Service Trips
Goal of Service Trips
TKA takes seriously our mandate to instill in our students a love for serving others. Each spring, TKA offers a variety of experiences to students, striving for a mix of local, domestic, and international trips. These experiences give students the opportunities to use their skills and talents to serve in the name of Jesus Christ, whether by building homes or playing with children.. Our flagship trip is to Tecate, Mexico, where we have been serving for twenty-eight years and have built nearly 400 homes.
Our vision is that each of our students receives a well-rounded education, and becomes a change agent in the world who serves and loves others in the name of Christ. For TKA, the goal of service is not to go somewhere and simply perform a service, but rather to engage in the full experience of service and to return having been transformed into a servant leader for life.
Below are service trips that have been organized by TKA. Some trips are planned annually, and others are rotated periodically.
Service Trip Safety Guidelines
The King's Academy is continually monitoring threats and concerns that may affect the welfare of students on service trips. We regularly check the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization for health updates and the U.S. State Department for travel advisories. At no time will we organize a trip with a travel advisory to a country that exceeds a Level 2 warning. We are also in contact with partner organizations in our planned service locations. If at any point we, or the partnering organization, deem travel unsafe, we will not hesitate to modify our plans or call off travel to that area. For questions, contact Rob Starke, Campus Pastor, at x4270
- Junior High Service
- Belize
- Brazil
- Costa Rica
- Dominican Republic
- East Palo Alto
- Ecuador
- Guatemala
- India
- Kentucky
- Los Angeles
- Malawi
- Guadalajara, Mexico
- Tecate, Mexico
- Paradise, CA
- Philippines
- San Miguel, CA
- Silicon Valley
- Spain
- Sunnyvale, CA
Junior High Service
Mission
The mission of Junior High Service is to awaken in students an interest and a passion for helping others by exposing them to a variety of service opportunities. We believe that through these experiences they will begin to find their purpose, develop their gifts, and discover how they too can make a difference.
Goals:
- To offer a local service opportunity off-campus for a small group of junior
high students each semester. For example, 20 students volunteering on a Saturday at a local soup kitchen. - To offer a service project for all junior high students during the weeks prior to the school's high school service trips. This project would be held during the three service group meetings built into the school schedule, and not during service week itself.
Belize
Information
Mission
The Belize Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be hosted by PathLight International, a Christian organization committed to the transformation of Belize through faith and learning. We will be the hands and feet of Jesus while participating in local community projects, and we will experience the adventure of learning about God’s creation in the rain forest.
Goals
- Sharing the love of Christ and building relationships with underserved Belizean children and their families.
- Repairing elementary school classrooms, rainwater collection systems, additional community projects as needed.
- Experiencing the diversity of God’s creation in the rain forest and conducting a hands-on science day camp at Jaguar Creek for local elementary students
Brazil
Information
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Mission
The Brazil Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be partnering with Hope Unlimited, an organization dedicated to rescuing street children in Brazil. Our team will minister to the spiritual needs of these children through various planned programs, games, activities, and arts and crafts. We will also minister to the local staff and community by leading workshops, having a time of sharing and prayer, and providing facilities enhancements while sharing the gospel.
Goals
We desire our students to grow in their own faith as they share the gospel and learn to trust God with the process of “planting.” They will have the opportunity to witness God’s redemptive power and healing work in the lives of the broken as they experience first-hand how much God loves each precious life. By bridging vast differences and distances, our students will come to appreciate what may be unfamiliar and begin to see God’s handiwork in everything, everywhere.
Costa Rica
Information
Mission
TKA junior and senior students are invited to apply to be a part of the Costa Rica Servant Trip. We are partnering up with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) to serve the people in and around the city of San Jose, Costa Rica. We plan on visiting an orphanage and an elderly care facility, ministering to the homeless, partaking in YWAM’s VBS ministry, distributing Bibles to those in the community,participating in the Soccer Ministry and helping out with projects around the base.
Jesus states in Matthew 25:40: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” By using the gifts and talents given to us through Christ, we will strive to be the hands and feet of Jesus, serving those in need. We will be going beyond our comfort zone and giving away our time to see how God will move in us, and through us. Our goal is to participate in a rich array of ministry opportunities. By doing so we believe that we can maximize the chances that God will speak to individuals in life-changing ways.
Goals
- Minister to those in Costa Rica who need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ through the avenues of multiple ministry opportunities.
- Develop an awareness of the current issues faced by the impoverished around the world.
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Introduce the students to the vision and work of YWAM, so that they may consider a future in ministry whether short term or long term.
