Call to Action
Avenue of Life in a Kansas City based non-profit that provides services for low-income individuals with the hope of helping them reach self-sufficiency. Find out about the transformative work they do in the community HERE! Find out how you can get involved HERE!
Meet the Voices
Wil Bailey - Costa Rica - Director of Acts 1:8 Missions
Wil Bailey is a North Carolina Conference Missionary. He received his Master of Divinity degree from Duke University Divinity School in May of 2003 and has been commissioned as a United Methodist Volunteers in Mission Individual Volunteer. His wife, Yolanda, is an active, life-long member of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Costa Rica.
Wil went to Costa Rica for the first time when he was 15 years old with a United Methodist Volunteers in Missions youth work team. He went back every chance he got, and by the time he moved to Costa Rica in 2003, he had been 14 times. The majority of those trips were mission work teams. Wil says, "I have known since that first trip that doing mission work in Central America would always be a part of my life." Wil has also been on work teams to Honduras and Belize and spent the Summer of 2001 working with the Methodist Church of Southern Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Wil spent the Summer of 2002 back in Costa Rica living with a pastor and his family in San Isidro. It was over the course of those three-and-a-half months that God showed Wil that there was a ministry for him in Costa Rica. The week before he left to come back to the States to finish seminary, Wil met with Bishop Fernando Palomo in San Jose, and the Bishop invited him to come to work full-time as a part of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Costa Rica.
In March of 2014 Wil and Yolanda were overjoyed to welcome the newest member of the Costa Rica Mission Projects family, Isabella Caroline Bailey Ulloa.
The family currently works to support a pre-school, coffee farm, as well as a 4 person dorm for women in college. In addition to all of this they recently launched a counseling center called Listening with Love where Yolanda provides spiritual direction and they have hired a part-time psychologist to provide counseling to local women. All of this in addition to serving as a mission team host site for the Evangelical Methodist Church of Costa Rica. They're busy y'all!
This is an image of the Escuchar Con Amor counseling center entrance. The logo is pretty clever because it means listen with love!
Big Idea
To Wil, success is feeling connected to one another as a result of the time we spend together. This understanding that we're all a part of the same family of faith connected by Jesus. Sawabona - I see you, the point is to be in ministry with people. We cannot do that unless we see each other. This requires us to slow down, become less task oriented, and focus on building relationships.
Find out more about Wil, and the work he is doing in his community through Costa Rica Mission Projects or Acts 1:8 ministries HERE! (They recently rebranded)
Thanks so much for listening!
Love, the podsquad