The Toddler and The Baby in a Manger

I love Christmas season. It has always played an important part in my family life. We decorated our house the last weekend of November, making it toddler-proof as much as we could. As the days went by, I caught David as he was trying to reach for the Nativity scene on top of the piano. Since the pieces aren’t breakable, I just watched, thinking that, being the rural boy he is, he was going to play with the sheep – something so familiar and ordinary to him.

Part of Our Nativity Scene

However, as I watched closely, he just grabbed the baby figure, and brought it close to Mary. I asked, “what are you doing?” and he replied, “tetita”. That’s his word for nursing. He added, “baby eat.” I thought that was cute, and left him playing. After a while, I returned, and asked “did the baby eat?” David replied, “otro lado.” The other side. Of course, I thought. A baby needs to eat his fill.

Innocent and funny as that interaction seemed, the image stayed with me throughout the day. I had never thought of Jesus as a nursing baby. However, to David, Jesus is a baby, and thus can relate so well… he being nursing baby himself. So, naturally, his first thought when seeing the baby in a manger was to pick that baby up, and bring him to his momma’s breast.

Not the case with this breastfeeding mama.

David and Mama during a nursing session

This has been a hard year for me. No big tragedy. No big disaster. It’s just been the constant day to day battles that half the time feel like I’ve lost – the kid who throws tantrums, the baby who still wakes up in the middle of the night, the kid who now is afraid of the dark, the messy floor after every single meal, the overflowing never-ending to do list. It seems that on a constant basis somebody needs something from me. I have no moments to myself.

And more often than not, I have felt like Christ and I don’t have much in common these days. How can I relate to the one who made blind men see, and the lame walk, the one who came back from the dead? Such power and glory! I often feel powerless and by no means have my act together. But David made me rethink this mystery – Who is this Immanuel, God with us, Word made flesh? Who is this God who decided to enter the world as one of us breastfeeding babies?

 “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving had special meaning for Rebeca and me this year. At the beginning of November our two-year old David was diagnosed with Kawasaki disease, which is a rare condition which causes swelling of the blood vessels, fever, rash, and achy/swollen joints, among other things. It is never fun to see someone you love suffering, but it is especially hard when it is a small child who is normally so full of life and energy. Thankfully we were in the US. We saw the hand of the Lord caring for us in so many ways. His fever started the day after we flew in from the Dominican Republic. If David had already had a fever when we flew in, we might have had an interesting time at JFK - one of the airports in the middle of the Ebola scare. The first day of his fever we were with one of our good friends who is an experienced pediatrician. He examined him then and found no reason for alarm as David only had common flu symptoms at that point. But more importantly we were on the radar of our de-facto pediatrician in the US, who was the one who first diagnosed this as Kawasaki.

We are very thankful that we were not in the DR when this happened. One of the common viruses affecting people here right now is Chikungunya, which causes fever, joint pain, and rash like Kawasaki, yet Chikungunya is mostly just uncomfortable. You just ride it out and treat the symptoms. That approach with Kawasaki can be fatal.

We are also thankful that my parents live only a few minutes from a world-class children's hospital, thankful for family and friends around us while David was there, and most of all, thankful to see him bounce back quickly after treatment. Seeing him healthy, energetic, and enthusiastically exploring his world has made us realize just how sick he was and the difference has really made us appreciate more the life of our beautiful son. This has also made us more sensitive to those around us who are suffering.

We think that David is out of the woods, but the statistic that Kawasaki is still fatal to 0.17% of kids who receive treatment is not comforting. We continue to pray that his six-week echo cardiogram will be clean and that the necessary aspirin regimen until then will not open the door to Reye's syndrome. And we try to appreciate every day we have with our beloved, fun-loving son. There are moments with two-year-olds that are difficult to hold on to that attitude, but most of the time we live in thankfulness for the life of David and thankfulness for the hand of God in this process.

Camp 1 Pictures

Below are some of our favorite pics from the first outreach camp of summer 2014.

Impact on the Community

My role with Young Life is one of equipping others to reach teenagers for Jesus. I love hearing stories from those I help equip about the impact that Young Life is having in their communities. In a pre-camp meeting, we were sharing about how things were going, and Roberto told the following story about how he had seen God at work the past week. There were two boys who wanted to come to camp, but didn't have the money. Roberto said he would help them sell doughnuts to earn money for camp. All day long they walked the streets of La Vega selling doughnuts. But when they told people why they were selling them, great conversations would occur. Many people who had no desire to eat a doughnut would buy two or three and give them to their friends. After a full day of this, one of the boys remarked that there were so many people they had met during the day who lived without hope. These two kids may not yet have a relationship with the Lord, but they understand the fundamental need we all have for hope.

Roberto Martinez

At the end of the day, Roberto went to the barber shop to get a haircut before going to camp. His barber told him that he had seen him with the two boys that day and wondered why he would spend time with them. Roberto explained his work with Young Life, and his barber told him through tears that if he had had someone like Roberto to walk alongside him in his teenage years, his life would have been different. I was fortunate enough to have not only great parents but other adults that walked alongside me, mentoring and guiding me in ways that my parents could not. Young Life is a relational ministry. We love encouraging the Robertos of this world to build relationships with adolescents who badly need an adult friend to point them in the right direction.

Outreach Camp Schedule

Some of our supporters like to see the camp schedule. Some pray for key elements, others just like to know more about what camps look like. Below is a schedule for this summer's outreach camps at Pico Escondido.

Groups love Pico Escondido

Pico Escondido hosts more than Young Life groups. We have tons of churches and other Christian groups from the Dominican Republic who want a great place for their retreat or camp. Here is what Doulos Discovery School & Grace Bible Church of Texas had to say:

Young Life requires each of their camps to bring in enough revenue to cover the costs of operations. We will have more than 25 non-Young Life groups stay at Pico this year. This allows us to keep costs very low for Vida Joven activities, charging them less than what it really costs. The outside user groups are happy because we provide them with a top-notch facility at a reasonable cost, so everyone wins.

Tea Cups And A Coffee Carafe

The cup my great-grandma used to serve cafe con leche to mom

One of the memories that has stayed with me throughout life is my mom yelling at a guy unloading things from a bus rack in the border between Honduras and Guatemala. It's January of 1987; I am six. It's late afternoon, getting dark, and we have traveled a long way from Guatemala City. The trip had been postponed for days, because our car was broken, but it had finally been fixed. We were ready to move to Tegucigalpa, since my dad had been appointed pastor at a church in the city. As we were leaving, I remember carrying one of my most valuable possessions with me - a little book with a Mary Poppins story and the accompanying 45 rpm disc. I carefully set the record in the back of the car, so I wouldn't accidentally break it. We said our goodbyes. My grandparents, aunts and uncles were waving, and crying, as we were getting ready to drive away for the next ten hours to the new country that was to become our own.