Students Build School in Peru

PUCALLPA, PERU – During the summer of 2025, students from the West Houston Seventh-day Adventist Church built classrooms for the Institución Educativa Particular Maranatha School in Pucallpa, Peru. Maranatha Volunteers International, which built the school in 2005, organized this project. Volunteers from Houston comprised the bulk of the work crew, and several joined from other states.

The trip was divided into two sequential stages. Twenty high school students served the first week, followed by a group of 15 college students. The combined efforts of both groups produced stellar results as volunteers laid 60 feet of block walls for the 80-foot classroom suite, completing three of its four classrooms.

Project coordinator Greg Hatch believes mission trips like this one to Peru can make a permanent impact on volunteers. “We want to continue to give our young people an opportunity to begin or continue a life of service and to understand what it means to truly sacrifice yourself for God and to be able to see Him at work on these trips,” Hatch said.

Damian Huerta, a high school student, said he initially signed up for a previous mission trip for the chance to travel, but after that trip, he “got hooked on it.” Huerta wase baptized during his second project. “We consistently worship a lot, so it kind of helps bring me back to reading the Bible,” he explained. “These trips definitely help you connect and be spiritual in a different way. There are no distractions. It’s just your colleagues and the Bible.”

Hatch has rallied young people in Texas to serve for more than a decade. “We decided that we needed to create opportunities for our young people and teachers who couldn’t attend a mission trip other than during the summer,” he recalled. Donors help provide financial support so that students don’t have to bear the full financial burden of these trips, making it possible for the young people to serve year after year. This decision to begin doing summer mission trips was made in 2012, and, apart from a pause during the pandemic, Hatch has led young people on the trip every year since.

By Sidney Needles
Photos by Greg Hatch