Sara and I are excited to announce our partnership with the Kekchi Bible Institute. Classes will be starting in a few days and we feel like this is a dream come true! While we were in the USA Sara and I talked to many of you about how we felt God leading us to become involved with training up new leaders through a Bible School or Ministry Training Center. This vision has now come to pass and we want to fill you in on the details. We believe that this is a sustainable way to quickly reach every single unreached Mayan village here in the Petén region of Guatemala. We made a short video about KBI, its goals and purpose. Click on the play icon below to watch it.

Blessings,
Jesse, Sara & Makai Eggman

Greetings,

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas! While we very much missed friends and family this was still one of our all time favorite Christmases!

The week of thanksgiving my (Sara) heart felt very heavy during a time of prayer. I had such a strong sensation that I was not fulfilling the call of God for my life and that deeply saddened me. Since I was a child my heart has been for the orphan, the unwanted, and the outcast. God has placed in me a passion for these groups of children to know their value and identity as sons and daughters of a king. I asked the Lord when the time would come for this ministry to come to fruition.  At the end of this time of prayer I felt in my heart that I was supposed to pray and keep my ears and eyes open. God is so awesome! Just 3 days later I learned from a missionary friend of mine that there was a Children’s home in our town with these exact types of children!

The first week of December Jesse and I went to visit this children’s home named Remar. Remar is an international Christian organization that helps to bring restoration to broken lives. The children’s home here in our town is specifically for orphans who have been abandoned by their parents or children who have been abused by their families. There are about 10 boys at the house for boys and about 30 girls at the house for girls. On our first visit to Remar we met a precious 4 year old little girl. It was heartbreaking to listen to this little girl’s history. She was rescued from her father who had raped her and then cut her head open with a machete. When she walked up I opened my arms to her and Jesse and I were amazed as she walked into my arms and allowed me to embrace her. Many of the children at this home have similar horrific experiences. The most heartbreaking news is that a large number of these children return back to their abusers due to the lack of a strong justice system in Guatemala.  The directors of this home are beautiful people who are trying their best to care for these children and help them recover from their traumatic experiences. The directors expressed to us their desperate need for children’s ministers. “We are doing our best to provide shelter and food for the children. However, there are not any people on our staff to just spend time loving on the children. We need someone who can come and love the children. We need someone who will play with them and teach them the bible and about the love of Jesus.” Their words were like water to my soul and an answer to my hearts cry. In that moment I wanted to jump up and say “YES! ME! I WILL DO THAT!!!” This is my ministry heartbeat. These precious children need so desperately to know their value and worth as children of God. They need to know the pure love of their heavenly father. I believe that God has led me to these children and He has placed it in my heart to reach them. I believe so strongly that these children’s lives and circumstances can be changed by the power of Christ.

We were blessed to be able to spend Christmas Eve with the children from Remar. We set up a sheet and played the nativity story in Spanish from a projector. We were able to buy jump ropes, a few jumbo balls, and some group games for the kids. God helped me make 2 turkeys and bake 100 cookies for them as well. We know that these children are very close to God’s heart. He made that very clear to us over the past couple of days. We had called the gas company and ordered a cylinder of gas to be brought to our house to cook the turkeys with. An hour after delivering the first cylinder they returned with a second cylinder of gas saying that they had received a call saying that we needed a second cylinder. I told them that we hadn’t called them but that maybe God knew that we would need a second cylinder and went ahead and bought the second one. Sure enough we needed both cylinders to cook the two turkeys. God pulled the strings to make sure that the children would get their turkeys! We are so excited to be partnering with Remar in helping these children. We are looking forward to seeing what God has in store  as we begin working more with them next year.

Thank you SO much for partnering with us. You are truly making a difference in these children’s lives. We are so grateful for all of your prayers, encouragement and financial gifts that continue to make the ministry here possible. We pray that you have a blessed New Year!

Our next update will talk about a second partnership we have made here, one that we believe will eventually help us meet our goal of reaching every village here in the Petén with the Gospel.

