AN INTRODUCTION TO LATIN AMERICA MISSION (Canada)

Who are we?

LAM Canada is in its 101st year of Christian ministry. From humble beginnings in 1921, the earliest missionaries saw themselves as servants of Christ ministering in often neglected and impoverished surroundings.

In 2021 we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Latin America Evangelization Crusade in Costa Rica in 1921 by Rev. Harry and Susan Beamish Strachan. They had been working as missionaries with Regions Beyond Missionary Society in the Argentinean pampas. Latin America Mission became the official name of the Mission in 1938 and the Latin America Mission (Canada) was incorporated in 1961. As a Canadian registered charity, we are blessed to celebrate 60 years of ministry and partnership with LAM USA, currently a ministry of the United World Mission in the USA.

In 1925, Toronto native Rev. William Thompson and his wife Pearl May were commissioned to go to Costa Rica as missionaries. It wasn’t long before many others followed suit. From Canada, we were a sending base for evangelists, medical professionals, and technicians.

Our missionary family and ministries continued to grow. We continue to be devoted to equipping and empowering Canadians and Latin Americans to serve the church of Jesus Christ in Latin and in Anglo-America.

Currently, 60 missionaries serve under LAM Canada in 11 countries: throughout North, Central and South America. In Latin America, our missionaries also reach indigenous or pre-Colombian era peoples. In Canada, we are engaged in evangelism, church planting, and bible training reaching out to Spanish and Portuguese speaking immigrants and temporary workers in the farming areas around the Greater Toronto Area. From Canada, we reach out to Portuguese speaking people in Europe and beyond through theological education online.

We remain faithful to the holistic understanding of the Christian mission as represented in the legacy and heritage of the Strachan family and of those who came after them. Their work is a powerful gospel testimony, a legacy we celebrate to this day! We run and support nearly 40 projects through our ministries in various community development initiatives.

We prayerfully reflect on our growth and seek discernment of the Holy Spirit and in the study of Scriptures. We cannot work without a God-given vision to our ministries. We want to continue to reach out to this vast continent with the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and serve the communities where He sends us in all their diversity, challenges, and beauty.

Our work is built on a holistic and biblical understanding of Mission. Partnerships are vital to the communities we serve.

Further information is available on our website at https://lamcanada.ca/about

What are our core values?

We are holistic, biblical, empowering, and involved in development

LAM (Can) is an evangelical community that, motivated by our love for the Lord Jesus Christ and in obedience to His commands, partners with Latin and Canadian churches, organizations and projects to strengthen the body of Christ and advance His kingdom in Latin America and beyond.

How do we work?

Our missionary staff and our partners adhere to Biblical principles.

We minister to the whole person.

Servanthood means empowering national believers and then stepping down from positions when it becomes apparent that key persons have been raised up by the Lord.

We are innovative to the times, seeking to find better ways to communicate and form communities of faith and action.

We are partnership oriented, which means we seek commonality, working in ways that honor the Lord, recognizing the gifting each person brings to God’s work.

We are committed to excellence, seeking to bring out the best in each other.

And we are financially transparent, being recognized by the four C’s for the clarity of our financial reports.

Where do we work?

LAM Works in several countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and Portugal.