El Rancho Del Rey was founded in 1956 by the husband and wife missionary team of Hank and Anne Moller. Since then, nearly 1,000 “at risk” boys from poor, broken and dysfunctional families have found a home here.  Most of the boys who have come to El Rancho over the years were previously living “on the streets” by their wits, vulnerable, abused, and in serious danger of being recruited into the violent drug gangs operating along the border region with the United States.  The mission is located 150 miles south Laredo, Texas, near Monterrey, Mexico, in a valley cradled between two dramatic ranges of the Sierra Madre Mountains.

The purpose of El Rancho Del Rey is to give children a place they can feel safe and at home while meeting their spiritual, physical and mental needs. For the past 54 years, the hurting and needy children of broken families have come through El Rancho and heard the Good News of Jesus and His Love. Many go on to serve the Lord in different parts of the country as pastors, while most stop the broken-home-cycle to become loving, responsible husbands and caring fathers.

Greenwoods Community Church has helped to support El Rancho del Rey since the late 1960’s.  For the past several years we have been sending teams of short-term missionaries to El Rancho to provide support with a variety of projects and programs.  On all of our trips we have been able to take some of our teenagers with us, who gain an experience like no other. They get to witness firsthand how the Holy Spirit is at work through El Rancho to give young boys a hope where they had none. In the process, our young people get to experience a language, culture and country in a way which they might never have been able to otherwise.  Many of them have said they will never be the same.  El Rancho has changed them in many of the same ways the boys there have been changed by the work of the Lord in this wonderful place. For the complete history of El Rancho Del Rey written by co-founder Anne Moller, click on this link:  No Way Places