even accompanied us on our family vacation trip to the zoo and to our faith community over an hour’s drive away every Sunday.

Until, less than two months ago, he broke his student’s contract (a formal written agreement typed up and signed between each of our homeschool participants and ourselves with explicit expectations, etc) and Darwin and I were forced to sit across our wooden dining table with him and inform him of what he should have already known: he had been expelled from school, which also implied losing access to breakfast in our home each morning, daily companionship with the other students, and a host of other benefits.

As we talked with him over an hour that morning, he sat across the table from us, looking us in the eyes without breaking his stare, and I almost wanted him to storm out and leave or accuse us unjustly. Something other than this show of utter respect that he had somehow learned by God’s grace under our care — oh, how beautifully he puts it into practice on some occasions, but not on others!

Searching his eyes, his soul, from across the table, I said, hoping that somehow God would reveal to me in that moment the answer: “Brayan, I honestly don’t know what’s left for us…If things had gone the way your Pa and I had wanted, you would still be living with us as our son. But you chose against that, so then we accepted you as a student. Now you have chosen against that, so…I don’t know what is left for us…”

So we discussed God’s abundant blessing of free will and our ability as humans to use that dangerous freedom to honor God and enjoy His blessing or turn our backs on Him and suffer the consequences — all the things we’ve said to Brayan so many times before.

A few days after the incident, having seen Brayan a couple times and encouraging him to look in our local town for honest work or an education, I was flipping through the book of Proverbs as I had sat down with four of our other kids for the exciting bi-weekly event in our household: payday for chores. Each kid has three envelopes (think Dave Ramsey’s method if you are familiar with it): a “Give” envelope, a “Save” envelope and a “Spend” one. Coupled with the divvying out of small bills for a job well done comes financial education, so as I searched for Proverbs that instruct on the wise use and handling of money, avoidance of debts, etc, my eyes actually fell upon and seemed glued to Proverbs 23:9:

Don’t waste your breath on fools, for they will despise the wisest advice.

It might as well have been written: Jennifer, stop wasting your breath on Brayan, because he has and is despising even your wise, well-intentioned advice.

Accompanying that, of course, was a deep sense of knowing that Brayan is not ours and never was. Whatever has or will happen in Brayan’s life is permitted by God for some reason, and in the end it will be to God’s glory. And I can rest in that, in Him.

So I released Brayan from my heart, bowing before the cross and entrusting Brayan to Him, for He cares for us. I do, after all, have that  written on our bedroom wall (“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” — 1 Peter 5:7) to remind me daily that beyond an unstable government, neighbors who steal from us and our own wayward hearts guiding children imbued with equal rebellion, there is a conquering, good King who holds the entire universe in His hands.

Even with this newfound freedom in entrusting all that is Brayan’s suffering, confusion and poor choices to the Lord’s care, he constantly knocked on my thoughts as I visited many different churches, groups and homes in the United States. And as Darwin patiently answered my questions about our prodigal son over the telephone, I was not encouraged: Brayan had been beaten up near one of the popular swimming holes in our neighborhood, later had been kicked out of his step-mom’s house for good reason, had not been coming around our home for several weeks, was heard to have been working with a few local men ‘chopping’ fields with a machete (a job I had personally witnessed Brayan do on several occasions and knew was not his forte.)

So last week during my first couple days back home, as I cut several neighbor boys’ hair with my electric clippers on our front porch, I suddenly heard from a distance that same voice that I would recognize anywhere as it travelled briskly up the long path to our front gate: “Hola Ma.”

My whole being smiled as I quickly debated within myself how to greet him, or rather how he would greet me before decidedly setting down the clippers and walking out to greet him as he entered freely through our gate that lets in so many. His ear-to-ear smile matched mine and he fit perfectly under my chin as we embraced, him then giving me his customary peck-on-the-cheek. I looked at his long, light-brown waves and said, “You need a haircut, young man.” If possible, his smile grew even more and he took his place in line after a few other teen boys who have not violated the codes of conduct in our home as often or as severely as Brayan, but who also, for some unknown reason, have not wiggled their way into my heart nearly as deeply as he has.

So as I cut his hair we talked, and he mentioned how much he wanted to go watch the concert that Darwin and the youth were going to put on that night after he himself had recently dropped out after having been our only faithful tenor for over a year. I asked how much money he had to pay for the ticket, and he said 60 Lempiras (the equivalent of three dollars). I said that if he really wanted to go, that we would pay the remaining two dollars for his ticket, and it seemed joyfully settled. He also asked if he could come with us to our faith community’s discipleship group on Sunday, and I sensed permission from God in my heart and said, “yes.”

When the time rolled around to go to the concert that night and then the discipleship group two days following, he did not show up either time.

So I am learning all over again to entrust him to the Lord and to trust beyond a shadow of a doubt that our focus should be on obedience to our great Father — expressed in faithful love — rather than any interest in visible results.

Please pray with us for Brayan and that the Lord may reveal to us what role — if any — we are to play in his life during this season.

