Rebeca's Trip to the YL Central America Leadership Retreat

YL Central America Leadership Team

Fifteen adults, four kids, one infant, all under one roof as the Central American regional team gets together in San Jose, Costa Rica for five days. We got together Saturday night coming from each country in Central America where we have Young Life ministry (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama) to be together for a time of casting vision, praying together, getting some training, and sharing what's in our hearts.

Our son David and I got on a plane Friday afternoon (this being David's 13th flight!) and got to San Jose at about 7pm. My cousin Debora was waiting for us, and we spent the night at my cousin Esteban's house. Saturday morning was good and relaxing, just a great time to unwind, let David play around with the dog, and then drove to my aunt's house for lunch. Then they took David and me to the house of Kevin Suwyn (Central America regional director) for the beginning of the retreat.

We had been praying and planning this time for a couple months now. We want to create spaces and times so we can share as a team and encourage each other, as often it feels like we are all alone in our areas, sometimes bearing heavy burdens. We started with worship and sharing what anxieties we'd left behind. My heart felt heavy as we went around the circle: an aunt wrongly accused of drug trafficking now in jail, awaiting trial, possibly facing 3-5 years of prison. A brother-in-law who that morning had fell off a roof, now paralyzed for life, never to leave the hospital again. Children and families left behind for a week. A son struggling with school. A brother, moving back home with his family of four. And there we were, opening our hearts with each other because this is the place where we can do it...

And as we shared what were the things we wanted to be able to trust God with, we also shared the things that we were so thankful for: A new opportunity to work with both of the main gangs in one of the countries, as a family of missionaries just moved into the neighborhood; God's provision throughout the year. Hollman, team leader in Nicaragua shared the story of one of the girls impacted by Young Life - a girl whose family problems revolved about how to get so and so out of jail; a life marked with violence, and not one good example to follow; a Young Life leader entering her life and starting a friendship, introducing her to Jesus. Her life has been transformed and now she has two spiritual daughters herself. I got goosebumps as Hollman said, "I see Young Life shaking the very basis of Nicaragua. It won't be easy, even dangerous... but we wanna see thousands of kids come to Christ."

We finished last night with some worship time and prayer. Looking forward to another day!

Raffy gets married

 

On Saturday night, Rafael Figueroa got married to his girlfriend Genesis. Rafael (Raffy) is Pico Escondido's guest services coordinator. This was a fun event, with sharply dressed people...

sharply dressed babies...

legal formalities... 

and the random prankster that seems to always be in every Young Life crowd and event.

Don't worry! He got up a few seconds later. It was all a joke, but the bride was as surprised as everyone else.

Overall, it was a fun event - a great celebration of these two friends' union.

Young Life in Latin America

As Rebeca and I have both been involved in Young Life's ministry in Latin America for several years, we thought you might like to learn more about it. Following is a great video they produced a couple of years ago. Some of it is shot at Pico Escondido, and Rebeca is in it, filmed while she was still on staff in Guatemala.

Young Life Latin America Video

Spring 2013 Work Teams

Preparing re-bar for guardrail project

Spring is a lot of fun at Pico Escondido. We have friends from all over the US come help us improve camp. This Spring we had seven teams: Michigan College Life, Floyd County (GA) Young Life, Trinity School (Durham, NC), Auburn (AL) YL, NE Grand Rapids (MI) YL, Alger Park Church (MI), and Winston-Salem (NC) YL, as well as a couple of friends from Colorado Springs. One of the challenges working with volunteer teams is not knowing much about their skill set or how hard they will work. This spring we had really hard-working teams that often exceeded our expectations.

Working on the new shop

We had a bunch of projects planned, as we had as many as 75 volunteers working at a time. Our biggest project was construction of a new shop. This will not only improve our maintenance capacity but allows us to move smaller shops out of our main lodge and office buildings to be able to use those spaces in ways that are more compatible with the rest of the building. The current wood shop, located in the main lodge (Cigua) will be converted in the future into additional housing. The current main maintenance shop is located in the building that houses our offices and camp kitchen. This space will be converted into an office for Vida Joven (YL field ministry in the DR).

Pouring the foundation for the kitchen extension.

Our kitchen is much better than it was a few years ago, but as we have added beds in the past two years, we needed to expand our food prep area to ensure we could provide food at the levels of quality, quantity, and hygiene that we desire. This extension will add about 150 square feet of space, which will include an additional counter for food prep and space for an ice maker.

Guardrail along road to gym

Screening sand for making mortar for guardrail project.

The guardrail project will not only keep vehicles safer as they drive down toward the gym and new cabins, but will also be a beautiful decorative touch and include lights for better getting around camp at night.