Blessings,
Jesse, Sara & Makai Eggman

Sara, Makai and I were on our way to a village here in Guatemala to meet with a pastor today. We stopped to get some gas at Shell and put some air in the tires just as we were leaving the town we live in. The gas attendant asked if I wanted super or regular gas and as normal I told him regular. It was only about 30 seconds after leaving Shell that the engine started shuddering and making a loud knocking sound. It kept acting like it was going to shut off. A few weeks ago another missionary friend of ours just had bad gas put into his SUV recently at Texaco and had to get his engine and everything cleaned out. So I assumed that was what happened to us as well. I called a friend and he came to help. We opened the gas cap and smelled the gas which smelled more like diesel than gas. My friend took me back to Shell and they told us that they had pumped regular gas into the truck. We called a mechanic and asked if we could pick him up and bring him to the truck. He said yes but when we arrived he said he was busy and gave us a chain to tow the truck to him. My friend started towing me but almost immediately the chain came loose and then my breaks went out. The chain had broken the trucks break line when it came free. Without breaks it was going to be really hard to pull the truck with a chain so we tried calling a tow truck. Most tow trucks here in Guatemala just hook up chains and pull you. We could only find one guy who had a tow truck that could pull the truck up into the bed of his tow truck. The problem was that he was out of town when we called.

We called the mechanic back and asked again if we could bring him to the truck. He was still busy but he said his brother, who is also a mechanic, could come with us. We dropped Sara and Makai back off at the house and picked up the mechanic. The mechanic tried getting gas out of the gas tank but couldn’t. He told me to start the truck and he opened up a valve on the engine and let some gas out. I talked about it being dangerous because the gas could catch on fire but then I went ahead and listened to him. He took out about a liter of “Gas” and sure enough it smelled more like diesel than gas and was slippery and slimy like oil. The mechanic decided that since we couldn’t tow the truck he would just take all the gas out through the valve so that we could put new gas in it and try to start it again. He ran a hose from the ground up through the engine compartment and started letting the gas shoot out of the valve into the hose and run down to the ground.

Please understand the following events seemed to take place in slow motion.  About the third time the car died and I restarted it a huge flame shot up. I turned the truck off and jumped out yelling for them to get back since the truck could explode. There was a huge pillar of flame shooting up from the engine and fire underneath the truck where the “Gas” had been flowing. I yelled for them to move the other vehicle away in case the truck blew up. When my friend tried to start his vehicle it wouldn’t start but kept making that clicking noise like when your battery is almost dead. I quickly decided that I was not going to try to look at the battery since I would have been right all the fuel on the ground and the flaming truck. For an unknown reason my friends vehicle suddenly started and he hit the gas to get out of there quickly. He was on a muddy slope beside the road and started sliding sidewise down into a muddy ditch beside the road. I yelled for him to get out and run for it. He yelled that we needed water but I thought to myself that that would probably only make it worse since you normally never put water on burning oils and the “Gas” had looked and felt oily. I took off running down the road away from the burning truck towards a big propane business that was only 100 feet away. I remember thinking that there was nothing we could do and that the Truck was lost for sure. I said part of Job 1:21 aloud as I ran, “The Lord giveith and the Lord takeith away, Blessed be the name of the Lord”.

As I neared the propane business I yelled out and asked if they had any water. The security guard disappeared and then came back with a 5 gallon bucket full of water. I ran back yelling that I had water. The mechanic met me and grabbed the water and went and threw it on the pillar of fire still coming from the trucks engine. Miraculously the fire instantaneously went out. I asked the mechanic if he was ok and he said yes. We noticed later that his eye lashes had been burned.  Praise God we were all ok! On top of us not being hurt at all the mechanic soon discovered that only a few hoses had burned and that the engine and everything else was perfectly fine. You would have had to have seen the huge pillar of fire burning continually for all that time to understand what a huge miracle that was! The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Today He gave much and took very little. I have a renewed sense of just how precious life is and am overjoyed to have more time here on earth.

Blessed be the name of the Lord!

Jesse Eggman

For those of you who want to receive our monthly e-mail updates.

I just wanted to let you know that Sara and I are switching our e-newsletters over to a new service called MailChimp. We are making this change to address the issue that many of you have not received the last few updates that we sent out. This will be the third update we have written since arriving back in Guatemala in Sept. If you haven’t gotten the last couple of updates you can read them on our blog (http://lastofthelost.missionsplace.com).

I sent out our first update via MailChimp 2 days ago titled “Our Life & Ministry”. If you did not receive “Our Life & Ministry” from us please check your Spam box as that is probably where it is and mark it as “Not Spam” or if you use G-Mail please check your “Promotions” tab and click and drag our e-mail over to the “Primary” tab.

Please add our e-mail address ([email protected]) to your contact list if you have not already done that.

*Note: To see the pictures on our updates you may have to enable images after opening our e-mail.

