Celeste Muñoz
San Marcos YoungLives Coordinator
Celeste Muñoz is not your average 21 year old.
At the age of 14, Celeste became pregant with her first child. The pregancy was hard on her and her family but would forver chnage her life. "My parents tried to get me to have an abortion for months and they didn’t accept it until I was in the hospital having my baby," said Muñoz. Even after childbirth, Celeste's life was very difficult. She had little hope that she was ever going to amount to anything, day to day life was a struggle in her household. Mainly because Celeste's mom had a baby at the same time as Celeste. Her little brother is only 4 months older than her son.
I continued my involvement with YoungLife throughout high school, but we still did not have a YoungLives.
YoungLives is ministry to teen moms. As society brings them down, we lift them up, we encourage them, and are walking through life with them. YoungLives gives teen moms a chance to have fun and take care of themselves, but at the same time it gives them an opportunity to grow in their faith.
Celeste knew the Lord would provide such a ministry when she showed the community how much of a need there was for teen moms to hear about Jesus.
As soon as she graduated high school, she began her freshman year at TXST, and became involved with YoungLife College. Shortly after, she went through leader training and became a YoungLife leader at her old high school, San Marcos High Shchool, and informally started doing YoungLives just by bringing teen moms and their babies to YoungLife club and campaigners. Celeste would do that for about 3 years.
Despite not having YoungLives in her YL area, she still managed to get involved in the ministry by volunteering as a childcare worker for 2 years at YoungLives camps in Texas over the summers.
Finally, after many discussions with her Area Director, the area committee discussed how important it was to get YoungLives implemented right here in Hays County. They decided to move ahead in the process by hiring Celeste as the part time YoungLives Coordinator. She is only on her second year in this position.