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Adopt, Answers to Illegal Immigration to U.S. Borders, Bible study, Central America, Child/Youth Leadershp, Community Life, Current World Events, Family, Foster, Homeschool, Teaching

Love of God and Humanity: A Photo Tour of Organic Christian Ministry

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We send you our warm greetings from our rural ministry homestead (the Living Waters Ranch) in Honduras, Central America. Below I’d like to share with you a general update using photos taken in our daily life of hospitality, teaching and discipleship for God’s glory.

My husband Darwin and I continue to foster our five children/teens ages 12-17 with the hope of being able to legally adopt them if we are granted legal favor and efficacy with the local authorities. (We’ve been trying to adopt for over four years now with very little progress, but we continue to raise our children joyfully with the hope of becoming their legal, permanent family someday.)

Our small, dedicated team of local Honduran missionary-teachers is well and thriving, and we continue to work alongside of them to serve 40 youth from our local community daily through our school and concentrated evangelistic/service activities.

I pray all is well with you and that you are encouraged to plant deep roots in the truth God has revealed to humanity through the life, death and resurrection of Christ. God bless you.

This is Abigail, a 15-year-old local youth who participated in our small discipleship-based homeschool for two years as a student and this year is one of three tutors at the Living Waters Ranch. We’ve designed the “tutor” position as  a work-study program for a selected group of our older, mature teens so that they can gain leadership experience in the realm of Christian service while also earning a small monthly stipend. (This is a huge blessing for them, as our rural neighborhood has very high unemployment rates — especially among teens and young adults — and a large percentage of the population lives in stark poverty.)
This is a group of  teens in our school during one of my P.E. classes recently. We oftentimes design wacky, team-building exercises that leave everyone not only sweating but also laughing! (One of the main goals behind this is to break down barriers of distrust, pride, racism and bullying in order to fully live out Christ’s call to love our neighbor as ourselves.)
Great picture! Here are our four foster daughters (ages 15-17) accompanied by Sindy (in yellow), one of our local tutors in our work-study leadership program. The objective: do a quarter-mile run without letting go of their teammates!
Here are a few of our local students in our small 8th-grade homeroom class, which takes place in our  multi-purpose dining room on the property where my husband and I live and serve. Many of the students in our school are behind academically and/or come from very precarious backgrounds. We receive them onto our property each day with the hope of expressing God’s love to them in many tangible ways in addition to equipping them for the future as wholly faithful followers of Christ ready for any good work.
This is Gabriela, a preteen who is new to our school this year. She lives with her dad, who is now a born-again believer after having had a very rough past, and two brothers.
In addition to art classes, we also include music, organic agriculture, Christian dance, Bible studies, swimming, evangelistic opportunities and other dynamic learning experiences into our normal weekly schedule at the Living Waters Ranch as part of our students’ integral formation.

Many of our classes involve mixed age-groups, pairing older teens with preteens. We do this mainly because we want to cultivate a family-style environment (we continue to call our school “homeschool” even though we now have 40 students enrolled), and for that reason we do not have mass numbers of students  in each grade/age group. Individualized attention with each student is a priority, and much of the discipleship that goes on around here takes place in the context of one-on-one and/or small group mentoring relationships.
Happy birthday to you, Isaac! We do not celebrate all of our 40 students’ birthdays individually, but the Lord put it on our hearts to do a special celebration for Isaac, a precious young man who is new to our school this year and recently took the step to be baptized. His mom left the family for the United States several years ago, and he has been living alone with his dad ever since. We figure that a mom normally is the one in charge of making a birthday cake for their son and putting together the festivities, so we were privileged to step in and fill that role on Isaac’s special day. He was brought to tears at the surprise and told us it was the first time anyone had celebrated his birthday.