If you have any questions, need help with any of this or still couldn’t find our e-mail even after checking your spam and promotions folders/tabs then please feel free to call our Skype phone number at (979) 314-4055 or email us at [email protected]

Blessings,

Jesse & Sara Eggman

Click HERE To see our full update for October with additional photos.

Things have been going really well here in Petén, Guatemala! I think that Jesse and I finally feel at ease being parents and raising a baby in a foreign country. Makai has been so wonderful throughout the whole transition and he seems to be really happy here.

There are definitely some challenges in being a foreigner as well as a parent here in this culture. It seems that everywhere we go everyone wants to touch or hold the “Greengo baby.” It can be stressful at times but God is giving us grace in how to handle each and every situation.

This past month we had the amazing opportunity to minister at a church about an hour away from our house. We were excited because the pastor had invited Jesse to preach and a special singer for the service. This service was awesome and quite the cultural experience! Neither of us had ever experienced anything like it before.

The service started at about 7:30pm and did not end until almost 11:00pm! It consisted of 4 different singers who altogether sang about 20 songs! In the middle of the service a woman came up to lead the congregation in prayer. She was so loud, that at one point I had to ask Jesse if Makai was crying because I could not hear him screaming at the top of his lungs even though he was sitting right on my lap! Finally… around 9:30pm after all the singing and praying Jesse had the opportunity to preach to the people. After Jesse preached the pastor invited two other people to come up and share the word. By this point it was almost 11:00pm. Although all of this was a huge stretch for us culturally Jesse and I were so blessed by the pastor and his congregation. We have never been in a church here that was so full of praise. It was amazing to see and hear them sing with everything they had. You could really see that they truly loved Jesus. Jesse preached to the people about Matthew 6:33. “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” Jesse encouraged the congregation to continue living faithfully to God when they have needs and to seek God for help and trust him to provide for them. The people responded and almost the entire body responded to the altar call. We were able to pray for strength for the people who were struggling with different needs and encourage them as we believed with them in faith for God to provide for them.

One Highlight we wanted to tell you about was getting to help Pastor Eugenio and his family evangelize the village of San Juan Villa Nueva. Pastor Eugenio recently moved there to plant a church and we journeyed to help him get started there. We were able to go from hut to hut talking to the people and inviting them to come to the church that evening for a special service and to watch a movie. We played the movie Courageous after worship and ended the evening with sharing a little and prayer. It was a great success as the church was full with people and there were even many outside looking in threw the doors and windows! Please pray for Pastor Eugenio’s family as they start the new work there and for the people of San Juan Villa Nueva.

We are so happy to be in Guatemala and we are really excited about some amazing doors God is opening up for next year. God has put such a vision in our hearts to see unreached villages touched with the power and love of the gospel. We are eager to share with you in our next update about the strategy God is revealing to us and the different partnerships he is blessing us with!

We are so thankful for each and every one of you who is praying for us and partnering with us financially. We appreciate you so much. Our family and our ministry would not be the same without you! Thank you for the sacrifices that you make with your time and finances in order to be our partners in the work God has called us to. We love and cherish each of you. We pray that God would just bless you and your families abundantly, that he would pour out and multiply back to you a hundred fold what you have sowed into us!

This week has been quite an adventure! We want to say thank you for praying for us and our trip back to Guatemala. Everything went so smooth. We had the Lord’s favor and did not encounter any problems! We arrived in Guatemala City on Monday around lunch time. All of our luggage made it in great condition and we did not encounter any issues at customs. We spent two days in the city finishing up all of the legal paperwork for our application for our residency. Wednesday morning we made the 8 hour drive from Guatemala City to our home in the Petén. Since then we have been busily working to get our home back in order. We came home to find that mold had grown over most of our clothes left in the house. Our dishes were also covered in dust and spider webs. Finally after 12 loads of laundry and 3 hours of washing dishes our house is looking like home again!

Makai did really well on the trip. He was such a trooper. He didn’t have any pain during the flights and he slept almost the entire 8 hour drive back to the jungle. Throughout the whole trip he was curiously looking around and enjoying all of the different sights. When we were packing in the United States I (Sara) did not want to bring a whole lot of luggage. Jesse however was wise enough to insist on bringing Makai’s pack n play and music mobile. I am so happy that we did. These two things along with Makai’s favorite blanky have been such a comfort to him. When we first arrived to our house Makai started crying and did not stop for about 2 hours which is very unusual for him. We called our directors and got some people together to pray for us, our household and especially for Makai. Makai went to sleep right afterwards and has been doing great ever since!

