Greetings to all from our ministry homestead in rural Honduras! We send you our photo updates from these past couple months of life and service. To God be all the glory!
Over the December-January traditional Honduran school vacation, my husband Darwin put in a lot of agricultural work hours alongside our foster children to improve/take care of our 17-acre property.Right near our front door, we’ve got quite the line-up of rubber boots for agricultural work days! What a blessing to have so many precious lives entrusted to us!Over the Christmas holidays, some of our foster children had visits with biological siblings and other blood family members. (Here one of our daughters is enjoying a trip to the park with her two biological brothers who live a couple hours away.)
A couple days after Christmas my husband, several of our foster children/students and I were invited to sing, play music and share our faith in Christ on a local television station. There’s a first time for everything!For two weeks over the Christmas holidays, all of our foster children went to stay with trusted family friends of ours in order to further expose them to new experiences in addition to granting my husband and I a much-needed respite!Here we are at a local bus station a few days before New Years ready to say our temporary good-byes as our kids were off to their various homestays!This is our pit bull Thor, one of our trusty guard dogs! He is playful with our family but very aggressive towards outsiders. He has a very important job here in Honduras where there tend to be high crime rates!This was a short nature hike around our rural ministry property during one of our family orientation days in January.
Here are more fun family bonding activities during one of our family orientation days. Participation in one of these events was a new prerequisite for all the local youth who aspired to enroll at the Living Waters Ranch school this year, and we thank God for experiencing great success in this endeavor. (It gave us a chance to get more hands-on contact with the parents and be able to involve the entire family unit.)Here is my husband Darwin teaching a group of parents and future students how to sing in choir class at a family orientation day.Here are more fun competitions during a family orientation day in January.More silly competitions and teamwork activities as we get to know our new students and their families!
This is Reina, one of our local Honduran missionary-teachers who shared her testimony of faith in Christ to all those in attendance at family orientation.Everyone loves pulling up weeds in the hot Honduran sun on family orientation day! (I’m the one bent over in the pink tennis shoes.) It’s important to give the parents and family members a taste of what our students do here in organic agriculture class on a weekly basis!More of the same! Talk about character development for the parents!
In January we invested in the upkeep of the four little cinderblock buildings on our property by re-painting them bright, joyful colors and doing a few general repairs. This is Yeri (pronounced “Jerry”), one of our students who is currently in his fourth year of full-time involvement at the Living Waters Ranch. He is highly gifted artistically, and we hired him to help with a good portion of the painting, thus providing him with the financial means to purchase his school uniform and materials to begin school in early February.
Gleny, one of our foster daughters who has lived in our home over six years now, is also a passionate painter and volunteered her painting expertise for nearly two weeks of her school vacation time in order to help see the project through.Here I am with Paola, one of our precious foster daughters who has been with us now for several years. I have lately begun spending more personal time training musically (something I didn’t begin until age 22), and several of our daughters have enjoyed practicing with me and learning new pieces together as we develop our talents for God’s glory.This is our family’s cozy living room in our cinderblock home on ministry property. During my Dad’s recent visit from Texas, he helped us paint the room bright purple! In Honduras we love to paint our homes bright colors, inside and out!These are a few of the cows from our small herd that we maintain on our rural ministry property. The milking females provide fresh milk daily for our watchman’s family and ours, and the males are eventually sold for beef. This provides a small periodic income for the ministry and serves as our emergency fund.One of our teenage foster daughters found these beautiful little flowers growing spontaneously in our front lawn.Each year we create a lot of fond memories through our intensive P.E. classes with our staff and foster kids during our January school prep. We want to keep our bodies in good shape and our minds sharp in order to serve God with excellence this year!
This is my husband Darwin during a hilarious round of blindfolded tag with our staff and foster kids during one of our riotous P.E. classes.
In rural Honduras there are always many weeds to be pulled up! In January after P.E. class one day we dedicated time as a team with our staff to tidy up our ministry grounds’ front lawn. Our foster kids were there to help too!Last week classes began as we undertake a new year of Christian discipleship, academic pursuits and integral development! This is one of our local teenage tutors who has been faithfully involved under our tutelage for five years teaching our small group of fifth graders on one of our porches.
This is Erick, one of our local missionary-teachers, with a local young man who is entering his second year of full-time involvement at the Living Waters Ranch. Last year his involvement as a student here allowed him to be mentored and discipled beyond the traditional classroom walls. He came to put his faith in Christ and was baptized several months ago, and this year he has returned to continue his integral education and Christian formation under our tutelage. Praise God!
I want to send our sincere thanks to all who responded to my last blog post in early December about our tight financial situation. I am relieved to inform you that we are now back on track financially thanks to God’s provision through all those who responded and donated. Thank you!
Sincerely in Christ, Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission
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.
