We send you our warm greetings from the Living Waters Ranch, our rural ministry homestead in Honduras. Below is quite an extensive album of photos displaying our daily life and ministry in our hidden corner of the world. To God be all the glory, and we sincerely thank those who pray for and financially support this ongoing mission to teach, parent and disciple Honduran youth in Jesus’ name.
Darwin and I have been actively educating our children and teens in the realm of godly stewardship (how to wisely and generously manage their finances) for several years. Each of our foster children have several weekly chores that they are responsible for, and they receive a small income for them every other week. In a recent family meeting we shared with them the idea of investing their savings in the purchase of a young dairy calf, which will eventually grow at almost no cost and can then be sold (or kept to have babies). Jackeline, one of our teenage daughters, very enthusiastically embraced our suggestion and has since utilized the money she had been saving in order to purchase a young female dairy cow from a neighbor who sold it to us at a great price. Her calf now lives on our large rural property with our small herd that Darwin manages and milks each morning with our 15-year-old son Brayan. We are very excited that she has made this wise investment, and the cow – especially if it gives birth several times, whose calves can then be sold – has the potential to provide the income to send Jackeline to college, help transition her into adulthood, etc. You go, girl!
Our eldest daughter, 16-year-old Dayana, continues faithfully onward in her piano studies as she is now in her third year of playing music under Darwin’s guidance. Every Saturday she goes into the nearby city of La Ceiba as Darwin’s assistant to teach piano lessons to a small group of young students. She has a dogged work ethic and has been extremely consistent in practicing roughly ten hours each week. Six of our other children are also in piano and/or violin, and just recently I, too, began practicing piano on a daily basis. Several months ago I felt God was nudging me toward learning more hymns and worship songs on the piano (I took lessons for about six months upon moving to Honduras in 2012), and as of this past week I am joyfully walking in obedience! I sat down at the piano bench for the first time in several months on Saturday to learn a new hymn, and I ended up practicing for five hours! In these past six days I’ve practiced 13 hours and learned two new worship songs! It is becoming a daily routine in our household that once our students and teachers leave around 3:45pm, several of us head to the schoolhouse (where the two big pianos are and several keyboards) to tap away for an hour or two. We praise God for this aspect of our daily lives and are encouraged as we see the majority of our kids develop the self-discipline and focus required to learn a musical instrument for God’s glory.
We are thrilled and blessed that all of our Christian laborers have begun actively forming relationships with our students after-hours and on the weekends. Three of them live in our tiny rural neighborhood while two daily take a bus in from a nearby city. Erick, whose story I mentioned on a prior blog, has started a weekly Bible study in his home for several of our teen boys, and Pastor Domingo has opened up his home on the weekends to several of our students whom he has joyfully put to work sanding and sawing in his carpentry shop. He has also received several students in the church he leads in his front yard, and our other teachers recently organized a riotous hiking/swimming outing to a local nature spot on a Sunday. We are thankful that God is allowing us to form a holistic ‘lifeline’ for these children and youth who may not have other loving, God-fearing adults in their lives.
Genesis, the teenager who had moved from across the country to live with us and study in our high school, unfortunately made the decision to return home to her family. She struggled with great mood swings and general negativity during her four weeks living in our home, and despite our best efforts to encourage, pray for, and try to convince her to continue studying and preparing herself to fulfill God’s will for her life (she had said that she wanted to become a lawyer, learn piano and return to her rural village fully equipped to serve God), she decided to return home about two weeks ago to her dry, very poor rural region where she has almost zero educational opportunities and no plan. Please pray with us for her, as we do not believe she made the correct decision but hope all the best for her according to God’s will for her life.
Amidst our many daily responsibilities as parents, directors of the Living Waters Ranch and teachers, Darwin and I are learning which tasks can be delegated and to whom. We are very excited and blessed that we have now delegated all of our legal communications with our lawyer who resides seven hours away in the capital city (in Honduras your lawyer has to live in the capital city if you want to experience any progress because that is where all the legal action takes place) to Miss Ligia, one of our faithful teachers who is a trained lawyer. She has taken great initiative to communicate and move forward with our capital-city lawyer in the adoptions that are currently in-process along with several other general legal procedures. We thank God for the team of very hard-working local Hondurans He has placed at our side and for the fact that Darwin and I are learning to rely upon them so that we do not get stretched too thin.
We are currently seeking prayer for Sandra, the local teen who we met last year when she entered our homeschool-style high school and then later moved in with us for seven months to escape a situation of sexual abuse in the home. She has since moved back in with us nearly two months ago due to various dangers and bad decisions she was facing in our rural neighborhood. She has sought Darwin and I out in private to talk/listen, confess different things she had hidden, and seek prayer for her life, but she is still extremely unstable and, according to what our other daughters have told us, seems to be on the cusp of dropping out of our high school and returning to our rural neighborhood to live a life of purposelessness and sin. She is extremely bright and has many God-given talents, but lacks perseverance and steadfast faith to see things through. She was baptized last year and has expressed to us several times that God has placed the desire on her heart to begin ministering to a group of young children who wander aimlessly around our neighborhood through the creation of a weekly Bible study, but she is easily distracted and has yet to take any steps toward fulfilling this specific call God has on her life. We love her dearly and have been through quite a bit with her thus far, and we are seeking prayer once more that God would illuminate her mind and that she would remain firm in her decision to love and follow Christ.
