Amor Ministries

We partner with Amor Ministries for our annual Memorial Day home building trip in Baja, Mexico, Come Build Hope.

Amor meets the tangible needs of the poor as a vehicle to share the love of Jesus with families and keep them together. They do this by providing homes, as well as food, clothing, backpacks filled with school supplies, Christmas presents, winter relief items like blankets and jackets, and water filters.

Their solution to the need is completed by thousands of volunteers from all over the world that participate on an Amor Mission Trip. The Amor Mission Trip consists of a house building project, outreach opportunities, and an opened door for the local pastors to teach the families about Jesus.

Amor believes in working with the local pastors that live and serve in the communities they build in. Pastors of local congregations in each Amor location provide Amor with an awareness of the spiritual, social, cultural, and economic realities that influence their communities. These Pastors locate and evaluate potential Amor home recipients and help prioritize the placement of Amor Mission Trip participants. The best part is that once an Amor Mission Trip is completed, these Pastors will continue to visit the family served by building a relationship to teach them about the love of Christ. The local pastors serve as a Ministry Planning Board, whether in Mexico, South Africa, or the United States.

History

More than thirty years ago, Gayla Cooper felt reluctant to spend even one day ministering to children in a Tijuana orphanage. However, after meeting a group of children from a Mexican orphanage, Gayla's heart was touched so deeply that she decided to pack her bags and move to Mexico to work in the orphanage full-time.

Meanwhile, Scott Congdon traveled to the very same orphanage with a community service group from his college. The children had such a profound impact on Scott, that when he returned home, he began collecting food and clothing for the children, returning to deliver the collected items.

Together, Scott and Gayla soon discovered that they shared the same dream of ministering to the poor in Mexico. In March of 1980, Scott and Gayla founded Amor Ministries. That fall, they recruited their first ministry group to participate in a building project at a Tecate orphanage.

One year later, Scott and Gayla were married and four more missions teams traveled to Mexico with Amor. The Ministry continues to live out the Congdon's initial calling and provides homes for families each day. Today, more than 600 missions groups take part each year in short-term Mission Trips with Amor Ministries!

Scott and Gayla, along with the full-time Amor Team, carry out their commitment and passion for helping the poorest of the poor in Mexico, as well as, South Africa and the United States. They mobilize volunteers and work with local churches to respond to the physical and spiritual poverty throughout the world.