We recently celebrated Indian Day, which is an important holiday to remember Honduran heritage. (My husband Darwin on the far left always dresses up and covers himself in clay/mud for Indian Day in addition to playing tunes on his wooden flute…) The kids love it!
This is Ivania, a local 10-year-old who is one of the younger students in our school. (We generally accept children from 10 years up through 19 years of age, with most of our students being teenagers). She was decked out in the full costume for Indian Day!
Here is a group of our preteen boys participating in a reflection/discipleship activity on our front lawn. (Our foster son Jason, age 12, is included here.)
This photo is not especially dazzling, but it does go to show that our students are responsible for doing the after-school cleanup everyday. We’ve established a system of rotating clean-up  groups to inculcate increased responsibility and general hygiene awareness in all of our youth as diligent disciples of Christ. This is particularly important because many people in this culture throw  trash on the ground and let it accumulate in public areas (causing environmental contamination, increased risk of diseases, etc.), which is a general woe we are actively fighting.
On many occasions throughout the year we organize service trips into our rural neighborhood to do trash pick-up, which is a colossal job. As mentioned above, there is not much cultural appreciation for clean streets and green areas (creation care) in our town, but we are content to try to make a humble dent in the overall problem and — hopefully — set a good example for our neighbors to follow. (This is also great character-development for our students!)
In several sectors of our rural town there is no organized system of trash pick-up, so most people simply dump their trash out on the street in front of their home. It is not uncommon to see dirty diapers, empty Coke bottles and all sorts of trash strewn about on or near public walkways. One of our local missionary-teachers is working with the local mayor and governing authorities to see what can be done about this potentially easily-solved problem, but progress is very slow.
Sharon Washburn, veteran missionary in Honduras and founder of a well-known Christian high school several hours away, has come out several times recently to do educational expositions for our students. This greatly enriches their understanding of the world and allows them to learn from a new perspective.

As part of her presentation, she taught the world cultures material to a group of our older students first, who then were in charge of teaching the material to the younger students.
All of our students are in weekly organic agriculture classes with Erick, one of our local missionary-teachers who has truly extensive knowledge and inspiring passion for creation care. In addition to cultivating an honest work ethic in our youth, Erick also uses the class as an outlet for additional discipleship and Christian reflection.
Here are a few of our preteens working in the pineapple patch.

This is Sindy, one of our enthusiastic tutors who has been involved full-time at the Living Waters Ranch for the last four years, enjoying a rambutan fruit on an educational hike.

 

God bless you with peace and salvation in Christ Jesus, and please continue to remember us in your prayers. I have more photos to share, but I will save them for next time!

If you are not on our mailing list and would like to be in order to receive our bi-monthly printed newsletter with testimonies and prayer requests, you may contact me directly at: JenniferZillyCanales@yahoo.com to send me your full name and mailing address.

Sincerely,

Jennifer, for Darwin and mission/family

Answers to Illegal Immigration to U.S. Borders, Central America, Child/Youth Leadershp, Current World Events, Personal Reflection, Prayer Requests, Teaching

Leading a Thirsty Horse to Water Only to Watch Him Walk Away

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A very strange thing has happened here. The tiny school we originally started out of our own home five years ago as a loving, Christ-centered outreach for local vagabonds and at-risk kids now includes a student population we never intended to serve: stable, bright middle-class students.

What was originally intended to be a rescue shop within a yard of hell for those on the farthest margins of society has been largely rejected by that population and embraced by another.

Yes, we still have a few rag-tag ex-vagabonds and rogue teens among our group of students this year (and many who have been abandoned by their mothers who left them to chase the American Dream), but we’ve been utterly surprised to receive new, stable families into our program who are not looking for a last-ditch rescue effort for troubled youth but rather a legitimate Christian school (and a dynamic extended family and discipleship program) for their growing children.

Our priority over these first several years of relational ministry in rural Honduras has been the least and the lost — those who are on the verge of entering gangs, those who have been overlooked by society and possibly not given a fair shot, those who have never stepped foot in a church building. Through many efforts, sincere friendships, prayers and tears, however, the majority of those whom we hoped to serve have opted out of a relationship with us (and opportunities to get an education, heal from their past, acquire life skills and learn to walk with Christ) in favor of a continued life of ease and sin on the streets. This has been bewildering, frustrating and devastating for my husband and I.

As the majority have now chosen the path of least resistance, we have been left seriously wondering if we should have prayed harder or done something differently in order to reach these teens in a more effective way. The most logical answer we come to is that they are simply people with God-given free will who have decided to use that free will in a way that does not glorify God.

