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Answers to Illegal Immigration to U.S. Borders, Bible study, Central America, Child/Youth Leadershp, Community Life, Current World Events, Family, Foster, Marriage, Personal Reflection, Special Needs Kids, Teaching

First Updates of 2022: Foster Family Diary

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Dear friends and family,

Happy New Year to each of you! May we all be intent on seeking God’s perfect will for our lives, families and workplaces in this new season. I hope each of you enjoyed a restful and fruitful holiday season alongside your loved ones and that the new year of 2022 brings with it new heights and depths of wisdom, conviction, revival and God-given purpose in each of our lives. 

Through this post I extend our sincere gratitude to those who prayed for and financially supported this grassroots ministry in 2021. We thank God for your partnership and friendship, and we want you to know that the scope and effectiveness of this humble work is able to increase and multiply due to your faithful generosity. Thank you!

In this post I will share with you several edifying anecdotes from our annual December break as a family in which we were able to take a small sabbatical from our ongoing service in our school and local community (without ever leaving Honduras!). I hope that some of the ideas presented herein might prove insightful and maybe even be applied to your own families as you see fit.

Sincerely, Jennifer (for Darwin and family/ministry)

Foster Family Diary

December 9, 2021: My husband and I sat down with our 6 foster teenagers to prayerfully write down our short- and long-term goals. Our 13-year-old special needs son (who cannot read or write) happily got to work “writing down his goals” right alongside everyone else. At the end of the activity when each person shared, he “read” his goals confidently: go jogging every day, learn more Bible verses, give thanks each day and take the dog for a walk(all things he already does on a daily basis). Hurrah for Josue’s admirable goals!

December 13, 2021: This Christmas season my husband and I are making a concerted effort to do more “mini-adventures” as a family. My chronic insomnia has oftentimes kept us from being more active with our foster kids, but we have decided to make more of an intentional effort to spend quality time together lately in spite of the circumstances or difficulties. Eight years into the parenting journey, all of our foster kids are now teenagers who will soon grow up and have lives of their own. We thank God for these precious treasures He has blessed us with, and we’re determined to create loving memories with them for God’s glory.

December 21, 2021: With the support and encouragement of our daughters and a dear friend, I have recently begun the arduous task of translating my book into Spanish. At first my (breakneck!) speed was one page per hour, but now I’ve hit a stride and am up to two pages per hour! I hope to be able to share with the Latin American community our testimony of life, faith and lessons learned in the Lord that are presented through my book. Pray that the Lord would grant me perseverance and diligence in this monumental task!

December 22, 2021: During these few weeks of family vacation from work and school, my husband set a goal for himself to paint more. (He’s never been enrolled in art classes – it’s a new talent he’s wanting to develop!) The other day a couple of our kids were busy happily painting and drawing around our dining room table with a local friend of theirs, and Darwin got right into the mix with them for several hours! Way to go, Pa!

December 26, 2021: All of our foster teenagers (except our special needs son) are getting their toes wet out in the “real world” engaging in various work-related learning experiences this holiday season. (They earn a dailypay of 4-8 dollars for 8+ hours of work. Such is the typical minimum wage in the developing world.) One of our girls is working as a babysitter and assistant bread-maker; another is working in sales at a local clothing store. Two of our teens are working voluntarily with a local family that butchers and sells chickens for a living. We are so proud of their consistency and integrity in the workplace! 1 Thessalonians 4:11 “…Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands…” and Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord…”

December31, 2021: Our “family challenge” this month was for each person to read five books that they had never read before. Surprisingly, five of our teenage sons and daughters accepted the challenge and read an incredible variety of edifying books throughout December! Way to go, readers! We’ve also begun reading through the entire Bible as a family each morning, beginning in Genesis. We invite you to join the challenge! 

My book that was published in 2021 is available on Amazon. If you are interested in acquiring several copies to sell in your church’s bookstore, in your workplace or among your loved ones, you can contact me directly to arrange a bulk shipment:
Adopt, Answers to Illegal Immigration to U.S. Borders, Central America, Current World Events, Family, Farm Life, Foster, Marriage, Music, Personal Reflection, Prayer Requests

Late Summer Updates

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We write to you from our ranch homestead in Honduras on the starting line of another Central American rainy season. We sincerely hope you and your loved ones are well and thriving despite the pandemic.