Dominican Republic
Information
Mission
The Dominican Republic Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be partnering with the Manny Mota Foundation, an organization dedicated to serving the local community of El Tamarindo, specifically focusing on their youth. Our team will minister to the spiritual and emotional needs of these children through various planned games, activities, and crafts. We will also minister to two local private Christian schools by putting on a program that highlights a biblical message.
Goals
The goal for this trip would be for our TKA students to learn how to love without boundaries. We want our students to develop a deeper appreciation for the blessings God has given them and learn how they can use their skills and talents to love on one another, both Dominican and in their community.
What Service Looks Like in the DR
East Palo Alto
Information
Mission
The EPA Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be working with three ministry organizations in East Palo Alto and Belle Haven. EPAMade seeks to empower single mothers through employment and job coaching that operates a thrift store in Menlo Park. Bayshore Christian Ministries’ mission is to cause the youth to grow spiritually, gain life skills, and develop as leaders so they have hope and a future. New Creation Home Ministries provides safe and secure homes to young mothers and their children while they foster long term independence through academic, parental, vocational and social growth opportunities.
Goals
- To serve with love while learning about economic, educational and societal injustices.
- To give the students the opportunity to grow in their personal relationship with God and mature in their Christian faith as they serve people in our community
- To help students create local contacts for continued local service and gain a passion and vision for local missions.
Ecuador
Information
Mission
The Ecuador Service Trip is open to TKA juniors, and seniors. We will be working with an organization called Inca Link to bring the message and experience of the gospel to unreached communities in the Amazon Basin of Eastern Ecuador. We will prepare to minister in a variety of ways, including: construction, sports evangelism with teens, teaching English, VBS with children, worship and teaching among the jungle communities.
Goals
- To serve, love, and share the gospel cross-culturally with the Ecuadorian people.
- To augment the ministry of the full-time missionaries based in Huaticocha, Ecuador.
- To encourage the local churches where they exist.
- To help students gain a passion and vision for missions.
Guatemala
Information
Mission
The Guatemala Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be working at an orphanage in Guatemala City to bring the message of the gospel and the love of God to a group of 30 children between the ages of 5 to 20 years old. We will prepare to minister in a variety of ways, including: maintenance projects at the orphanage, VBS with children, worship and teaching among the children in the orphanage as well as visiting a Pediatric Cancer Hospital, Home for children with disabilities, and a Women’s nursing home.
Goals
- To serve, love, and share the gospel cross-culturally with the Guatemalan people.
- To support the ministry in the orphanage with the children and workers.
- To bring the good news of our Lord Jesus to those in need.
- To give the students the opportunity to grow in their personal relationship with God and mature in their Christian faith as they serve the Guatemalan people.
India
Information
Mission
The India Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be partnering with First Love International, an organization devoted to providing housing, necessities, and education to orphan children. Our team will minister to the spiritual needs of these children through various VBS programs, games, activities, and arts and crafts. We may have the opportunity to minister to the local community and tea plantation villages by leading VBS, outreach programs, and providing facilities enhancements while sharing the gospel.
Goals
We desire our students to grow in faith as they share the gospel and learn to trust God in the countryside of India. Students will gain irreplaceable experience in learning how to love others regardless of lifestyle, culture, or status. They will have the opportunity to witness God’s redemptive power and healing work in the lives of outcasts as they experience first-hand how much God loves each precious life. By bridging vast differences and distances, our students will come to appreciate what may be unfamiliar and begin to see God’s handiwork in everything, everywhere.
Kentucky
Information
Mission
All interested juniors and seniors are encouraged to apply for the Kentucky Service Trip. Up to 30 inspired and qualified students, along with 12 adults, will fly to Kentucky and partner with the Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) to assist families living in poverty in the eastern part of the state. We will travel in groups of 7 each day (2 adults and 5 students) from our camp to do construction projects, landscaping, painting, cleaning; anything to proactively help those families in needs.
Goals
We want to deepen our personal relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through the process of serving. We also desire to draw closer to one another in Christ. With those two precepts as a foundation for our ministry, we feel we can truly bless those we meet and be genuinely blessed as well. This is an amazing opportunity to serve the gentle, genuine people of Kentucky.
Los Angeles
Information
Mission
The Los Angeles Service Trip works through an organization called Union Rescue Mission, a Christian organization dedicated to helping the homeless. As a team, The King’s Academy will partner with URM to serve the needs of inner-city communities, both materially and spiritually. This can take on any number of forms, but generally, the types of needs remain fairly consistent—all people need food, water, clothing, and Jesus— URM is committed to life transformational ministry through the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt about it—the depraved landscape of the inner city is significantly different from most other service trip destinations. But God is still powerfully at work there. Nineveh, that great city of many years ago, was turned completely around by the eventual obedience of just one person—Jonah—fulfilling his calling to bring God’s word to the city. Los Angeles is another great city where God’s message is truly needed today, and where even one person from TKA can help share that Good News.
