With a special guest post from Nicole (VanLoon) Bautista.
If you’ve been around our region for a while, chances are you’ve heard of Nicole (VanLoon) Bautista. While her hometown is Saugatuck, she has spent the last 8+ years serving faithfully in the Caribbean Islands. Nicole has a heart for young people and a deep love for Jesus, and her life reflects that in every way.
As Nicole plants seeds across the islands, we’d love to share her story with you—and also invite you to be part of it. Do you know anyone in the Caribbean? Have connections to churches, schools, families, or youth leaders in those areas? Nicole’s work is all about relationships, and we’re trusting that the Lord might use our network here in Western Great Lakes to help build something beautiful.
Keep reading to learn more about Nicole’s journey and how you might be able to support the next chapter of Young Life in the Caribbean.
Nicole’s Story
“My name is Nicole Bautista Van Loon, and I’m terrible at answering the question, “Where are you from?”
Most of the time I stay pretty literal: I was born and raised in Saugatuck, Michigan, I graduated from UofM, and would consider myself a Michigander to the core.
…But I’ve also spent the last 7.5 years in the Dominican Republic. I moved there to work with Young Life and eventually got married to Jorge and we are now raising our 1 year old daughter Hannah there.
…But I ALSO feel very at home in Kingston, Jamaica because for the past 3 years I’ve been visiting and working to establish and grow Young Life ministry there as well. So all these geographic places hold important space in my heart.
Being “from” and experiencing Young Life in all these places meld together to help me do what I do: bring the DNA of Young Life to new contexts. I do this by recruiting leaders and helping them catch the vision for the “why,” and guiding them in the “how” of bringing Young Life to their schools, neighborhoods, and cities. And because Young Life DNA boils down to “Jesus and kids”, I often find that there are already people who love Jesus and want kids to meet Him in these new places. It’s my job to get connected with them and equip them in the tried-and-true methods of Young Life.
One of my favorite examples of this is a young Jamaican couple, Jon and Bella Bair. They had been campers and then counselors at a Christian summer camp for years, and much of their spiritual formation came from their leaders who poured into them with great consistency and love. And because summer camp ended after summer, they were always looking for ways to continue to do the same for their campers. Except they found it was difficult to be consistent and things would always eventually fizzle out. When I met them, they had such a hunger for discipling kids. All they needed was some structure and a methodology — and they recognized Young Life as a perfect fit!
Jon loves to talk about the Discipleship Tree because he recognizes that we are doing exactly what Jesus did with His disciples: spending intentional, life-on-life time, praying, and calling kids deeper. And Bella has really run with the vision: she came on part time as our Area Director last year, and has since raised up a team of high school junior leaders to run the Wyldlife club and recruited 3 women to be YoungLives leaders, a ministry we plan on launching this summer. These two have experienced the life-changing love of Jesus, they’ve taken Him seriously in His calling on their lives, and they were walking out their faith long before I was introduced to them. But God is sweet in that He has leveraged their testimonies for greater impact now that they are such an integral part of the Young Life Kingston team!
This is how I’ve seen it work all over the Caribbean: God already knows who He wants to use, and He comes up with the most creative ways to weave people’s stories together. One last example I’ll give is about Bermuda. In the fall of 2024 I got connected through a prayer call to someone that has been praying for Bermuda for years. I started asking around and it turns out we did have Young Life on the island in the 80s, but lack of staffing meant it had a short tenure. In a completely unrelated conversation, my friend introduced me to his coworker who used to do Young Life in Tennessee. He has family in Bermuda and was curious if there was any ministry going on there. I gave him a bit of the background I had just learned, and he said he’d reach out to one of his cousins, thinking she might be interested in learning more. He quickly realized on a call with her that not only had she heard of Young Life but she had PARTICIPATED in club in the 80s! She is excited and motivated for us to come visit and meet some of her friends who also want to bring Young Life back to Bermuda.
It’s clear God has been writing this story for a long time, and we are just now getting a glimpse of it. Miraculously and mysteriously, we are also being invited INTO the story as co-laborers with God. It is an honor to work with so many people who have accepted God’s invitation to participate in His grand story. And I know in every season, on every island, He will continue to invite, equip, and empower leaders to love Jesus and kids with their very lives.”
To learn more about what is going on with Young Life in Latin America, check out their website.
