At Amor Ministries, Easter has been a historically busy day.  Most Amor Team Members don’t remember what it was like to not be spending our Easter at our global headquarters in San Diego, welcoming our wonderful groups on that joyous day.  This year, because Easter was so late in the month, most of our Easter groups have already come and gone.  While we all each had a wonderful time spending Easter at our homes, we certainly missed celebrating The Resurrection with our groups, who come faithfully every year to serve Him.

We love to have extra help on a worksite.  Even the littlest hands can make a big impact!

The following post is from Jeff Ahlberg, the Amor Ministries Business Development Manager

Recently, Amor Ministries had the privilege of working with another local non-profit here in San Diego.  This non-profit, called Street Angels, is a REVO San Diego partner with Amor and is doing some amazing things in our community.  Street Angels works with, and provides resources for, homeless youth in San Diego.  They distribute food and basic essentials to teens living in homeless communities in downtown San Diego.

In our effort to use our limited warehouse space efficiently, we needed to get rid of our old inventory of unused trip participant shirts from years past.  That’s when we had the idea of partnering with organizations that could use the shirts to help make a larger impact. Street Angels came to my mind first.

I met with them downtown just after a rain storm on a surprisingly cold day for San Diego.  I passed dozens of homeless men and women, both old and young and many of them were drying out there sleeping supplies as well as their clothes.  It really hit me then that these t-shirts Amor is giving away will be received at the perfect time.  When we started handing out the supplies, a few teenagers asked what the shirts were for.  We told them they could take as many as they need and that these shirts were free.  They grabbed a handful and then told all their friends.  Before we know it, people were grabbing t-shirts like they were $100 bills.

It felt great to be able to partner with Street Angels and help them in their mission.  I would never have thought those boxes and boxes of unused shirts could make such a difference.  Amor is constantly looking for creative ways to partner with organizations in fulfilling our mission to eradicate physical and spiritual poverty.  It was a great experience to be able to serve the poor in our own community. Now, if you go to downtown San Diego, there’s a great chance you’ll see Amor Ministries being represented!

I’m sure you have heard about the devastation that occurred yesterday and continues to occur in Japan.  While searching for news on the effects of the earthquake and tsunami around the world, we came across MSNBC’s photo journal of the devastation. We would like to invite you to look at the images on the link below and pray for the people you see in the images. Join us in prayer.

MSNBC Photo Journal of Japan’s Earthquake and the Tsunami that Followed

We are extremely thankful to say that Amor’s operations have not been directly effected by the tsunami. All of our Amor Mission Trip Participants, Ministry Locations, Team Members, and the like have not been effected by the tsunami advisories we had here in San Diego. Thank you for those of you that were concerned and said prayers for us.  As the San Diego Union Tribune put it, “[the] tsunami produced measly waves in [San Diego].”

It may seem a bit early for spring to be here…but for all of us at Amor, it begins today!  Over the next two weeks, we have a lot of groups coming to serve with Amor!  We are so pumped!  Let us show you why…

11 Team Members – Serving with groups in the San Carlos Apache Reservation

2 Team Members – Serving with groups in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico

6 Team Members – Working with EMI to plan our next steps in developing our Cancun location (learn more about that here)

1 Team Member – Serving with groups in Tijuana, Mexico

That leaves just 8 Team Members at the offices (Global Headquarters as we like to call it) in San Diego!

Like we said, we are stoked to get busy building a lot of homes!!!  Can’t wait for the rest of spring…and summer!