Goals
The L.A. Service Trip team of juniors and seniors will provide service to inner-city residents alongside other leaders and participants. Members will likely experience settings that may be uncomfortable, and they may be around others who may make them feel uncomfortable. This is not an opportunity for team members to compare levels of bravado, but to bring love and compassion where there has been mostly emptiness and disdain. Team members will be challenged to grow new eyes for service, new ears for compassion, new thoughts for responding, and new hearts for people living in the city.
Malawi
Information
Mission
TKA juniors and seniors are invited to apply to be part of the Malawi Servant Trip. We will be partnering with Malawi Children’s Mission in Blantyre, Malawi. We will spend time with approximately 150 orphans from three local villages helping in the feeding center, playing with the children, teaching God’s Word and tutoring in academic subjects. We will also be visiting a local village having the opportunity to interact with the local people and find out about their lives. Additionally, we will visit the Queen Elizabeth State Hospital to bring gifts to those who are extremely ill and pray with them.
Goals
Scripture speaks about God’s heart for those who are oppressed. We have a wonderful opportunity to see God’s heart for the poor and BE the hands and feet of Jesus in a very practical way. This trip enables our students to truly see the vast difference between the first and third world and to develop a global awareness which becomes integral to who they are, and which God uses to motivate and call them to serve Him.
All past trips have been transformational in the lives of the students and adults that participated. We were stretched out of our comfort zones, served in a community where smiles and play were the main means of communication, we have interacted in discussions with other high school students about world issues, prayed alongside the ill and dying in hospital, learned to pray for a hurting world, laughed endlessly on our long bus rides, squealed at bugs and became a unified team.
Guadalajara, Mexico
Information
Mission
This team, comprised of juniors and seniors, will be ministering to orphan, abused, and abandoned children at a boy’s home in Ixtlahuacan called Hope House. The home is an outreach program of Shepherd’s Heart Ministries, a registered non-profit organization based in Tennessee. Our hosts are long-term missionaries serving in Mexico. The team will be working on building and maintenance projects at the home, leading a Vacation Bible School (VBS) program, and running an afternoon sports camp for the boys at the home.
Goals
By serving as the hands and feet of God, we will strive to bring joy into the lives of the orphans at Hope House. We will work to improve the property, to provide the boys with better physical comforts, but we know the most important goal is to build a relationship with each boy and share God’s love with him. We want the boys to know that they are loved, prayed for, and accepted for who they are. Through this service trip, participating TKA students and staff will see a culture and people in need and be changed to see more clearly through Jesus’ eyes.
Tecate, Mexico
Tecate Information
Tecate Ministry Team Information
Mission
All TKA high school students are invited to attend the Mexico Service Trip. We will build homes, FROM THE GROUND UP, for Mexican families on the outskirts of Tecate, Mexico. We will also play with the neighborhood children, meet their parents, hold "Kids Club" (VBS) for the children, and have fun while being part of a hard-working team. Our host, Sergio Gomez, heads the non-profit organization, Baja Vision Ministries, which helps identify the families in need of homes. We will also hold “Kids Club” (VBS) for the children, offer a Health Outreach for the women, and run soccer camps for the youth while partnering with a local church.
Goals
By serving God with all that we have, we endeavor to make a significant difference in fulfilling the physical and spiritual needs of those in Tecate. We want to catch vision for service and bring it back to our homes, to school, and to work. This trip will be faith-increasing and life-changing for our students.
Paradise, CA
Information
Mission
TKA Junior and Senior students are invited to apply to be a part of the 2020 Paradise, California Service Trip. We are partnering with Hope Church (currently located in Chico, CA) to serve the people in and around the city of Paradise, California. This city was devastated by the Camp Fire of 2018. The pastor of Hope Church of Paradise, Stan Freitas, is involved with community leaders and has been discussing plans to rebuild. A government official describing the devastation said, “We can only recover if schools and faith communities make the way.” We plan to help rebuild some elementary school classrooms, and if allowed at that time, assist in rebuilding some of Hope Church. We may have the opportunity to help with the annual community fundraiser sponsored by Hope Church called “Rock the Ridge.” This could involve a VBS-type of program for elementary age students. Since FEMA is still on the ground in Paradise, it is difficult at this time to be more specific about our plan. We will update as new information is known.
