Darrel was born in Oceanside in 1961. He was Student Body President at OHS, played football and baseball, and was in the marching and jazz bands. He married his best friend Sheri in 1983 and has a daughter and two grandkids. He graduated from Ottawa University with a BA in Religious Studies. A house building mission trip to Mexico in 1991 changed the trajectory of his life. Darrel served as the Country Director for Mexico with Amor Ministries from 1998 to 2006. Amor has built over 20,000 homes for the poor in Mexico. He has been an Outreach Pastor in San Diego since 2006. In 2008 he founded the non-profit Give Clean Water that serves Pacific Island Nations with potable water in rural communities. Give Clean Water was one of the first non-profits in the world to use Sawyer water filters in Fiji. GCW’s focus on health and economic outcomes led him to an International Director job with Sawyer. He was the system architect for a border-to-border clean water project in Liberia, Africa where 130,000 families living in the rural bush villages received Sawyer filters. Diarrhea rates were reduced from 36% of homes to 1.5% of homes. By July of 2023, every home in the Marshall Islands received clean water with Sawyer filters. By December of 2024, 97,000+ families will receive clean water in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. As of 2024, Sawyer has impacted over 28.5 million people with clean water in over 80 countries.