Darwin and Jennifer Zilly – Canales
Darwin, a native Honduran, and Jennifer, originally from Texas, serve as the Executive Directors at the Living Waters Ranch on the northern coast of Honduras. They raise the youth God has placed under their full-time care and serve in holistic discipleship and teaching alongside their team of local Honduran missionary-teachers in the Living Waters Ranch’s transformative grassroots school.
After many years of prayer and discernment regarding the call on her life, Jennifer received confirmation in 2011 that her role in God’s Kingdom would be to be a mom to children who do not have one. The following year she graduated college and moved to Honduras to fulfill the vision the Lord had given her.
Darwin is a passionate musician, teacher, and farmer, and God had been working faithfully in Darwin’s life for over a decade in preparation for the work He had planned for him to do. Darwin and Jennifer met during her first year in Honduras and were married in June 2013. Less than five months later they became foster parents to a sibling group of three.
As of 2021 (eight years into their journey), they have fostered 13 Honduran children/teens in all and continue to parent 6 in the context of their own home. All come from traumatic childhoods, and Darwin and Jennifer seek to lead their children daily into healing and freedom in Christ.
After beginning their service in Honduras as foster parents, in 2015 the Lord placed it on Darwin and Jennifer’s heart to expand the vision of the Living Waters Ranch to include a discipleship-based elementary and high school for local students in hopes of impacting the lives of the youth in their surrounding neighborhood. Many local schools suffer from varying forms of corruption and desperately low educational quality. Thus, the need for a legitimate educational institution (and one that goes beyond traditional textbooks and classroom walls to reach and transform the soul of the students in Christ) is great.
The family-style program includes organic agriculture, individual discipleship and group Bible studies, intensive physical training, community service and evangelism, choir and music classes in addition to traditional academic classes in an environment very intentionally built upon the foundations of truth, love, and healthy discipline.
Darwin and Jennifer are carrying forth the vision of late missionary Teresa Devlin, who founded the Living Waters Ranch and constructed the buildings before her death in 2012. Darwin and Jennifer labor as a team alongside several extremely dedicated and talented Honduran believers who serve as teachers, missionaries and servants on their home soil for God’s glory.
Jennifer maintains a blog with updates, prayer requests, photos, and stories of how God is working among them at:
www.HiddenTreasuresinHonduras.wordpress.com
She also published her first book in 2021 titled “Hidden Treasures: Wrestling with Significance, Faith and Suffering While Serving in the Developing World.” It is available on Amazon:
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