This is Erick, one of our highly dedicated local missionary-teachers posing with one of our students in a recent boys’ retreat/campout on a local beach. These extracurricular events are organized several times a year as a way of further deepening our investment in our students’ lives as we guide them in the way of Christ.Here is a group of 5 of our local students, all 7th-graders, at a late-night get-together on someone’s front lawn to do homework together. (Many families in our neighborhood do not have very spacious homes, so they’ll move a plastic table and chairs on the front lawn in order to do homework or entertain guests.) Two of these young men were baptized by us this year.Here is my husband Darwin’s little orchestra in one of their twice-weekly practices. (In our area of Honduras there are little to no orchestras and/or musical training, so the ongoing discipline and passion it takes to organize such a group is a big achievement here.)
This is one of our older teen students in a recent community service project in our local community. A big part of what we do is serve our students/youth, but from there we train them to humbly serve others as Christ taught (so that the blessing does not stop with them but rather multiplies and blesses others).This is my husband Darwin in a recent choir performance in a local mall. He trains our more mature/disciplined students and foster children to sing Christian and classical songs in several different languages, and they oftentimes get invited to sing in public venues.
This is Fernando, another one of our local missionary-teachers who works alongside of Darwin to teach guitar and choir to a group of our students. He is also an agricultural engineer and has many years of experience teaching at the university level here in Honduras.This is Jessica (far left), another one of our local missionary-teachers, at a road race with the family of one of our students. We as a ministry strive to be involved in the local community and connect with our students and their families not only in the classroom but also in their daily lives for God’s glory.This is a group choir practice in which Lawny, one of our very high-energy local missionary-teachers is teaching our students fun hand-movements to go with each song.
More trash pick-up! As you might have seen in some of our previous posts, we as a ministry are periodically involved in local trash pick-up, as the culture here does not typically reflect much discipline/order as far as trash collection goes. Many people throw their trash alongside public walkways, and we have taken it upon ourselves to begin setting a good example and serving where/when we can.
This is Aracely, one of our beloved local missionary-teachers on her 30th birthday. We surprised her by celebrating alongside of our entire team in our little office building.My husband Darwin, who is our tiny school’s 6th-grade teacher, did a fundraiser with his students throughout several months in order to earn enough money to help them buy part of their school uniforms/supplies for next school year (which here starts in February). This is a big deal here, as many students’ families struggle to purchase their kids’ school materials each year.These are the butter cookies my husband and his students baked and sold during months in order to raise money to buy their school supplies. Talk about hands-on training in microenterprise and perseverance!This is Brayan, one of our foster children who lived with us on-and-off for several years before eventually leaving home last year. He has since entered the Honduran military and recently completed his basic training, which is an honorable achievement for him. He even came to stay with us recently on his 10-day leave, and we were able to pray with/for him and continue investing in him in this new stage of his life.Kyshia, a Christian missionary who has served in Honduras nearly 40 years, has become a close friend and mentor for my husband and me. Recently, she came out to our ministry property to do a hands-on workshop with our entire staff on the topic of sexual abuse and what our response should be as Christians.
My husband Darwin is a talented swimmer (self-taught) and now leads several weekly swimming classes for our students in a local river a short walk from our ministry property. This photo shows his group of older teen boys enjoying flexing their muscles.
This is the coast of La Ceiba, the nearest local city to our ministry property and a site where we oftentimes organize school field trips.Here is Darwin’s group of younger teen boys toying with the idea of jumping off the ledge into the river to begin class…
This is our foster daughter Paola “studying” for one of her final exams a few weeks ago in our living room. I caught her sleeping on the job and couldn’t resist snapping this shot!The visual quality of this photo is not great, but it sure does provide a good laugh! This is Josue, our special-needs foster son who is back living with us for a few months doing his “cool” pose with my sunglasses.Here is my husband Darwin with three of our teenage foster daughters in our recent year-end school event. (The traditional school calendar in Honduras ends in late November.)This is a recent dinner I served in our home with our foster children. Most meals include some combination of beans and/or rice with eggs, cheese, etc.Here is one of our local students in organic agriculture class on our rural ministry homestead. All of our students are involved in agricultural training as a means of character/spiritual development under the faithful tutelage of one of our local missionary-teachers.
This is one of our foster daughters with her biological nephew. Several of our foster children are in monthly contact with their biological family members and we enjoy cultivating a healthy relationship with them.This is our staff of missionary-teachers and tutors who serve at the Living Waters Ranch. (My husband Darwin was on the mike and for that reason cannot be seen in the photo.)Here is my husband Darwin on a recent field trip with some of his 6th-grade students.Darwin also teaches swimming with our female students and foster daughters. Several of them have lost their fear of water through this class and have learned to swim various strokes for the first time in their lives.
God bless you! Thank you for allowing us to share!
Hidden Treasures: Seeking the Kingdom of God in Honduras 