To read a couple other posts about our journey with Brayan, you can go click on: Our Favorite Neighbor and It All Started with a Cup of Water.

Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Information About the Mission, Music, Personal Reflection

God of the Impossible [With 8 Videos of Darwin’s Choir]

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Last Friday 9 kids, 7 teenagers, 4 adults and several backpacks and suitcases piled into our cab-and-a-half 2001 Toyota pickup to drive the Living Waters Ranch’s young singers from our rural town of El Pino about 20 miles to the city of La Ceiba for a musical performance at a local concert.

The drive, of course, took closer to an hour one-way as our truck moaned and wobbled up long, rocky, trash-littered side roads as we made house-stops to pick up each of our neighbors from their home, most living in shanties accompanied by more than a few family members, emaciated dogs, extremely free-roam chickens and welll-experienced clothes hung on the line or on barbed-wire fences.

The children and youth that you will see in the video links below in bow-ties and spotless white shirts typically spend their days in dirty, ragged clothes wandering aimlessly around those same long, rocky, trash-littered side roads, working occasionally with a machete or struggling to learn how to read for the first time at age 14.

We came to know each one of them because at some point amid their long, directionless days they wandered up to our front gate at the end of our long, rocky, trash-littered road.

One by one they’ve come over the last year or so, and to be impiously honest, I had hoped that they wouldn’t come, that one more undisciplined youth wouldn’t come up to our front gate under the guise of looking for something.

Because I knew that what they really needed wasn’t a cup of water or a hot lunch or a pay-by-the-day job ‘chopping’ our yard with a machete or an afternoon of rough-housing with our kids. They needed guidance, the kind of day-after-day, show-up-at-all-the-most-inconvenient-times, cling-onto-you-because-few-others-pay-any-attention kind of guidance, the kind of shepherding into Christ’s fold in which one minute the sheep want to belong to the flock and the next they have split from the herd to play tag with the roving wolves.

I was busy — am busy — learning how to parent a teenager, a special needs child and three others thrown in the mix, trying to figure out how to wash the dishes with buckets of water because the running water went out once more, trying against all logic to keep a perpetually dirty house clean, juggling teaching and coaching in the local Episcopal School with life at home, making more than my share of mistakes as I learn how to direct a small Honduran foundation, and struggling night after night through bitter insomnia and various sicknesses.

But nonetheless they came, some lethargically accompanying our neighbor’s cowherd as they sauntered across our property, others simply standing eagerly outside of our gate waiting to see if someone would come greet them.

And so, this past Friday evening after the concert as our young singers let loose and ran about wildly around the playground of the facility where the concert had been held and I click-clacked out in my long dress and nice sandals to round ’em all up and head home, God’s will hit me hard, like an unexpected blow to the solar plexus: as they all came bounding toward me, ranging in age between 7-16, I knew for the first time beyond any hint of a doubt that these rogue neighbors of ours are just as much ours as the five who live under our roof. Not ‘ours’ in any sense of ownership, but in the sense that we are responsible to God for shepherding them. As much as I have resisted, as much as I have complained during the grueling process of learning how to love and respect one another, as much as limits have been set and broken and re-adjusted, as much as they’ve yelled too loud and hit the soccer ball up under the roof overhang too many times, as often as they’ve showed up way too early in the morning, as often as I’ve selfishly put my own well-being before theirs, and whether my flesh likes it or not, this gaggle of lost hooligans has been entrusted under our care just as much as those whom I tuck into bed each night.

So on the ride home, as little 7-year-old Paola sat in my lap and Darwin drove slowly through the night, our car’s joints creaking and complaining under the weight of so many passengers, my heart rejoiced. My heart rejoiced in the Lord because I finally get it.

As we passed slowly, windows rolled down, through the main drag in our neighborhood — which can be likened to a steaming pot of sin, violence and despair — the song drifting powerfully from our car’s stereo proclaimed over and again the God of the impossible, and I couldn’t agree more. As we passed by the newly-constructed open-air bar that now occupies what used to be the local boys’ dirt soccer field, loud music about who-knows-what invaded our open windows and effortlessly drowned out the voice that proclaimed the God of the impossible.

That is just like the world, isn’t it? With all the noise in our hearts, our heads, in the media, the race for bigger and more, our overriding need for ‘security’, the desire for human omnipotence, we think we are drowning out the God of the impossible, as if we must only make enough clatter in order to have somehow overpowered Him, swapped our place from created to Creator.

And I smiled, little light-as-a-feather Paola in my lap, the humid night air seeping into our pores, as I became filled with glee, convinced I shared a secret with the Almighty that few others seem to know.

Because the truth is actually just the opposite.

The God of the impossible cannot, will not, be drowned out by human babblings. He existed before and will exist after human reason — He created the earth upon which that bar shanty was constructed, and His winds, rain and justice will someday bring it down. He brings lost boys and girls home, enables rotten mouths to proclaim songs of praise, brings together His scattered people from all tribes, tongues and nations into one united family. He sets the orphans in families and turns neglected boys raised by tired mothers and absent fathers into faithful husbands and loving fathers. The God of the impossible does not grow weary even when we do; He performed the impossible task of granting something as dangerous as free will to a being as disobedient as the human, and then re-defined ‘impossible’ by sacrificing His own son to bring the prodigals home.

