designing a world of hope
News from John Agee with
Engineering Ministries International  
March 2011
Greetings!

As life springs forth this season, I trust that God continues to lead you in the way that He has prepared for you. Take some time over the weeks ahead to reflect on and rejoice in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, God's Son, the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). He took on flesh and dwelt among creation to spread His kingdom, bringing life through salvation for those who follow Him.
In This Issue
Father's Love Expressed in Peru
Looking Forward to Ghana This Summer
Father's Love Expressed in Peru
Papa Gil
Papa Gil
While in Peru, the EMI team partnered with Papa Gil, a man who embodies fatherly love for the children he cares for, especially his adopted daughter. In his words, Gil's passion is to "take the children that nobody wants, like very weak children, children who are ill, children in danger, children with social problems, children with problems..." God has given him the grace to sleep lightly so that he is able to hear if his handicap daughter requires assistance in the night, and he recently returned from a fundraising trip to Europe with her, taking care to hold and comfort her on long airplane and train rides. Gil has been caring for outcast children in Ayacucho through Casa Hogar Los Gorriones for the past 9 years, even after his wife passed away 2.5 years ago. Gil and the Los Gorriones staff currently live "in a rented house and in reality [they] have too many children, [the rented] home should house 15 children...but the reality is that there are so many children in the streets in Ayacucho, so many children abandoned and that [they] meet cases [that they] cannot refuse. So at the moment [they] have about 29 children (14 handicap children). They are sleeping with 2 in 1 bed, because [they] don't have the place to put more beds. But here they are better than in the streets or at home, where is violence, because alcohol destroyed."

Ayacucho Project Team Reviewing Plans
Ayacucho Project Team Reviewing Plans
I was blessed to step in at the last minute and lead the EMI team of 7 who were mobilized to design new facilities for the children's home. We visited existing children's home and the new site, where we prayed over the land and praised God for redeeming it. The previous owner of the land had planned to build a prostitution home, but God had other plans for the site. Now it will be used as a safe haven for children who have been rescued out of a life that could have led to prostitution.


Praise God for the way that He is using Papa Gil to express love, and continue to ask our Father that Gil would know Papa God's love in a deeper way through increased revelation of Jesus.
Ayacucho Team
EMI Team at Ayacucho battlefield above city of Ayacucho
View more pictures from this project trip at www.carlajv.com/2011Ayacucho

Looking Forward to Ghana This Summer
Ghana Sticker Fun
Kids Play with Stickers at Good Shepherd Happy Children's Home
I have the privilege of recruiting and watching God prepare a team for the upcoming summer project trip to southeastern Ghana. We will be partnering with the Jesse Brooks Foundation to master plan and design the Good Shepherd Happy Children's Home site for 100 kids in Aflao, Ghana. Praise God for the team He has begun to put together including a lead architect, two civil engineers, and an electrical engineer! Please join me in praying for God's provision of a structural engineer, a junior architect, and a drafter to complete our team. EMI veteran project leader Bob Smith and his wife Marilyn, as well as my sister Rebecca will be joining the team as we serve in Ghana.

The Jesse Brooks Foundation was established in memory of ten year old Jesse Brooks who, while on her first and only mission trip to Montana, lost her life in an automobile accident on the trip home to Alabama. In 2007 Good Shepherd Happy Children's Home was built in Ghana, West Africa. This home currently provides safe haven to 40 children who had been left orphaned or abandoned. Daily operation are overseen by a local Ghanaian pastor and local board of directors. Today 52 additional children are in need of a home and care. The new 2.5-acre plot of land will give these 52 additional children a home and also provide housing for the 40 children at the existing home, since the existing property floods badly.

I am excited to return to Ghana, and especially for the opportunity to work with a Ghanaian electrical engineer on our team. Pray that God provides opportunity to connect with other Ghanaian design professionals and ministries as I spend a few extra days around the capital, Accra. I appreciate your prayers for team unity, for relationships with the ministry and nationals, and for the name of Jesus to be magnified throughout our stay.



Grace and Peace in Jesus,


John Agee
Engineering Ministries International
Blessing and Adoption as Sons
Papa Gil with the kids of Los Gorriones
Inspired by Papa Gil's love as an earthly father to so many outcast children in Peru, I am reminded of how much our heavenly Father has blessed us through adoption as sons. Join me in praising God for the vast riches of grace that He has lavished upon us through Jesus!

 

Ephesians 1:3-10 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
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Prayer Requests
  • God's grace as I prepare for and take the Professional Engineer licensure exam on April 8

  • God's leading in team preparation for the summer children's home project in Ghana

  • New Partners to Cover $200/mo. Financial Need

  • Connections with people and ministries in West Africa, and God's provision of a team for EMI's future West Africa office

  • For Jane & my relationship and for her to walk by faith as she begins university in Nigeria
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