Tag Archives: Difficulties on the Mission Field

Adopt, Family, Foster, Marriage, Personal Reflection, Prayer Requests

An Update from Jennifer: “Please Pray for Us”

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Dear friends and family,

I send you our warm greetings on behalf of my husband Darwin, our motley group of foster teens and our dedicated ministry staff at the Living Waters Ranch in rural Honduras. 

I humbly ask for your earnest prayers during these coming weeks and months, as our patchwork family has been immersed in a very difficult season with many lasting ramifications. In the following paragraphs I will share with you a small glimpse into some of what we’ve been going through:

In November 2021 we reached a breaking point with one of our beloved daughters (age 19, having lived 4+ years in our home), as her incessant stealing, lying and unhealthy behaviors were tearing our family to pieces. Her exit from our home came after months (and, to be honest, years) of immense levels of distrust and rebellious incidents in the home. We had taken every measure possible to correct her, encourage her, pray for her, teach her and walk with her along the “straight and narrow” path of Christ, but to no avail. Her departure from our home in November brought relief but also prolonged heartache, as she was an integral member of our household and was deeply loved despite her flaws. 

Then, two months later in January 2022 two more of our beloved daughters (ages 18 and 17, having lived 4+ and 8+ years in our home, respectively) decided to leave our nest completely out of the blue, one of them giving us an hour’s notice before she packed up and disappeared from our lives. In Honduran culture, it is very common (and economically necessary) for young adults to continue living with their parents well into their twenties and/or until they get married (even as they work, go to college, etc.), so our teenage daughters’ sudden departure left in its wake many broken dreams, damaged relationships and things left unsaid, undone. We had many admirable goals and plans with both of them for 2022 (and beyond). We were knee-deep in the process of legally adopting these two when they decided to sever all significant ties with our family with little-to-no explanation, so the sting of rejection and broken family ties cuts even deeper.

In the midst of it all, my husband and I are having marital issues that oftentimes go untended-to, as our many other responsibilities and commitments oftentimes receive the largest part of our time and energy. Our marriage is left on the backburner. We are coming up on 9 years of marriage in June of this year, but we still have many areas that need urgent attention (and too little time and energy to tend to them). Please pray for our marriage.

It is not my intention to complain or to hang our family’s dirty underwear out where all can see; I simply ask for your honest prayers during this season, as our family has gone through many devastating storms over the past few months, some of which have caught us completely by surprise and left us speechless and hurt. (And, in the midst of the pain, life marches on and we still have 1 daughter and 3 sons at home, needing our attention, prayers, counsel and love in the midst of their own struggle to accept many of these painful new realities.) In many ways my husband Darwin and I are carefully and painstakingly re-evaluating our family life as we wonder silently before the Lord just where to go from here.

In August of this year I am planning a month-long trip back to the United States for the first time in five years, Lord willing, and during my stay on star-spangled soil I have a 2-week-long retreat scheduled at a Christian counseling center to help me work through much of the traumas that I’ve experienced in this decade of living and serving in the trenches of the third world. We’ve weathered many painful, dangerous storms over the past several years – my husband’s violent kidnapping by a local gang, countless robberies (more than half of which have occurred within the walls of our home by our own children), the murder of several people who were close to us, betrayal/slander, the devastating breakdown of many of our key relationships, and others. 

Living in close context 24/7 with abused, abandoned children and teenagers whose biological parents taught them many destructive, anti-social behaviors in their early childhood brings about enormous levels of stress and compassion fatigue in the lives of foster- and adoptive parents like us. There is a very hazy line between what is work/service and what is personal/family time. On a normal day we arise at 4:00am and go nearly non-stop until about 7:30pm, oftentimes with little-to-no personal time or down time.

If you know a local foster family where you live or in your church congregation, I encourage you this week to reach out to them with a word of encouragement, offer to serve or help their family in some way, or simply lend them a listening ear and a prayerful heart, as foster- and adoptive families face incredible challenges that many “normal” families could not even begin to imagine.

Thank you for your honest prayers and continuing support, and please let us know how we can be praying for you as well, as the Lord has called us to bear one another’s burdens in love.

Sincerely, Jennifer (for Darwin and family/ministry)

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An Ongoing Challenge We Face Serving in Rural Honduras

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I write to you from the little bright-blue office building on our rural ministry homestead in northern Honduras as I ask for prayer regarding an ever-present difficulty we face in our daily efforts to guide, love and disciple the many youth in our home and school for God’s glory.