My husband Darwin even made resumes and secured healthy employment for several of our local teens over the Christmas holidays in order to keep them busy/focused so that they would not fall astray (and because the majority of them say that they really want to be able to make an income). Darwin spoke with the manager of a local clothing store in order to get a job for one of our beloved teen boys, and Darwin spent several hours going around town with the young man buying the clothes he would need for his daily work uniform. The young man only showed up for the first day of work and then decided not to go back because it was ‘too hard’ being on his feet so many hours.

Over the December-January holidays Darwin organized outings to go fishing with these local teen boys (many of whom come from broken homes), watch Christian movies with them, visit their homes, counsel and pray with their parents, etc. We opened up the door for some of them to come live with us in order to escape unhealthy home situations, which several turned down. After great sacrifices on Darwin’s part (on many days he spent more time with the teen boys than he did with me and our 7 foster kids), all but a small handful have since turned their backs on us and have dropped out of our school in favor of doing absolutely nothing at all in this current season of their lives. We’ve even offered agriculture jobs on our rural property to these same local young men in order to provide them an honest income doing productive work, and all but two have turned down the offer to work without any real reason.

I share this with you not to judge these youth or complain about our experiences with them, but rather to openly share some of the confusing and very turbulent emotions we’ve gone through over these past several weeks as we’ve been confronted with the reality that many of those whom we love dearly and earnestly want to shepherd in the Lord are simply unwilling. Many people ask God to grant them a heart for the lost — love for humanity, to see people the way God sees them. Our experience is that the painful blessing in holding this God-given perspective is that there is much heartbreak in store as many of those whom you grow to love end up making decisions that lead to their own destruction and alienation from the Lord. This is perhaps part of the sorrow that Christ knew so well.

Thus, our new motto (however unfamiliar it still feels on our lips) is: We want to work with youth who want to be worked with. The season has now passed of us dropping everything in order to look for those who’ve run off and try to convince them time and again to do what is best for them (even against their own will): live for God, prepare for the future, live an honest life, etc. We have effectively let go (both physically and emotionally, which is much harder) of these teens and are now entering a new year and season of working with eager, young lives who really want what we are offering and whose parents are on-board with the nitty-gritty discipleship and formation process.

I would also like to share a new missions/global perspective with you based on our experience,  however hard it may be to believe: some people are materially poor, uneducated and/or far from God not because they were offered no opportunities or because no one has shared the gospel with them, but rather because — even after being pled to work, get an education or seek the Lord — they refused. This is hard to swallow and sounds very harsh, but this is the reality we come up against time and again (and we are not alone in this; many local pastors and missionaries have the same experience).

Also: many people believe that youth join gangs because they are looking for love/acceptance. This might be true in many cases, but I no longer believe it to be true in all. In our experience we have offered a very genuine, vibrant love and acceptance into a healthy, biblical community to many youth, and they are simply not interested (mainly because it is ‘too hard’).

Will they now turn to gangs or anti-social groups looking for a sense of belonging? We have no way of knowing; time will tell, but we can know for sure that if they do so it is not because they have known no love or have experienced only rejection in their lives, thus turning to the gangs as a last resort. They were given open doors and pled to walk through them, but they ran away from the love that was being offered them.

A couple weeks ago Darwin and I had a heart-to-heart talk with one of our favorite teen boys who had been in school with us for the past two years. We sat on little wooden stools in our empty, quiet dining room on a Sunday afternoon. We listened to his home struggles, tried to give him biblical advice as far as he would listen, affirmed our love of him, and at the end prayed for him through tears. We had offered to employ him and even help his family with food donations if only he would remain in relationship with us through his daily participation at the Living Waters Ranch (which, after all, is not for our benefit but rather his). At the end of the entire encounter — which lasted over an hour — I asked him if we could embrace him, which is a physical boundary I do not typically cross with our male students. He nodded yes, and my husband and I tightly held his 16-year-old body between us for several minutes as all of us fought off tears. Even after such an experience, the young man decided to drop out of our school/discipleship program and can now be spotted wandering the streets of our rural neighborhood, as he is now neither working nor going to school. His dad is in the process of leaving illegally for the States with one of his younger brothers even after Darwin tried on several occasions to convince the dad to stay.

These types of loss — and we have over a dozen other similar stories — leave us with an aching void in our chest but at the same time we know there is nothing else we can do beyond open the door, share the good news of Christ, participate in an honest and loving relationship with the person, extend opportunities and give wise counsel. If the person refuses, we can only watch them go, even knowing the likely myriad of consequences they will face due to their poor decisions.

