Over spring break, nearly 200 students traveled to an area near Tijuana, Mexico, and spent the week building houses for families in need. The trip was organized through Moraga Valley Presbyterian Church (MVPC), who partnered with Amor Ministries, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of poverty-stricken families in Mexico, the United States, and South Africa.
Evan Kolding, director of Student Ministry at MVPC, explained the role of the teams building houses. According to Kolding, the houses bring safety, security, and the “possibility of residential longevity” to families living in poverty. “The stability that comes from having a dependable home that can survive decades of family life is a gift far beyond any of us who are building often realize,” he said.
According to the Amor Ministries website, Amor selects the building sites and provides standard building plans, as well as necessary tools and resources, for each mission team. “The need there is still great and Amor will always be there to serve the people. We believe that Mexico is our neighbor and we know that we are called to love our neighbors,” says the website.
MVPC offers the trip to all high school students from the area, as well as adults from the community who are either interested in leading a student group or being a part of the adult group that builds their own house.
Student participants were organized into 13 different groups, led by student and adult leaders. Each of these groups built one house for each of 13 different families. The students and adult leaders were driven down to Tijuana in a total of 4 tour buses. 2 days of the trip were devoted to the journey, and 5 days were spent building the house.
The town that students worked in was located in the countryside, about 30 miles from Tijuana, and is in deep poverty. The scene in Mexico provides a deep culture shock for Moragans, as make-shift houses line the sides of the dirt roads, and trash lies everywhere. Mission teams stayed in conditions similar to those of the families they were serving.
Many of the families assisted by Amor Ministries suffer from poor sanitary conditions, food shortages, and have trouble affording clean water. The families live on paychecks of about $200 a month, with about $100 going towards the land they live on each month. Therefore, they have only $100 left to meet their basic needs.
The mission teams are not experienced laborers, so they build houses of a simple design. According to the Amor website, the student builders typically create a two-room home with a concrete floor, stucco-finished exterior, weather sealed roof, two windows, and a door.
Senior Candie Del Valle, who has gone on the trip for the past 3 years, was a student leader this year. “I wanted to influence students around me and be somebody that younger students from Campo could come to,” she said. Del Valle believed the trip was much more rewarding as a leader.
This year was very different from past years for Del Valle because she had students looking for her for guidance when building the house. “Usually as a student, you don’t have a lot of preparation. My co-leader and I met a whole month before Mexico and talked about building the house and our students, and all of the other components that are a part of Mexico,” she explained.
Freshman Kimberly Tang said she enjoyed “growing close with my team, who were people I would never talked to otherwise.” Because this was Tang’s first time on the trip she was nervous she would get sick or hurt on the trip. According to Tang she went on the trip because she wanted to help those less fortunate.
Armor began their ministry in 1980 by building houses for Mexican families, and has since expanded their mission trips to other communities. MVPC has been partnering with Amor Ministries and sending students to Mexico for more than 20 years. Together, these two organizations have built over 17,300 homes in Mexico, with the help of over 330,000 volunteers.
Kolding was thrilled with the outcome of this year’s trip. “I feel that this past year’s trip went amazingly well. Fundamentally we go to Mexico to build homes for families that have insufficient housing, if housing at all and we were able to leave Mexico with 13 homes built and finished. On top of that we had 186 high school students and over 50 adults working together on this trip in ways that changed lives.”
According to Kolding, one of the challenges the teams faced was the unpredictable weather. “This year we lost a half day of work because of rain, which in all fairness ended up being an amazing time for teams to connect and build relationships.” Another challenge was grouping the students into teams of “high school students from all different walks of life [that are] able to find community and safety among each other,” said Kolding.
Kolding described the impact that the trip has on the students. “Students are able to experience how open, vulnerable, and missional community with their peers can actually transform lives.” Students were also able to experience something they would have never been able to by having to “realistically need and depend on each other not only to complete the task but to make it socially, spiritually, and emotionally through their every day life,” said Kolding.
Amor began their ministry in 1980 by building houses for Mexican families, and has since expanded their mission trips to other communities. MVPC has been partnering with Amor Ministries and sending students to Mexico for more than 20 years. Together, these two organizations have built over 17,300 homes in Mexico, with the help of over 330,000 volunteers.
