About us......

Scott and Jenn Miedema and family 

Leadership Training with Young Life Latin America/Caribbean

What we do: 

The Miedema family lives in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic.  From there Scott serves as the Training Director for Young Life in Latin America and the Caribbean, while Jenn is support staff for the expat missionaries throughout the division. 

     Young Life currently has ministry in 26 countries in the LAC division. In those countries we are working with over 200 national staff, 80 student staff on scholarships with the YL Developing Global Leaders scholarship program and over 1,600 volunteer leaders connected to about 90,000 adolescents. 

   What is Young Life? 

Young Life aims to be truly incarnational ministry with adolescents.  Leaders GO where teenagers are- in their neighborhoods or schools- and build significant friendships with them in order to ‘earn the right to be heard’. They share Jesus through actions, relationship, fun, and adventure with the focus on helping teens experience Jesus’ love, come to know Him and be discipled in faith.  You can learn more at www.younglife.org. 

       Jenn and I's role is to help train and equip leaders for this work and encourage and support them as they invest in teens in their countries. We do this by directly mentoring some leaders as well as developing training plans and planning events to help equip staff and current or potential volunteer leaders. We also use the Dominican Republic as a training center for leaders for other countries to visit, see and experience this kind of ministry in action and learn from it in order to better know how to serve and train others in their home countries. The DR has a long history of great YL ministry and currently has 40 active clubs and over 280 volunteer leaders, most of whom met the Lord through the work of Young Life and now are discipling others, so it’s a great model for other countries to experience and learn from.

Young Life growth in the LA/C division since 2010: God is on the move---

Year	Volunteer Leaders	National Staff	Teens at club weekly	Teens in discipleship weekly	# of TOTAL Ministries	Kids  Impacted
2010	727	108	5,473	2,211	136	21,954
------	---------	-------	-------	--------------	----------	--------
2014	1,139	132	8,815	3,290	204	41,212
----	----	-----	-----	------	------	---------
2017	1,653	210	12,333	7,577	302	89,923

  

     How to support us:  We don't use this blog often, but we do send monthly prayer emails and longer letters a couple times a year. If you'd like to be on our mailing list for either one,  please inquire at smiedema@hotmail.com.    You can also follow us on social media:  Instagram-- jennmiedema or scottmiedema or on Facebook.  

 Giving is possible online at https://giving.younglife.org  or by mailing checks to Young Life, P.O. Box 70065, Prescott, AZ 86304-7065.  In either case, mark your gift for Area XD220 in the memo line to indicate the gift is for our support.  Thanks for considering partnering with us.