Get to Know the St Esprit Family

Ministry Description

We will be overseeing many of the business functions of Palabra de Vida: Panama. As they continue to grow in infrastructure with the addition of a hotel, student housing, the discipleship institute, and more, our focus will be on capital projects and expansion, grant funding, fundraising, and project management of the programs to ensure we are stewarding these resources correctly. Additionally, with the land provided at the camp, we will be working to establish a farm/garden program to help feed the camp and surrounding communities, while enhancing some of the other local ministry work of the other missionaries. Long-term, we would like to see an equine-assisted therapy program, which would be one of the first of its kind in Latin America.

Learn more about the ministry in Panama.

About Cory

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. I was not raised in the church, but came to the Lord at 15 years old. At the time, my sister was attending a youth group and I just wanted to tag along to meet people. It was on September 12, 2001 (shortly after the 9/11 attacks) where I was at a mid-week prayer service and they did a call to the prayer rails. I had never been, but felt something in my soul telling me to go up. They were singing "Shout To The Lord" on the stage and I felt a strangers hand on my shoulder. I heard audibly in my head "You don't have all the answers and you never will, but you can't do life alone." It was at that moment that I accepted Jesus. Following that, through college, grad school, and after, I held various positions both in church ministry and outside. I was a Youth Director and Sports/Recreation Director at a church for a few years prior to going back to graduate school where I focused on sustainable community development and international development. My research looked at the role of the North American Church in combatting human trafficking, using Haiti as a case study. I had been back and forth to Haiti on numerous mission trips. I was serving at a local non-profit in Akron, OH where I was a poverty educator and ran a collaboration of 35 non-profit agencies on combatting generational poverty. Following that, my wife and I moved back to Pittsburgh where we bought a couple of Subway restaurant franchises and I was serving as the Director of Local and Global Outreach at our church, where we got connected to ministry in Panama. I'd always had an interest in missions, but assumed that would just be going on and leading short-term trips. During the preceding 10 years, we built a restaurant and real estate portfolio, but continued to feel God's pull to be in missions and specifically in Panama. We had already bought a home there in 2022 and began to spend 3-4 months a year serving as volunteers alongside the missionaries. We knew, though, that God was calling our family to more and this became evidently clear in mid-2025 as we had an opportunity to sell our businesses and we felt God's clear call to move to Panama as full-time missionaries with our 4 children.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Contact Information

cstesprit@gmail.com

Address:
Cory St Esprit
Word of Life Panama
PO Box 600
Schroon Lake, NY 12870