Fourteen year-old Marcos comes from a poor family with and unstable home life. He used to hang out at the baseball field as an escape from the pain at home. Another baseball player shared Marcos love for baseball, and soon the two friends spent all their time together. But there was another passion in this friend’s life, and soon Marcos found himself being absorbed into his friends youth ministry. Today, Marcos literally drags others into that youth group and experiencing the love of God that he discovered. Tres Brazos, a disenfranchised community at the crossings of several neighborhoods, is home not only to Marcos, but to countless families with domestic troubles, mothers in their early teens, and youth like him lost in a sea of disillusionment searching for a way out.

For almost a decade and a half, Josefina & David Távarez have been faithfully investing themselves in youth ages 12-18. In the past three years, working with their church in Los Tres Brazos, they have formed a family and have become the teachers, counselors, and parents of Marcos and countless other youth in the community. Every Sunday they lead the youth Sunday school and every other Friday night they create a youth night called “El Club.” With the end goal of Christian maturity and growth in mind, the group enjoys an array of games, activities, movies, and creative teaching. As David describes it, “Because it’s become something ‘crazy’ or ‘informal,’ we have been able to attract other youth from the community. Welcoming them just how they are, they easily identify with the group and join in. Many are searching for the love and acceptance providined in the environment we intentionally create. Through focusing on investing in the potential leaders around us, we strive to multiply ourselves, creating leaders that can infect others and raise up others just like we are doing. We call it ‘reaching them so that they live for Jesus.’ Together with IYI, we want to infect the world.”