Improving camp landscaping

 One area in which work teams have consistently helped us is our landscaping. We are only able to have one full-time landscaper on staff. He is kept very busy mowing, raking and doing other landscaping maintenance. He has very little time for projects to upgrade our landscaping. Teams are wonderful help in this area. This Spring the main project was the garden in front of our offices. It looks wonderful!

Thinning out trees

Another great way in which work teams have helped us in the past couple of years has been thinning out trees. We planted thousands of trees in the early years of Pico Escondido. Most of those trees survived and are nice, but they block the views around camp and the main species we planted has a short lifespan in these rainy mountains. We removed around 30 trees this spring. We will later plant new trees of different species which are more strategically placed to protect our beautiful vistas.

Thank you, Spring 2013 work teams!

How do I take a work team to Pico Escondido?

First, take a look at this video about serving at Pico Escondido.

Taking a work team to Pico Escondido is probably the easiest international trip you can make. Young Life has a program called Young Life Expeditions which helps people do short-term service trips, both domestically and internationally. If you tell YLX that you want to do a trip to the Dominican Republic, they will give you information about how to get started, what you will need, guidance with fundraising, and help with flight reservations if you desire. As you get closer to your trip date and want to refine details, you will communicate directly with Pico staff. We will take care of all logistics in country, from food, lodging, and ground transportation, to projects, information about local ministry, and entertainment. 

For more information, go to Pico's US website. We look forward to having you come see us!

David is growing

 

Life as a parent has been a whirlwind! David is a great kid. We are in awe of the mystery of life and the wonder of the development of children. He began to crawl a couple of weeks ago, so we have been making the house as baby-safe as possible and reasonable.

His favorite passtime now is to crawl over to something he can use to stand up. This chest is one of his favorites. The other is the kitchen table and benches. Below is a short clip of him traversing one of the benches.

In spite of the late nights, greater demands on our time, and uncertainties that come with a new stage of life, we love this child! He is a wonderful, sweet boy who is curious and observant, loves baths, the outdoors, his uncle Sami and his dog.

More videos below if you are interested.





Medium video for computers {smaller videos below if you are viewing on a mobile phone}

 

Smaller video files for viewing on mobile phones:

Trip to Costa Rica

Last week we went to Costa Rica. It was a great trip. The principal reason behind it was to support a big Young Life event in San Jose on March 15th. It was an event which both attracted new kids to the ministry and also gave US donors a glimpse of YL's activities in Costa Rica. About 100 donors attended along with over 700 teenagers from around Costa Rica.

Rebeca was asked to go to be the speaker for club. It is not easy to speak to that many people, especially when they have varied backgrounds and points of view. She did a great job. I (Roy) was asked to go on the trip to help with logistics. There is a great new program in Central America called Camp On Wheels (COW). Since YL cannot afford to have camps in every country, in Central America they have created a huge trailer full of games, adventure equipment, a mobile kitchen, a circus tent, and many other supplies. With this, they can greatly improve the camping experience at facilities the local ministry is able to rent. It is a great idea that is just starting out. In order to get a jump start on use of the COW for this big event, they asked a couple of experienced YL camp guys to come and help set up for this event and begin creating procedures for future use. It was an interesting project, and fun to see it all come together. The team in Costa Rica did a great job and worked really hard. There was a circus tent for club, and inflatable climbing wall (I know - it sounds crazy, but it worked great), carnival games, soccer, basketball, hockey, food, and many other attractions for the kids. They had a blast. At the end of the evening, we gave every student a T-shirt. 700 kids is a lot of people to manage, but we thought we had a good plan: different lines for different sizes, with someone holding a sign in front of each line. But the MC made the mistake of yelling "FREE T-SHIRTS", and a stampede broke out. It was pure chaos for about 15 minutes, but nobody got hurt, every kid got a T-shirt, kids got on the right buses, and a great time was had by all. And they all heard a great presentation of the Gospel. It was a beautiful event.

In addition to a lot of hard work preparing for the event, we were also able to spend a couple of days with Rebeca's aunt, uncle, and cousins who live in San Jose. I had never met two of them, and had spent very limited time with the others, so it was great to get to know them more. We had a great time with them, and even got to hike up a volcano one day. David was a trooper in all of the travel. Rebeca's cousin is a professional photographer, and took some great pictures of us.

David Joshua Clifford Aguilar

On Sunday, August 26th at 8:45 am, our son David Joshua Clifford Aguilar was born. He weighed 7 lbs and was 20 inches long. David is doing very well thankfully. Mother and father could use more sleep, but otherwise things are good. The birth was pretty smooth as births go. Thanks to all for your prayers, gifts, and notes of support and encouragement!

David - an hour after his birth

 

David with exhausted dad in hospital

David and Grandma