So, please pray for these young lives who have unexplainably chosen to go astray, and — however strange it may sound — please pray for my husband and me, as these losses deeply affect us and are not easily forgotten. Pray that these young people might come to a genuine repentance and that they might begin to honor the Lord with their lives — whether that is in the context of a relationship with us at the Living Waters Ranch or elsewhere.

Thank you to all of you who regularly pray for this mission and support this work financially. God bless you, and please know that we do the best we can to administer our time, energies and funds in order to be effective servants, parents, teachers and missionaries for God’s glory.

Below I will include some photos that were taken within the last couple weeks of our new batch of local youth who are eager to learn and grow alongside of us at the Living Waters Ranch this year. We currently have a little over 50 students, the number of which tends to flux a bit throughout the year. Among them are many children being raised by single dads, teens living with aunts or grandparents because their mothers abandoned them to go to the United States, and — as I mentioned above — some new students who come from more stable, middle-class families.

Sincerely in Christ,

Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission

Glory to God! Thank you for your prayers!

Answers to Illegal Immigration to U.S. Borders, Central America, Current World Events, Family, Foster, Marriage, Teaching

Undercover Photos: Integral Learning and Discipleship 2018

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Okay, so nobody actually went undercover, but the following photos were taken by our dedicated team of Honduran missionaries/teachers in the midst of our daily efforts to connect with, teach and disciple the youth in our community homeschool program for God’s glory.

We are currently wrapping up the 2018 school year (the traditional Honduran school calendar runs from February to November) with over 40 full-time students involved in our little grassroots mission. Thank you to all who pray for and financially support this living expression of God’s love in Honduras.

Our Christian psychologist solicited the help of a few students to paint her little counselling space.

Our school is very dedicated to giving individualized attention to each student as the majority of our youth come from very broken backgrounds and need personalized mentoring, tutoring and relational discipleship. For that very reason we try to keep each grade at a limit of 3-10 students. This is our very small eighth grade class with three faithful members who have been under our academic and spiritual guidance over two years now.
Much of our teaching occurs outside the classroom walls!
This was an organized field trip for a group of our students to explore a local river.

Last month we celebrated one of our foster daughters’ 15th birthday party, which is a very special occasion in Latin American culture. Here she (Jackeline) is posing with Erick and Aracely, an extremely dedicated Honduran couple who serves alongside of us daily at the Living Waters Ranch in teaching and discipleship while also voluntarily filling the role of aunt and uncle for our foster children.
Here my husband Darwin, Jackeline’s special needs brother Josue and I are enjoying her special day. It is not uncommon in our area for 15-year-old girls to already be pregnant or be living in a marital-type relationship, so the fact that our foster daughter is living in sexual purity, is doing great in school and is seeking God’s will for her life deserves celebration!
An after-school get-together between teachers and students on our front lawn

When it’s your birthday in Honduras, they pelt you with flour and/or raw eggs…One of our local students got to celebrate turning 13 on a school day! (Poor guy.)

(Front) One of our five foster daughters who just recently hit her one-year anniversary of happily living in our family. We plan on legally adopting her when she turns 21, as it is impossible to do so before then due to certain legal requirements around her case.
Another one of our foster daughters enjoying some kind of after-school fun. (I have no idea what she’s doing, but I absolutely love that smile.)
What better way to learn about plans in Science class than to go outside and plant a garden? This was my husband Darwin’s idea, and he gathered together our motley crew of roughly 20 primary schoolers to do just that…

This little boy was one whose father withdrew him from our school unexpectedly in order to join the migrant caravan to the United States.

Many of the youth in our primary school are already well into our teens (like the young man whose back is facing the camera, age 15 even though he doesn’t appear that age) but are very behind academically due to the poor local public school system and/or family issues that caused them to have to drop out of school for several years, drastically interrupting their education.
About a month ago my husband and Erick, the other male teacher/missionary on our team organized a campout up in the mountain with a group of our teen boys.

Even teenagers can enjoy jumping rope! Here are two of our teen boys (ages 16 and 17) who are in ninth grade with us enjoying this spontaneous after-school game. (My husband and I joined in as well!)

In Honduras, “Indian Day” is a very big deal…so we all got dressed up to celebrate!
What a precious family (mother, who works with us, and daughters who are in school with us)!