Time and again we see our youth make very hasty decisions regarding their future, oftentimes abruptly moving far away without forewarning or impatiently making life-altering decisions that they will likely regret in the future. Oftentimes they seek and then reject our counsel; other times they simply make impulsive, life-changing choices in the blink of an eye without consulting anyone.

This deeply saddens and frustrates us, as my husband, our team of local missionary-teachers and I fully understand that the labor the Lord has called us to is long-term. We are convinced that lives are not generally changed in a matter of weeks or months, nor do most learn to walk with the Lord in a short time-span. Our longing has always been to walk alongside of — form friendships with, disciple, provide for, teach, suffer with, give hospitality to, etc. — the youth in our lives for a period of at least five years or more in order to equip them with the knowledge, inner healing, practical skills, fear of the Lord, etc. to face the future as true sons and daughters of the living God ready for any good work.

While our commitment first to God and then to the youth is long-term, the youth’s commitment to us (and oftentimes to the Lord) is short-term at best.

Just a few days ago one of our very responsible older teen students who entered a few months ago into our family-style school unexpectedly dropped out without notifying us. We saw him for the last time on Monday; he came to school as per usual, said nothing to us, and then — poof! — that afternoon left town and moved several hours away to join the military in the middle of our school year. Even his parents were aghast, as they had no idea of his plans. He was one of our best students, has a sincere walk with the Lord and seemed extremely content in all of his activities with us. Just three weeks ago he started taking guitar lessons with us and enthusiastically told us of his plans to buy a guitar so that he could practice more at home. He lived on our rural property with his parents and even served as one of our night watchmen.  His younger brothers, who continue in school with us, are obviously very negatively affected by their older brother’s rash decision-making to abandon their family, his job and his schooling. He still had several years to go to finish high school, which he now will probably never finish. The night he left, my husband Darwin tried to call him several times in order to ask him what had happened, but the young man didn’t answer his phone and has yet to call Darwin back.

These kinds of reckless turns of events leave us on edge, as we never know who the next victim might be to such hasty decision-making. So many of our youth flip-flop constantly and seem incapable of making any kind of decision beyond today. We know that this is in large part due to the fact that many of our young people come from dysfunctional homes and have suffered many traumas in early childhood, stunting their brain development and inhibiting their capacity for sound decision-making. Even so, it never fails to surprise us when those who so enthusiastically proclaim their commitment to the Lord and to our school are some of the first to dive head-long into the caos and begin living pointless lives on the streets of our local town far from God’s blessing. Others have made the unhealthy, impulsive decision to move to Mexico or the United States even though there was nothing pushing them away.

A comparable  set of events have also taken place within the confines of our foster/adoptive family where we raise our kids on the same rural ministry property where we run our school. Last week two of our teen girls began spiraling downward very rapidly and made the abrupt decision to leave our home because they no longer wanted to submit to our authority or hear our opinion (or the Lord’s) on the matter. The sudden turn of events caught us all by surprise, and they are now gone in the blink of an eye and on a path we never dreamed for them to take. A month ago I would not have been able to even fathom that these devastating losses would occur in such a short time-frame, but now without warning this is our new reality and we are left now with 5 children as we cope together, pray for our lost girls and try to carefully establish a new “normal” for our family. Although it has been very painful, we do feel at peace.

I share all of this with you with two motives: (1) so that you might better understand the overseas context in which we live and serve on a daily basis and (2) so that you might come alongside us in prayer for these beloved but highly impetuous youth who lack stability in their lives and decisions.

This morning as I spent time in the stillness of our living room lifting up each of our lost youth individually before the Lord, I sensed He reminded me that we are simply sowers of seeds. In some lives we may be granted the privilege of faithfully sowing during many years; in other lives we may only be given a few days or weeks. Whichever the case may be for each of our precious youth, we desire to sow the Word into their lives daily and then leave the results — their growth and the future harvest — in God’s hands and timing. This can be hard for us to accept, for as we come to love and shepherd these youth we earnestly desire to keep them under our care long-term not for our benefit but for theirs, and it is always a devastating blow when they make a spur of the moment decision to leave our care and turn their backs on God’s will for their lives.

I would ask that you might also pray for my husband and I in this matter, as our hearts are currently hurting and our nerves are on end as we’ve undergone the loss of several loved ones lately and fear for their physical and spiritual safety. And, sadly, we are currently trying to prayerfully and strategically intervene in the lives of a couple more of our dear youth who are on the verge of making similar overhasty decisions.

Thank you for your prayers and support. God bless you, and may the Lord grant us all firmness in our decision to live for Him and serve as His hands and feet to a lost and hurting world.

With peace in Christ,

Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission

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Cattle Thieves Return

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Early this morning our watchman’s wife came up to our gate to inform us that cattle thieves had broken into our property last night and stolen again for the second time in ten months.