There is finally good news to be reported about my insomnia! Over the past two months I have been visiting a very professional local physical/massage therapist twice weekly as a last-ditch resort to finding the root of my sleep disorder. She has found several stress-related physical problems that have remained hidden over the last several years, and she has been working with me extensively on how to manage my stress levels better so that they don’t take root and turn into physical problems. My sleeping has improved drastically over these past two months although there is still much progress to be made. At home we have also made several positive changes to help manage stress levels better (such as the aforementioned delegating of tasks along with my new daily routine of playing worship songs on the piano), and I have begun sleeping much better. Please continue to pray for me as this will probably be an ongoing battle over the course of my lifetime (learning to trust in God and lay all my cares/stresses at the foot of the cross). Praise God for this progress!
Amen! Glory to God!
A few nights ago I lay awake amidst dull, humid air as my husband’s steady snore quietly hummed around our little bedroom, bouncing softly off the walls to accompany what was otherwise a perfectly silent night.
It was probably an hour or two after midnight, and I had yet to fall asleep. I stared at my husband, not three inches from me, as a too-familiar jealously overtook my weary body as my thoughts jumped to accuse the unfairness of the situation. The alarm on my cellphone would sound at 5:00am to get us both up for a new day, regardless of how much or how little each had slept.
My foggy thoughts then began marching off in one direction and then the next as I frantically tried to reel them in, unsuccessfully trying to trap and tame them under a desperate prayer for peace, for sleep. How many nights over these past few years had I spent with eyes clamped shut but with my mind spinning onward, struggling against my own utter exhaustion to plead with God that He may grant me sleep?
And then, suddenly — in the midst of flip-flopping from one side to the other, positioning and re-positioning a pillow between my knees or held close to my chest, heart racing and anger rising for another night spent without any semblance or rest — it began to rain. And I mean, really rain.
I could no longer hear Darwin’s maddening snore — before I could even think to remember if we had clothes out on the line, our tin roof had become a chaotic drum set, playing a rather majestic yet frightful series of sounds as so much water hammered down over our little home in the foothills of the mountains.
It rains quite frequently in our part of Honduras, but, even so, whenever a rain of such caliber comes down, you can’t help but shiver with fearful awe at such power.
And then, as strong winds came to accompany the rain in its madness overhead, the thought entered my mind and, with it, a very real sense of worry: What if our roof blows off?
Now, this had never happened to us before, but due to the construction of our home, it would not be a far-off possibility in the face of such a strong storm. In many other occasions — and this one included — the wind had come up under the tin roof with such force that the roof actually does warp and flap, creating an impressive metal-on-metal noise to accompany all the slapping of water on metal.
The thought that immediately followed the first was: That would be absolutely terrible. I mean, everything would get really, really wet.
Sometimes such simple, obvious thoughts are made somehow more special or enlightening when one is so sleep-deprived. I looked, mind drained of energy, over at Darwin, who continued to sleep as if he was completely unaware of any pending danger of losing our roof.
I lay on my back, looking up at our roof but at the same time convinced that at any moment I would be under the direct rain if and when the storm decided to take our roof away. In a daze, as if using a flashlight to light a small path through my mind, I began considering the absolute usefulness of a roof, hoping against hope that we might be able to continue enjoying the benefits of our own.
In rain, to keep dry. And not just people, but objects. Without the roof, the computer gets wet and ruined, all paperwork, other electronics, books, wood furniture over time if it gets enough exposure. Clothes mold. Bed becomes soggy and unusable.
In sun, to keep protected. Otherwise, the direct rays would be almost unbearable.
In snow, the roof provides obvious protection from such cold elements. Who could sleep in their bed under a heavy snowfall if they didn’t have a roof?
Oh, a roof is such a wonderful thing, and I had never truly considered it before now in the face of possibly losing it!
Not only provides protection from the elements but also against bugs and other animals, together with the support of the walls. And, heaven knows, in our home we would be living wild if it weren’t for our little tin roof and cinderblock walls! How many of the bats that we hear and see daily, rats, mosquitos, and other large scurrying animals would be our housemates if it weren’t for our blessed roof!
So, as the wind and the rain howled onward, growing in their anger —I could hardly hear myself think in the midst of such din! — I continued to light up small, forgotten corners of my mind as I remembered all the ways in which a roof is so utterly valuable.
I was then unexpectedly swept up into a sense of newfound awe at just how utterly amazing a roof really is. I mean, we’re facing pounding rain and really strong winds — and I’m not wet! Not even a little bit! It’s as if I’m in another world, apart from the aggressive elements, but, really, this is all thanks to the roof, nothing more. I should be soaking wet — everything outside is! But I’m not. It’s as if I’m not even in close proximity to the storm, because the roof is protecting me.
Then, completely out of nowhere, as if that itty-bitty flashlight that was oh-so-slowly searching the deepest recesses of my mind was suddenly exchanged for a giant light-switch that illuminated everything at once:
He is my roof. With that, I felt like a thousand new revelations came upon my mind like rain: He is our refuge, our shelter. Literally. In the storms of this life — the chaos, the injustice, the suffering, the stress, the loss — we can hide under Him and remain untouched. There is no longer any rationalizing of this nonsense about falling prey to worry, control, outrage, and fear. The storms of this life that come beating down upon us, howling and threatening to consume us, can actually not even touch us if we remain under the One Roof who cannot be stripped and blown away. The Lord is my refuge; now I understand what that means. To get swept up in the storms of this life, soaking wet with the chaos of this world, is proof that one does not understand this. I have not understood this.
And so I continued to lay there as the storm raged on, but now with my thoughts swept up in awe at the God of Refuge, who — if we dare to trust Him — takes the hit of the rain and the wind so that we may hide beneath Him, untouched in the midst of a land replete with water damage. May He give us the eyes to see this and the faith to live accordingly! Amen.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” Psalm 91:1-2
I would hurry to find a shelter from the raging wind and tempest. Psalm 55:8
You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Psalm 32:7
Hidden Treasures: Seeking the Kingdom of God in Honduras 