So last Friday as we retraced those long, rocky, trash-littered side roads to drop our young singers off to unknown home lives, I entrusted my heart to the God of the impossible and participated in the dangerous task of looking upon each of their moonlit faces as they jumped out of the truckbed and came to my rolled-down window to say “goodnight” with the same love in which I look upon each of our own children.

 

[Below you will find the links to watch a few videos taken during the concert.]

To watch our eldest daughter, 14-year-old Dayana, playing piano, click HERE.

To watch Darwin’s youth choir sing “Cuando haya tristeza” and “Venid a Jesus,” click HERE.

To watch Darwin’s youth choir sing “Cristo ya resucitó”, click HERE.

To watch the choir sing “Spirit of Truth”, click HERE.

To watch the choir sing “Vois Sur Ton Chemin” in French, click HERE.

To watch the choir sing “Estoy bien” (the hymn “It is Well”), click HERE.

To watch the choir sing “Maria Mater Gratie” in Latin, click HERE.

To watch our daughter Dayana sing a solo in Italian, click HERE.

 

Community Life, Family, Farm Life, God At Work Among Us, Homeschool, Information About the Mission, Personal Reflection, Reflections on Life in the United States

Vast, Unmeasured, Boundless, Free

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The day after I arrived home last week I sought out a quiet place to absorb, to process, give thanks. Our five kids plus about 10 of our faithfully enthusiastic neighbors had asked permission to go to our property’s mango tree to see if there was any ripe fruit, so as the kids bounded out our front gate like a tribe of wild indians, I breathed deep, watching them go, and treasured in my heart each of their steps so marked by freedom and joy, standing in such stark contrast to the general oppression and depravity in our neighborhood and world.

There is a hymn that says that Jesus’ love is vast, unmeasured, boundless, free. I felt as though in that moment I could actually see just how boundless and free that love is as I watched the kids leap across our large property.

As I stood on our front porch watching them go, having already given more than a half-dozen haircuts to shaggy boys, flinging little people around in the hammock, and wiggling my way into wayward teens’ hearts, I could only think to go be alone to treasure all that I had seen before it somehow flitted away from my memory.

So I walked into our Education House’s schoolroom and sat atop a small cement half-wall that divides the rectangular room in two, trying to hide myself in the folds of Christ’s love while contemplating all that He is. As my eyes travelled to a newly pinned-up poster that our sister Jenae had taped on the wall above the whiteboard, I read it, lost in a rare sense of wonder, and could only let out a small breath, staring around the empty schoolroom and saying, “I can see you here. Lord, I can see you here.”

The quote, written in large, block letters on purple construction paper and sprinkled here and there with glitter, read: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. (Marianne Williamson)

My thoughts shifted and settled as I remembered one of many things that had happened that morning. A very precious neighbor of ours, a 13-year-old boy who comes from a poor agriculturalist family with about 10 or so siblings and who himself is the size of about an 8-year-old due to malnutrition, mentioned to me while I was clipping his hair that his dad had been offered a “chopping job” (mowing a large piece of terrain with noting more than a machete) for 1,000 Lempiras (which is the equivalent of about $50), he had completed the job after many days of labor (and as the only breadwinner in his family), and then the man who had hired him decided not to pay him.

These kinds of stories are not uncommon for our ears and hearts, although for me it was after having come from visiting a country that  can afford better care for its dogs than Honduras can for some of its children. I looked at him, my eyes asking the question that we both already knew the answer to, and he said matter-of-factly, “Yeah, we don’t have any food. We didn’t eat last night and haven’t eaten yet today.”

I then took my turn saying what we both already knew because it is now a rhythm of sharing and love that the Lord has etched among us, a deep rut within the selfishness of our souls where His vast, unmeasured love can flow freely: “You know breakfast will be ready shortly.”

“…And my mom asked if you would –”

“Yes. We’ll send home some food. Don’t worry.”

His undersized 10-year-old brother just received his haircut and two of his sisters are running around our home somewhere.

So last week as my husband and I walked up the long, rocky road to our home together for the first time in over three weeks, everything seemed a less brilliant shade of green, the rocks somehow seemed bigger, and I was hit with a sobering sensation of re-entering a very real battlefield in a hidden little corner of the world where life and death literally hang in the balance.

Sweat poured down my temples and I had to watch my steps so as not to land in a cow patty along the winding path, excitement pulsing through my veins to be seeing the kids for the first time in weeks, although also fully aware that long, demanding days and possibly sleepless nights laid ahead on this journey that has only just begun.

So that first night back home I bathed under cold water from our shower head that drips rather than sprays and laid down in our double-bed, dripping in sweat even though I had just come from the shower, and I remembered that He who has called us is vast, unmeasured, boundless, free in His love for us, and that even if I cannot sleep at night I can rest in Him.