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Central America, Current World Events, Family, Farm Life, Foster, Personal Reflection, Prayer Requests

Manuscript Sent to the Publisher and Other Updates

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We send you our warm greetings from our ranch homestead in Honduras. I sincerely hope you and your loved ones are healthy and thriving despite the pandemic.

We send our sincere thanks to all those who continue financially supporting and praying for this small mission even in the midst of so much global uncertainty. We appreciate you and thank God for His provision through you. Several months ago one of our local missionary-teachers (Lawny) helped me write thank-you notes to all those who actively support us, but the Honduran post office has been closed since March so we’ve been unable to send them! If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll reach you by Christmas! : )

My husband Darwin and one of our foster daughters in a recent water balloon fight on our ranch

Our eldest daughter, age 19 and living outside our home for the past year, participated in her little brother’s 13th birthday party. We are amazed to see God’s work in her life and the way He is restoring our relationship with her. 

Here in Honduras we continue indefinitely under quarantine and general restrictions, although we have learned to make the best of it. Our small staff of missionary-teachers continues to diligently work and educate our students, but now they do so mainly out of their own homes. The majority of our teachers live in close geographical context to our students, so they have begun teaching and giving tutoring sessions in their own living rooms and on their own porches, receiving small groups of students at a time. One of our local missionary couples (Erick and Aracely) still directs an intensive discipleship group 1-2 times per week out of their home and continues to organize community service and evangelism projects on a regular basis.

We began our journey as foster parents with these three back in 2013. They’ve grown a little bit since then!
Here are a few of the calves that have been born on our ranch property recently.

We are currently digging a professional well on our ranch, as water issues have plagued us for these past several years. The NGO Primero Agua is helping us install this addition free of charge, and we’ve been hosting their men in our home for the past couple weeks.  They will most likely have to wait to finish the project until early next year as our property is plagued by many rocks and they need a more advanced drill to get past them all.

Today I officially sent in the manuscript of my first book to a self-publishing company, and these next few months will be dedicated to editing and marketing. The title is Hidden Treasures: An American Living in the Developing World Wrestles with Significance, Faith and Suffering. This has been my main project throughout these past few months of quarantine, and I hope the book will serve as a small flame to light the paths of many for God’s glory. In my book I use pseudonyms to protect our children’s identities, and I will begin doing so here on this blog as well. So, in the following posts don’t be surprised if I stop mentioning our kids’ real names!

In the summer months we have a lot of birthdays in our home! We take advantage of these small celebrations to pray individually for our kids and dedicate them once more to God’s care.

My husband, our five foster teens and I are doing exceedingly well.  We continue to run daily as a family and are currently on the cusp of reaching 30,000 pages read in quarantine! We have, however, been without internet for about three months now, which has both complicated and simplified our lives.

God bless and keep you. Sincerely in Christ,

Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission

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Fall 2019 in Rural Honduras: Photos, Updates and Prayer Requests

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Greetings to all from the Living Waters Ranch, our rural ministry homestead on the northern coast of Honduras.

I’m relieved to inform you that the political crisis has calmed down a bit lately, and the roads have been open with no noticeable protests for the last several weeks. We continue to pray that peace and justice might prevail in Honduras and that God might grant our leaders true wisdom so as to effect God-honoring, long-term solutions for this hurting nation.

Below I share with you a diverse set of photos (and detailed explanations!)  from our daily life of service in this little corner of the world…

This was a campout that several of our local missionary-teachers and students went on during a recent school vacation. These types of events are organized in order to dedicate additional time to disciple our students, offer healthy recreational activities for them,  and pour into their lives beyond the classroom for God’s glory. We offer several campouts such as these throughout the year, and many of our teenage students participate.

Darwin and a select group of our students (including two of our foster kids) were recently invited to sing on television with our new guitar/choir teacher (the man in the vest on the far left). He is a very talented local musician who composes up-beat songs with Christian and ecological messages.