My husband got really into Indian Day and covered himself with clay and crafted a handmade loincloth. He was definitely the center of attention and made a whole lot of people laugh!
My husband and I performed a made-up Indian dance for our students (which they really enjoyed)…

One of our extremely mature and hard-working local students who aspires to be a Christian psychologist
One of our local teachers (right) alongside of a student of ours

Thank you and God bless! (I hope some of the photos made you laugh.)

With joy in Christ,

Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission

Answers to Illegal Immigration to U.S. Borders, Central America, Community Life, Current World Events, Personal Reflection, Prayer Requests

I Dare You to Stay: Fighting Illegal Immigration

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I approached the twig-and-barbed-wire gate under the drizzling rain and called out a friendly greeting. Very quickly three little girls came out to greet me, the smallest of which is adorably naughty. A big grin spread across her face and her eyes twinkled as she was pleased to see me. I greeted them warmly as their mom appeared at the gate only moments after her three daughters.

She is a young mother – 30 years of age, only two years older than I am – and very hard-working. We are currently in the Honduran rainy season, and she had a large black plastic trash bag clipped around her to keep her clothes semi-dry as she hand-washed her family’s laundry under a slight overhang in their rocky yard.

They motioned me through the gate and the mother and I shared a warm embrace. I tickled the little one’s belly and she let out several giggles as she tried to tickle me back. This was not the first time I had visited them, and our visits tended to be very light-hearted and filled with God’s grace.

This woman’s oldest daughter is a very kind and diligent young woman who has been in our discipleship-based homeschool program for three years now and has slowly climbed her way into a position of leadership, academic excellence and faithful perseverance among her fellow students. Many of her classmates have become discouraged and given up over the years since she entered in 2016, and her dogged persistence in remaining in our non-traditional (and very demanding) program has impressed and inspired many. She has won the honor of a paid tutoring position for other students and is one of three students in a university-level math class we offer. She’s 14 years old.

This specific visit occurred on a school day, so this eldest daughter was up at our home at the Living Waters Ranch participating in a normal day of Christian discipleship and academic classes. The mother shuttled me into a one-room open-air wooden shack that serves as their kitchen and multi-purpose room, and she allowed me to choose which plastic chair I wished to sit on. I chose the shorter chair, not wanting to appear bigger than she as we would be sitting down to talk about a very important subject.

We got situated – me in the shorter chair I had chosen and she in the slightly taller chair – as she looked at me expectantly, face bright. I sighed deeply, not sure where to start but fully confident that God would be with us as I had already prayed through this meeting before arriving.

Our knees almost touching, I began softly, “I heard that you are thinking about going to the United States…”

The day prior her daughter (who has come to be like an honorary member of our family as she frequently stays overnight to do homework or participate in sleepovers with our five teen foster daughters) had shared with me that her mom had unexpectedly brought up the topic of moving illegally to the United States several times in recent conversations with her daughters, and rather emphatically so. She was very scared by her mother’s impulsive plan, fearing that within a month or two her mother would sweep her and her three little sisters off to an uncertain future in a foreign land. I prayed with our beloved student and asked her permission to visit her mom in an attempt to convince her to stay. Her eyes bore into mine – filled with uncertainty and even fear but overcome by a very real trust she has in me (and in God) after three years of very close relationship with us – and slowly agreed, worrying that her mom would become angry with me or with her daughter who had betrayed the family’s plan to outsiders.

As many are aware of the press covering of the current drama of the large caravans of Hondurans and other Central Americans parading north to the United States border, we who are here in Honduras (on the other end of the equation) are deeply troubled as this wrong mindset affects many who are in our area, plus I personally feel ashamed and angry of the chaos many of the immigrants will thrust upon the United States.

The Honduran caravan currently on its way to the United States

Just last week a single father who had his three children in our school suddenly decided to withdraw them from our program, joined the illegal caravan in hopes of a better future, and rumors have it that his children appeared on the news a few days ago as now being held in the Honduran capital seven hours away from where we live (while Dad continues marching onward to the United States) where they will now be placed in an orphanage.