Last year they took our two adult milking cows and butchered them silently outside of our front gate, leaving us without milk and with an orphaned calf on our hands. Last night the victim was a young adult female whom our 14-year-old foster daughter Jackeline had saved for and purchased with the hope of the cow providing her a legacy of calves and milk, which could potentially pay for her college education or set her up to make at least a partial living off of cattle-raising within the next ten or twenty years.

We had taken several proactive steps since the first cattle robbery to secure our cows in a well-lit pen between our fence and our watchman’s home, but just the same the thieves arrived so quietly that no one heard them and we suspect they drugged our watchdogs (a common act down here) because they didn’t even bark. To leave with the cow, they just cut through several sections of our barbed-wire fence, which now must be repaired.

The cow they chose last night had been severely malnourished when our daughter bought it from a neighbor at a reasonable price about two years ago, and we’ve seen the cow gain strength and beauty as she had just recently reached maturity and would be ready to become a mom (and thus finally produce milk) at some point over the coming year. Many of our other kids did not understand our daughter’s entrepreneurial spirit: Why would a teenage girl buy a cow with her money instead of something more immediately useful and interesting? Several adults who know her (including my husband and I) had marveled at Jackeline’s maturity and eye for long-term gain as she had invested in the cow and had placed great hopes on her to provide (at least in part) for her future.

This morning I went into her room and jostled her awake on her bottom bunk. As she rolled over, my hand patting her leg gently to greet her, I informed her of the news as her face froze for several moments, her eyes trained on mine. My words came out dryly, “They stole your cow last night.” When she didn’t seem to register what I was saying, I added, “The thieves. They returned and took your cow.”

For those of you who are not familiar with Honduran law and justice, it is largely myth (as in, it doesn’t exist). Two years ago my husband’s brother was shot dead point-blank in a nearby town, there were several eye-witnesses and people knew the name and address of the killer, and after many trips to both the local and regional police station nothing was done in attempt to find the killer or do justice. Ten months ago when they stole our first two cows I walked off under misting rain down the long gravel road that meets the highway as I found a police officer on foot watching traffic. I informed him of the tragic robbery and slaughter that had occurred only hours before (as in, “Please help us hunt these people down”), and the police officer only shrugged and told me that he wasn’t surprised because that kind of thing happens all the time. He and his comrades arrived in their brand new, decked-out police truck two weeks later to our property (which lies about 1.5 miles from the police station), and gave us our condolences for our loss. I looked at them in shock and thought, “Condolences? You came here — two weeks after the fact! — to simply give us your condolences?! My grandmother could give me her condolences! You are the POLICE — do your job and fight for justice!”

In Honduran culture it is very common that when somebody has something that others don’t (for example, a cow or a nice cellphone, etc), someone will come and steal it from them to assure that no one gets ahead or experiences much success at all. Extortion here is high — many small businesses or people who are experiencing some humble level of prosperity are forced to pay the gang lords a monthly “war tax” or they will be killed. Cattle thieves are also common: why go through the long and difficult process of buying cattle when it is much easier to simply steal? (This is the general thought among those who are given over to a life of crime here, especially because the police provide virtually no threat to those who break the law.)

Many people leave Honduras and flock to the United States for this same reason — endemic injustice that refuses to allow people to prosper in the quietness of their own endeavors and hard work. If you prosper too much, you become the next target.

So, we ask for prayer. It is very easy to fall into cynicism or a fatalistic attitude of “Why try?” We are on a very tight budget as a ministry, and our small herd of cows — two of which provide milk — help alleviate our grocery bills of buying milk and represent a humble emergency-type fund in case at some point we are desperately low on money. My husband is now thinking about selling off our four younger cows and maintaining only our two momma cows that give milk plus a male for future mating, but even so the thieves could return at any point at take our remaining cows or that of our watchman’s family. Please pray for discernment in regard to how we should most efficiently use our rural property without becoming a magnet for thieves.

We desire to live a quiet, honest life here in rural Honduras reaching out the the poor and lost with the good news of Christ and practical education and discipleship to equip people as instruments of God’s hope, love and justice right here — without people leaving Honduras in search of a better life elsewhere. Please pray with us that the seeds in which we are sowing in the lives of the nearly-50 young people in our school will provide a good fruit that will glorify God and that we would not be easily discouraged as we know that our final prize and rest will be with God for all eternity.

God bless each of you, and please pray with and for us at this time, for protection over our property and for some semblance of real justice here on earth (even as we know that God will bring about real, perfect justice at the end of the times). Thank you.