This is our groundskeeper and two of his step-sons spending quality time together playing with a kite on our ranch’s large grassy lawn.

This is one of three bougainvilleas that we planted around our school buildings a year or two ago.

Here are our foster daughters and a couple local students receiving weekly cooking classes in one of our teachers’ homes.

The Honduran post office finally opened up after having been closed the past six months, but they are only mailing letters to a short list of American cities, and for 16 times the normal price! Needless to say, our hand-written thank-you notes to those who support this mission have still been unable to be sent! : ) Via this post we would, however, like to extend our sincere thanks to all those who continue to pray for and financially support this little mission in this corner of the world. It has been and remains our intention to be a small, flickering flame to those around us for God’s glory, lighting others’ paths and encouraging those near and far in the truth of Christ. Please continue to pray for us that God might grant us persevering faith so that this purpose might be accomplished.

This is the view I enjoy in our living room each afternoon as my husband Darwin trains our five foster teens in our in-home orchestra! Under traditional circumstances, the group would be much bigger and would include over a dozen of our local students, but he’s adapted his orchestra to fit the quarantine’s limitations. Darwin has all of his Christmas music ready and this week began training our local students in a virtual choir on Monday afternoons.

To save on gas expenses, sometimes we prefer to walk or take a bike into town to run our errands!

My husband and our foster teens posing after a virtual recital they performed several weeks ago.

One of our foster daughters began taking the initiative several months ago to offer weekly violin lessons to local youth as a way of sharing her skillset and God’s love with others.

We continue to operate our small Christian school long-distance as the majority of our students are now receiving their education out of our teachers’ homes. My husband  frequently does house-visits to several of our students’ homes in order to encourage them and oversee their progress, both spiritually and academically. We are waist-deep in many agricultural and maintenance projects on our ranch where we live and serve, and I have put on the hat of “stay-at-home mom” for the past six months as my days have largely revolved around the constant care of our five foster teens and the daily management of our household as I’m currently not teaching classes, directing meetings with our teachers, etc, in the traditional sense.

Teenagers sprawled out on our couch or all over our floor are a normal sight in our home! The habit of reading is not generally common in Honduran culture, but with a lot of persistence and incentives our kids have become avid readers. We recently reached the goal of 30,000 pages read as a family in quarantine and are now working towards 40,000!

This is one of our three rescue cats lounging in our kitchen windowsill.

A team of local boys/men have been working with my husband Darwin in several small-scale maintenance projects around our ranch property for the past several weeks. Here they are laying a cement foundation for the cows’ stable.

We would ask for prayer during this time for sleep issues in our household. I’ve struggled with nearly constant insomnia for about 15 years, and recently a couple of our teenage foster daughters have begun complaining about sleepless nights and ensuing fatigue during the day.  My nearly constant state of sleeplessness and now that of some of our children is perhaps the most consistent and disconcerting factor in our household. We don’t know what the root cause of this is, and the remedies we’ve tried thus far have proved ineffective, so we simply ask for prayer in this respect for our family. Under such circumstances it is easy to feel discouraged and adrift as you just try to get through each day. Thank you for your prayers!

Our foster son receives classes in his teacher’s home alongside his classmates in our school’s 7th grade class.

In early August we celebrated my 30th birthday at home with homemade cards and heart-warming moments as a family.          

One of our foster daughters and a local classmate give a recent school presentation in their teacher’s backyard.

Here we are with one of our beloved foster daughters who has now formed part of our family for five-and-a-half years. It is our heart’s desire to be able to legally adopt our children, but after many attempts and long seasons of waiting and frustration, we have had to temporarily give up that dream and be content with being family to them for God’s glory regardless of whether the Honduran government legally recognizes our commitment. We have local friends here who worked tirelessly to adopt a special needs teenager and, six long years later, they finally got permission from the government to change her last name!

Every morning as a family we have a devotional and pray together before commencing the day’s activities. We’d like to encourage you to join us in prayer for the worldwide pandemic and all that it implies. God bless you and your loved ones in your daily affairs, and may we each live in accordance with God’s will and with our hopes placed firmly in His promises.

Sincerely,

Jennifer, for Darwin and family/mission