OUR STORY
How Love In Action International Ministries Began
Founders of Love in Action International Ministries, Gary and Jerri Zimmerman, have been involved in overseas missions since 1974 when they were missionaries in Costa Rica working at a seminary where students from Latin America were enrolled. Upon returning to the States, Gary and Jerri continued their calling and founded Love in Action in 1986—a ministry through their church—sending short-term teams to assist other ministries in various countries. In 1998, they expanded the name to Love in Action International Ministries, established the ministry as a
non-profit, and continued to send short-term teams. In 2004, Gary and Jerri lost their daughter Andrea to cancer. Several years before her diagnosis they felt God’s leading to begin a ministry for children. Throughout Andrea’s battle with cancer, the believers in Bolivia had prayed for her.
Andrea
When they heard of her passing, they offered Love in Action International Ministries a two-and-a-half-acre property. They knew then that God had provided the property for the purpose of establishing a Home to rescue children in Bolivia.
The groundbreaking for the first orphanage in Guayaramerín, Bolivia took place in 2005. Surveying and construction began in June of 2006 and the first of Andrea’s Homes of Hope and Joy opened on June 14, 2008.
Since that date, multiple teams of volunteers have traveled to Bolivia to work alongside the local people to construct buildings and minister to the children who have been brought into a home of hope and joy.
In addition to Andrea’s Home, a Christian school has been established on the campus for kindergarten through sixth grade. Credentialed teachers provide a well-rounded education which includes the basic subjects plus Christian education, music, choir and band, physical education, computer, English as a second language, and arts and crafts. Andrea’s Home also owns 230 acres where a
farm is being established.