Jesus states in Matthew 25:40: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you do for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Our goal is to participate in a rich array of ministry opportunities. By doing so we believe that we can maximize the chances that God will speak to individuals in life-changing ways.
Goals
- Opportunity to bring hope, practical help, spiritual encouragement, and prayer to the community.
- Develop an awareness of the current issues faced by communities that have survived a natural disaster.
- Expose the Juniors and Seniors to the fact they can make a difference in a community. Praying their faith would be stretched and have life-changing spiritual dialogue regarding God’s will, i.e., the rain falling on the just and the unjust, (or in this case…fire).
- That the students and the town of Paradise would experience the love of Jesus through us using our hands and feet to serve!
Philippines
Information
Mission
The Philippines Service Trip will take place in two different cities on the island of Luzon called Binmaley and Olongapo. The team will partner with Binmaley Foursquare church in Binmaley, Pangasinan and New Covenant Church in Olongapo city. Both of these areas offer opportunities to serve in a variety of capacities to meet physical and spiritual needs of the Filipino people. These areas demonstrate a stark contrast between the extremely wealthy and those who are very poor. There is no middle class. The primary outreach of the trip will be to serve the poor areas of the Philippines. The team will take part in things like food distribution, Children’s VBS, clothing distribution, going to a school to hand out gospel tracts and worshipping with other believers in more remote areas that cannot come to church. Just as when Jesus commissioned Peter to love Him by "Feeding sheep", students on the Philippines trip will get the opportunity to feed those in need both physically and spiritually.
Goals
The Philippines team will provide needed sustenance to the poor in the Philippines. Members of the team will have some of their limits tested as the climate and conditions are not as comfortable as they are used to in the United States. In these conditions, students will see how many people in this world live and "thrive" (as one team member from a previous year put it) despite having very little material wealth. Team members will have the opportunity to grow closer to God by observing and living around the conditions that many of the Filipino people live in every day of their lives. Students will develop a heart for the poor and understand God’s compassion for the poor. The team will also live out Matthew 25:39-41 and through scripture study and prayer, learn that what they do for the "least" of these, they do unto the Lord. Also, the students will be culturally immersed in the way of life of the Filipino people by interacting with the locals (going to the market to buy our food, cooking alongside of them, etc.).
San Miguel, CA
Information
Mission
The San Miguel Elementary School Service Week is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be working with children from kindergarten to 5th grade. We will prepare to minister in a variety of ways including: helping directly in the classrooms, facilitating sports activities, and leading a school assembly. We will have the opportunity to continue building our partnership with San Miguel School and creating relationships with our community.
Goals
- To serve and love our local community.
- To give the students the opportunity to grow in their personal relationship with God and mature in their Christian faith as they serve people in our community
- To connect with families that live in our neighborhood.
- To help students create local contacts for continued local service and gain a passion and vision for local missions.
Silicon Valley
Information
Mission
The Silicon Valley Cityteam Service Week is open to TKA juniors and seniors. Cityteam is a Christian nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming the lives of individuals, families, and communities with physical and spiritual needs. We will be working with the City Team San Francisco and Oakland centers, where we will minister to and serve the homeless community. Activities include anything from work projects to food and hygiene kit distribution.
Goals
- To serve, love, and share the gospel with our surrounding communities.
- To connect and minister to people struggling with poverty, homelessness, and addiction.
- To help students create local contacts for continued local service and gain a passion and vision for local missions.
Spain
Information
Mission
The Spain Service Trip is open to TKA juniors and seniors. We will be serving with Colegio Alpha and Omega School in Denia. Colegio is the only protestant school in Spain serving the native population and has been doing so since 1961. We will be working with students at the school, helping them with their English, sharing the Gospel with the non-believers and encouraging our brothers and sisters in the faith.
Goals
- Help students of Colegio to further develop their English skills.
- Share the Gospel to the 80% of students who do not yet believe.
- Encourage the staff and students who are believers in a country that is spiritually dead.
- Complete at least one labor project for the school.
Sunnyvale, CA
Information
Mission
Reach Potential Movement (RPM) is a community that recognizes that even in the high tech center of the Silicon Valley, where there is tremendous wealth and resource, there is still much need all around us. Many are surprised to learn that nearly 40% of children in Sunnyvale and Mountain View public schools qualify for free or reduced lunch and live below the poverty line. At RPM, we desire to bring together our community to help under-resourced kids reach their highest potential.
During TKA's service week, a team of students and staff will minister to the low-income families of Sunnyvale by offering a camp for their children while they are on spring break. The Vacation Bible School camp will include sports, cooking,and crafts.