We have been so blessed to have my parents make this trip with us. They helped bring our luggage and take care of Makai while we met with the lawyer and have been cleaning right along with us.  They have been such a huge help. I don’t know how we would have ever done everything without their help.

Yesterday Jesse along with my parents went to Las Gaviotas to minister to the people. While we were in the States we were given little beauty bags with soap, shampoo, and other goodies to give to the women in the village. My mom was able to hand out the bags and encourage the women with the Word of God and prayer. My dad was able to encourage the men in the village to work together in unity as they work to finish building their church. It was so exciting to see my parents being a part of the missions work we do here in Guatemala.

We are so grateful for all of your prayers and for your partnership with us that made our return to Guatemala possible! Thank you!

Please keep praying for us, for the legal work for both our residency and for the title for our truck, and for the ministry here to bear much fruit!

Blessings,

Jesse & Sara Eggman

Just wanted to let you know that God willing we are flying back to Guatemala in the morning (Monday Sept. 9th). Our first flight is at 6am and we should arrive in Guatemala City around 12 noon. We will be staying in Guatemala City for two nights. While in Guatemala City we will be going to see a lawyer in an effort to get “Rentista” residency in Guatemala. This would allow us to not have to leave the country every 3 or 6 months. We will also be trying to get a vehicle title transferred into our name. We plan on driving the 8 hour journey back to our home in the jungle in that vehicle on Wed morning (Sept. 11th). We would appreciate your prayers for a safe, fun and fruitful journey that is blessed in every way as well as success in getting our “Rentista” Visa and quickly getting the truck title transferred into our name without any trouble.

Thanks so much for your faithful prayers and partnership with us!

May God bless you abundantly!

Jesse, Sara & Makai Eggman

Dear Friends,

It has been a while since our last update. Being a parent is more wonderful than we ever dreamed and more taxing than we ever imagined. We are so blessed to have help from our family during this wonderful and trying time of our lives. We have been working on a few things while waiting to return to Guatemala. We are still trying to raise funds and need another $1000 a month to meet our budget. Please pray that we will be fully funded with our budget met when we leave for Guatemala. Go To Nations asked us if we would be willing to apply for residency in Guatemala. This will mean that we will be able to fulfill legal roles for GTN there and that we will no longer have to renew our visas every three months. Our planned return to Guatemala in mid-July had to be pushed back so that we could go through the necessary steps to apply for Guatemalan residency. We have been filling out and sending off documents like crazy in an effort to get all the necessary paperwork done so that we can return to Guatemala. We have our flights booked for Sept 10^th. Please pray that all the documents are approved and sent back with plenty of time to spare before Sept 10^th.

I (Jesse) feel like I have learned a lot and grown a lot in the last couple of months. I had the opportunity to preach at a Spanish speaking church here in TX about a week ago and feel like God taught me a lot through the sermon. I want to share a summary with you.

2 Peter 1:3-4 says “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires”. I think the majority of people in the world can say that at this moment they do not have in their possession everything they need for the rest of their life. So in the natural it seems like the Bible is wrong and we do not have everything we need for life and godliness but the Bible says in 2 Cor 5:7 “We live by faith, not by sight. From the very beginning to the very end it is all about faith for us “believers”.

So when the Bible says we have been given everything we need for life and godliness we accept that by faith, we believe it to be true even if in the physical realm it doesn’t seem to be true. Through faith in God’s Word you possess a currency that will obtain for you everything you will ever need for life and godliness. God’s promises are activated, cashed in, or made real in our lives, through faith in them. If we don’t know the promise then we can’t claim them by faith or stand on them in faith. To summarize, if we don’t know the promise we miss out on it and allow the devil to steal from us what we didn’t even know was ours. God showed me that the Israelites were not the only ones given a promise land to take possession of. I pray that each of us will make a decision today to not only be defensive, that is learn Scriptures that apply to our current problems in life once the devil has attacked us, but to be offensive and seek out all that God has promised us in His Word so that we can start taking back all the “Promise” land that God has given us.