This is 11-year-old Josue, a special-needs young man who lived with us as one of our foster children for over 4 years before moving in with his maternal grandmother earlier this year. We still see him frequently (and invite him to all of our family birthday parties), and he will actually be coming back under our full-time care during the upcoming months as his grandma will be out of the country for work until roughly March 2020. (Grandma feeds him really well and doesn’t let him play much outdoors, but we already have a plan for how we are going to help him regain the active health he enjoyed before!)
Several weeks ago my husband and several of our local students’ moms got together to celebrate my 29th birthday alongside of all of our students, teachers and foster kids. We miraculously cut the cake into over 60 pieces in order to make sure everybody got a piece! (I dare you to count ’em!)
You gotta be good at math to cut this cake!

Waiting for their little piece of cake!
One of our local students, an 8th-grader, explains his recent science project to a group of onlookers.      
This is my husband Darwin with a group of his English class students on a special field trip into the city of La Ceiba to eat pizza. Some of our local students never get out of our little rural town, so experimenting a change of environment tends to be very exciting. (One of our local teens had never seen the ocean even though the nearest beach is only a few miles away from our town. That was remedied as Darwin organized a large group field trip out to the beach earlier this year.)
This is Jeffrey, a local 15-year-old youth who has been in our school for the last several years. Currently in 4th grade, he has several developmental delays  and comes from a severely disintegrated home, as his father and one of his brothers left earlier this year for the United States, leaving him, his mother and two of his brothers behind. Jeffrey requires a lot of individualized attention as he has dislexia and ADHD, and my husband Darwin has a very soft spot for him. We are very proud of Jeffrey for choosing to stay in school and be exposed to daily biblical teaching, as it is very popular for teenage boys in our neighborhood to simply roam the streets or get mixed up in trouble.
This is a photo taken in Darwin’s group piano class earlier this month. Music is a fundamental element we try to inculcate in all of our students as part of their integral development, healing from past traumas, and preparation for life and God’s service.
Whenever our foster children have a birthday, we like to take the opportunity to write them love letters and little notes of affirmation and encouragement. These specific index cards were part of 16-year-old Paola’s celebration, and a few of them read “You are strong in Christ,” “Your life is of great worth,” “God has been good to you,” and “You are beautiful!”
Birthday parties are so much more fun with disguises!

Prayer is an integral part of life in our home. On this specific occasion we were praying for God’s blessing, wisdom and salvation over one of our foster kids on their birthday.
Several weeks ago I began teaching an intensive World Geography class to all of our students, focusing on current world trends and how we should react to said trends from a God-honoring standpoint. A recent topic for the class was the ever-increasing LGBT influence around the globe and how we as Christians should stand firm on the Bible’s clear teachings concerning homosexuality and God’s design of man and woman, biblical marriage, etc. As part of the class curriculum I asked all of our students to look up Bible verses specifically addressing these gender- and identity- issues, and to write them on index cards, poster boards, etc, in a loving and clear way with the goal of communicating truth and edifying one another as God created them. We have since filled two of our school’s bulletin boards with this precious information, and we continue to influence our students and foster kids to live a God-honoring life, not giving in to what the world claims is normal but rather standing firm on the Rock of truth.

Here are two of our beloved local missionary-teachers participating in a recent game of blindfolded Chinese freeze tag alongside of our students. (One is a lawyer by profession and the other is a trained beautician, but both have been called by God to lay down their lives and traditional plans in order to love, teach and disciple the next generation of Hondurans for God’s glory.)

This is Darwin doing the father-daughter dance with one of our foster daughters (Gleny) who recently turned 15, which is a big birthday in this culture.
Here is Erick (purple shirt), one of our extremely influential local missionary-teachers leading up a Saturday effort to clean up the streets in our neighborhood — a never-ending job done with grace and dedication!
Who knew that picking up trash could be so much fun?

God bless you, and thank you for your continued prayers and support. Please pray that the Lord might increasingly shine His light through us and that many might come to repentance and saving faith in Christ through this hidden yet faithful work. 

Sincerely,

Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission

 

PS — Please feel free to contact me directly at JenniferZillyCanales@yahoo.com if you would like to share any personal prayer requests with me and/or reach out with any questions, suggestions or concerns.