My husband Darwin and two of our teen foster daughters were driving home from a Christian ballet class around dinnertime a couple days ago and found the intersection of our rural neighborhood filled with close to 200 people all frantically trying to form another caravan to follow after the first. There were people screaming and trying to get more people to abandon their homes as they would gamble everything for their slice of the American Dream. My husband and teen daughters were devastated.There are many opposing views on the immigration crisis, but we stand firm in our belief that laws and protocols should be respected and if anyone (from any country) would desire to enter a foreign land it should be done so with the appropriate paperwork, under specific circumstances and with a respectful attitude. We are working very hard on our end to inform our students and their families of the harshness of the trip through Mexico and the reality of what will most likely wait for them if they even make it across the boarder. Our desire is to offer opportunities – educational, employment and in the realm of spiritual formation and involvement – right here in Honduras and teach this generation how to honor God with their lifestyle and choices here. I am teaching an intensive 5-week Geography class that the majority of our 40+ students and teachers participate in as we seek to bust many myths about illegal immigration and convince those under our care that a peaceful, dignified life before God and before men is possible right here in Honduras. Many of our teenage students have been very surprised by the information and photos presented in this class, and we thank God that many (possibly all) are being convinced to stay in Honduras rather than chase after an illusion (and an illegal illusion at that).

So — returning to the context of my visit with a local mother — I sat in that little wooden hut knee-to-knee with a woman not so different from me as those carefully-chosen words – almost whispered – came out of my mouth: “I heard that you are thinking about going to the United States…”

The look on her face suddenly changed as she was not expecting that to be the topic of our conversation. A barely audible gasp escaped from between her teeth and she continued to stare at me, waiting to see what else I would say. I continued, ever so gently, “…If you are willing, I would like to talk with you about that…”

Her facial expression changed once again – from the original gleeful expectation to quiet shock to an equally unexpected torrent of sadness – and she began to cry in my presence. I pulled my chair over even closer to her, ending up right next to her as I put my hand on her arm. She spoke, not at all mad but rather displaying raw sincerity that neither of us had ever dared to reveal during any of our prior visits. She expressed her own uncertainty, her frustration, her concern for her daughters’ safety and future, her desire to escape the material poverty she has known her whole life.

I listened to her very rational thoughts even as I prayed that God would convince this precious woman to stay put right here in our little neighborhood in Honduras. She spoke of her own emotions and loneliness only a few minutes before she herself began voicing all the objections – the crossing of the border in and of itself is illegal; the trip through Mexico is extremely dangerous for women and girls as the Mexican cartels have a tendency of kidnapping and raping immigrants; the promise of a ‘better life’ in the States is mostly an illusion; and so on. I continued listening as she finally became convinced (by voicing her own thoughts) that she would not be going illegally to the States and that she would continue to parent her four girls with dignity and love right here as that would honor God more than fleeing.

My heart rejoiced as she then began voicing all the reasons to stay – Honduras needs hard-working, God-honoring young people like her daughter; even though she lives in poverty they do not suffer from lack of food on the dinner table; we must work together as neighbors under the perfect will of God to make positive changes here.

After this emotional introduction to our conversation I ended up sitting there with her nearly two hours as we entered into several other topics, exchanging parenting stories and advice, encouraging one another, and laughing a lot along the way. We prayed together before I headed out, and I praised her once more for her bravery and faithfulness as a mother. Many mothers (especially in Honduran culture where there are many teen mothers who are not ready for parenthood) abandon their children or “give them as gifts” to other people. This woman – even though she gave birth to her firstborn at age 16 – has stood faithfully by all four of her girls every day of their lives and works extremely hard to maintain them with dignity. Just recently she took on a short-term position of shift work at a local fruit company, working all day until 10:00pm or 11:00pm at night and then hand-washing the big pile of clothes at 3:00am and making breakfast for her girls before heading out again the next day. Praise God for mothers like her!

So, this is a small story I share with you to inform and encourage you in regards to the current immigration crisis. I have on my list a visit I would like to pay to another beloved student’s mom this upcoming week who is likewise thinking about leaving Honduras in hopes of finding something better in the United States. Please pray with us for all the children and teens in our school (44 currently) and their parents, that God may fully convince them to stay in our area and be patient enough to see what He might do in their lives instead of getting swept up in a dangerous phenomenon that goes against established laws.

God bless you, and please pray with us for God’s will to be done in a powerful way in the midst of this immigration crisis.