Guatemala- Greg and Julie Garrett at Eagle’s Nest Children’s Home – GUA005

Eagle’s Nest Children’s Home is just that…a home to children.  We along with the other missionaries and staff work to provide for every need (physical, emotional, educational, psychological, and spiritual) of every child for whatever, short or long, amount of time they are in our care-.  Typically, this is a home to 30-40 children ages birth through 18 including special needs children.

What do we do?  We love, play with, train, teach, and share the gospel with the kids here.  Julie’s main role is to serve as a liaison between the home and our elementary school.  She helps evaluate the specific educational needs of our kids, communicates regularly with their teachers and house parents, and helps to develop individual plans to meet their needs. She also tutors some of our kids one-on-one and plans lots of fun activities for the kids over their breaks.

Greg gives lots of attention to our kids, letting them crawl and climb all over him just like any dad does.  He also leads our weekly youth time with games and gospel messages.  Currently, he is also helping to facilitate a community road project.

More to the story…

We are the Garretts- Greg, Julie, Otis, Aliza, Ruthie, and Eleanor.

Missions have been a part of the lives of both Greg and me since the very beginning.  Believe it or not we actually met in Guatemala while we were on the same missions team with Adventures In Missions.  I am originally from Massachusetts, and Greg is from North Carolina. We served together in Guatemala for eight weeks during the summer of 1997.  Once God crossed our paths on that trip, He continued to unite us together.  We were married in 1999, have lived in North Carolina ever since, and have always had a heart for missions.  As God grew our family, our desire to serve as a family cross culturally continued.  We looked for opportunities to bring our young children on mission trips and did!

Serving together has deeply impacted our family.  We have always valued relational missions. Tangible needs are important to meet. Short term trips often focus on them, but God gave us a desire to partner with a ministry that would be family friendly while also establishing relationships that we could continue from year to year.  It was in 2015 that we learned about Eagle’s Nest Children’s Home in Sololá, Guatemala.  In June of the same year, we took our first trip as a family with all four of our children. During our time there, Greg and I fell in love with the ministry and asked the full-time missionaries there how we could help and what their greatest needs were.  And so began a season of leading teams from our church in NC to go and serve.  Over the years we stayed longer and went more often. Relationships grew deeper, challenged us, and our hearts were transformed. We are so thankful for what the Lord has already done in us through this ministry and excited to keep seeking the Lord, falling into His grace, and sharing our only hope-the gospel.