Joshua Makai will be 3 months this week and is growing fast! Every day he is developing in so many new ways. Right now he is discovering his voice and is cooing and gagaing constantly.  He is a sweet spirited baby and is a joy to our lives. I (Sara) never could have imagined all of the ways a baby would change my life. Taking care of Makai is a lot of hard work.  Between changing diapers and nursing him every 2 hours (this little guy definitely takes after his dad in that he loves to eat!)  it has been a challenge to get anything else done! I have to say though that just one little smile or coo from him makes it so worth it! I feel as if I am just now beginning to feel at home in my new role as a mom. The past few months I have really been enjoying the lessons God has been teaching me through motherhood. Here is an example.

So Baby Makai has been teaching me a lot through our daily ordeal of cleaning his nose. His nose gets really clogged with boogers and it affects him in everything he does, especially when he eats and sleeps. By the way he reacts when I clean his nose you would think that I was torturing the little guy. He kicks and screams and cries the whole way through. What he doesn’t realize is that if he would just hold still and trust me, getting the mess out would be much more peaceful, easier and faster. He hates going through the cleaning process but loves being able to breathe afterwards. A lot of times we are the little one crying, kicking, and screaming while God is just trying to refine us and get the mess out of our lives. I am learning to just hold still and let God move in my life even when it is uncomfortable or not very much fun. I am realizing that he cares for me even way more than I care for my son and that he always has my best interest in mind. Even though I may not always enjoy the refining process, I love being clean afterwards!

1 Peter 1:7 “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold- though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.”

Although my roles are changing in life my identity in Christ is firm. I am learning more every day that it is more important who I am that what I do. As we prepare to go back to Guatemala I am excited and looking forward to all the promises God has given our family and for the calling he has on our life in the Petén. I am discovering the joy and peace of enjoying the ride to where God is taking us.

Please keep our energy levels, our funding, our paperwork and the coming transition back to Guatemala in your prayers!

Blessings,

Jesse, Sara & Makai Eggman

It’s been two months since our last update and a lot has happened.

With the help from some of our Guatemalan friends we were able to put together a video on Las Gaviotas and the work we plan on doing there.

See Video Below

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foeBV6ZWxDc[/youtube]

I Jesse went with Jim DeHart, GTN’s Petén Director, and Marlon, one of GTN’s National workers, to explore a distant village close to Mexico called the “Lone Chicken”. It was quite an adventure. The vehicle we were traveling in lost all power three different times and the tie rod fell to the ground resulting in a loss of all steering of our vehicle. We traveled a total of seventeen hours. We rode four hours on horseback through very deep mud, killed a large poisonous snake in our path, and were able to eat the “King of the Rats” for dinner. On our way back home we also got stopped by the Guatemalan Military while we were driving through a very dangerous stretch of road after dark.  All of these events made it an unforgettable journey! I couldn’t believe how beautiful the village was when I finally got there. I came out of the mud right onto a bridge crossing a beautiful river which led to the village. “The Lone Chicken” was situated on the side of the mountain right by the river. It was the most beautiful village I have ever seen! I believe that God did an amazing work in the hearts of the people there in that village. There were many dangers but God protected us through each and every single one! I believe that light overcame darkness and the Kingdom of God advanced in power. We are looking into the possibility of helping to build a school and a church among other things in that village in the future.

Since leaving our home in Guatemala for itineration and partner building we have lived like nomads and traveled roughly eleven thousand miles. We have had wonderful opportunities to update many of our current partners in person as well as share our mission and vision with many new potential partners. We have been able to preach the Word of God, share our testimonies and teach about missions and Guatemala at various churches, youth groups, home groups, house churches and even with inmates in prison. We have seen many new partnerships started and have been very encouraged through all of these experiences.

Jesse was able to help at two nonprofit organizations located on a small ranch in Desoto, TX, Gospel Revival Ministries and Aquaponics and Earth, on behalf of Go To Nations for a couple of weeks. He was able to learn a lot about Aquaponics by picking up things from Aquaponics & Earth’s president and founder, John Musser. We also received training on how to reach unreached tribal groups when one of Gospel Revival Ministries Native Leaders stopped by the ranch unexpectedly and shared about the work going on in India with tribal groups. The time spent there was invaluable and we are sure that the things we learned will be applicable and useful for us and others in the future.

Thanks so much to each of you who partner with us and pray for us! None of this would have been possible without you!

Please continue to keep this time of partner building in your prayers. We are progressing towards meeting our monthly budget goals but are still looking for many new partners to help meet the needs. Sara is only a little more than a month away from her due date and has been feeling very uncomfortable. I have been fighting with allergies / cold / congestion off and on for the past 6 months now. Please keep our health in your prayers as well.

May God bless you abundantly,

Jesse & Sara Eggman