When YL became MY life

YL Camp 2013 (Me, Jane, and Anabel)

I got a message on Facebook chat from my friend Jane the other day saying she was excited to make cookies with me and when am I coming back so we can hang out again?  It made my day.  Jane changed my life.  Before I met Jane and before we baked a bunch of delicious cookies together, I was just a body taking up space at Young Life meetings in Ecuador.  Before I met Jane, I was trying to figure out how the heck I was supposed to fit in this YL world.  There are people who absolutely love teenagers; want to be with them, want to talk to them, want to hang out with them.  They have this passion and desire to see teenagers, specifically, know and live for Christ.  That person is Ivan, my fiancé.  Which is why it makes perfect sense that he is now the Director of YL Ecuador because it is his heart and passion.  So, when I went to visit him this past summer, it was a sink-or-swim kind of experience for me.  Do I decide to join him and enter into this teenager-filled world or not?  The YL slogan is "You were made for this." and there were times (especially when I was pulled up front on a Club night to do a ridiculous skit or game in front of everyone) where I thought I am definitely NOT made for this!  Slowly, I started to understand the components of YL.  Club is a chaotic night full of fun but with a purpose to gain the opportunity to share the message of Jesus Christ.  (I volunteered to bring/make the snack each week so I couldn't be asked to lead the games or participate in the skit.  Shameful, but true).  Ivan would point out how kids came but more importantly how leaders make an effort to connect to them, talk to them, and make them feel included and loved.  Which brings me to Jane.  YL put together a day excursion, hiking through the rainforest to swim in a river.  There was a good number of teens and leaders who went.  I fell in the river at the first crossing point, got completely soaked...everyone got a good chuckle at the foreigner failing on a simple hike.  I'm thinking, I am so NOT made for this!  We settled at a little spot where people could sit on rocks, play soccer in the sand, tube down the river, or jump from the cliff into the water.  Girls played in the sand, a pick-up game of soccer began, several set off with inner tubes in hand.  Everyone seemed to fall into their little groups.  Everyone except the clumsy "gringa" (that's me) and a girl named Jane. Jane came to the river dressed completely covered from head to toe in mostly black, which is pretty crazy since it's hot and we are planning to swim.  You can barely see her eyes or her face because she likes to keep her dark hair covering it.  She identifies herself as an "emo" and never smiles in group pictures.  She was sitting on a rock, alone, writing furiously in a notebook.  I went up to her and tried to get her to join one of the other groups with me.  Fail.  So, instead I sat down next to her on a rock and asked her what she was writing.  Turned out, she was writing lyrics to a song by one of her favorite bands, Black Veil Brides.  Here's the crazy part, the band is based in the USA and so all of their lyrics are in English and she was working on translating them to Spanish.  Hey, that's something that I'm actually good at!  So, we started chatting, I worked on lyrics with her, and we were buddies for the rest of the day.  When we got back from the excursion and we were walking kids home, we found out that she actually lived one block from where I was staying!  So I invited her to come over some afternoon and bake cookies with me.  She did.  We baked.  We talked.  We listened to Black Veil Bride music, which is so NOT my style of music.  Something happened in this process.  I started to love being with teenagers.  I started to look for her at Club because I wanted to know how she was doing.  I started to yell her name across the street if I saw her walking so I could wave and say hello.  I started to think, I was made for this!  Jane went to YL Camp.  She meets with a YL leader and they talk about God and what it means to have a relationship with Him.  I don't know exactly where her walk is with the Lord, but what I do know is that I have a burden on my heart now for her.  I care about whether she knows she is loved by the Creator of the universe.  I've seen the scars and marks on her arm from countless cutting and I want her to know so desperately that we are healed by Jesus' stripes and scars so she doesn't need to cut herself anymore.  When I think about YL Ecuador, I see her face (hair covering her eyes and all!) and I can't wait to get back so we can bake some more cookies!  I thought I needed to be someone I wasn't in order to find my place within YL, but God really taught me that I just need to be me. 

Psalm 139:16 (The Message)

You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.