We’re Aaron & Alicia Clevenger. This is how we’re living deeply.
Aaron: When I finally rented professional office space and moved out of our spare room (working from home is great, but the inevitable interruptions from our three young children weren’t ideal!), I thought we’d gained a guest bedroom. Alicia thought bigger.
Alicia: I felt like the Lord was pointing us toward hosting an exchange student from Young Life Madrid. The timing just worked out perfectly. We’d watched our friends Matt and Jenny Burghart host YL exchange students here in Knoxville for a couple of summers, and something about it just kept tugging at us. We had a room. We had a family. We said yes.
Aaron: The first summer, our student from Spain was Eva.
Alicia: She was 15, and within the first couple of days, she had just seamlessly fit into our family. She gravitated toward our kids -they’re now eight, six, and three- and they were immediately attached to her. She made us feel so loved, and I see the Lord in that.
Aaron: Eva’s older sister had gone through the program and become a believer. Eva herself wasn’t -and isn’t- there yet. But something had still shifted at Young Life Camp, which is always the centerpiece of their time here. I’d seen it so many times as a Young Life leader myself in the past: when Eva came back from her week at camp, I could tell. Something was different about her.
Alicia: After camp, she told me she was interested in learning more about Christ. She said her sister’s way of seeing life was starting to make more sense to her. And that’s the thing about Young Life- it’s built entirely on relationships and trust. For a teenage girl, those connections are so needed and so desired (having been one once- I know!). And I really believe it will be those relationships that lead Eva to Christ. We’re still in touch. She’ll message about school, about her life. We hear about the students gathering for Bible studies back in Spain, so she’s still connected to Young Life there. Eva’s story isn’t finished. I honestly think it’s just beginning.
Alicia: Our second student, Cecilia, was a different personality entirely.
Aaron: She seemed even younger than Eva, honestly, though she was about the same age. Quiet. It took her a while to warm up to us, to the other students she was traveling with. Conversations were… I don’t want to say hard, but they took some effort.
Alicia: She wanted to be in her room. She wanted to FaceTime her friends. It was probably a pretty vivid preview of what it’ll be like when our own kids are teenagers! Cecilia came here mostly for the English immersion aspect of the program- her parents had pushed for her to come over to the U.S. more than she had. There was no spiritual motivation, as far as we could tell. Just a good program, a chance to travel, a chance to grow up a little.
Aaron: But she went to YL camp here. And she came back a Christian.
Alicia: I picked her up from camp and she was just flowing with information. I was genuinely shocked she could talk so much- I had no idea she had it in her! She felt lighter to me. That’s the only way I can describe it. Like something had lifted.
Aaron: Those last three or four days after camp were the best conversations we had with her all summer. A complete transformation. She said she wanted to follow Christ- and you could see it. It wasn’t just words.
Alicia: And Cecilia has stayed so intentionally connected with us since. She messages at least once a month on WhatsApp- asking about the kids, sending pictures back and forth. Around Christmas, completely out of nowhere, she mailed gifts to our children. Candy. A puzzle. Things like that. She had remembered what each kid was into. Really sweet.
Aaron: She’s coming back this summer. That tells you everything, I think.
Alicia: And when she does, we hope she stays with us again. We’re working through the placements, so we’ll see. But yeah, she’s coming back. And honestly, we can’t wait.
Aaron: This whole thing has required us to be generous in ways that weren’t always convenient. Driving around you wouldn’t typically do. Plans that shift. Schedules that aren’t entirely your own anymore.
Alicia: The first summer, everyone in our house got sick- except Eva, thankfully! We’d had this whole plan for a lake day, and it just fell apart. I was so stressed. I had a vision for what it was supposed to look like, and the Lord was basically just saying, ‘I’ve got this. It doesn’t have to be picture perfect.’ He handles things so much better than I could. Both summers that we’ve hosted students, he’s been teaching me I’m not in control. It’s a lesson I constantly have to relearn.
Aaron: I think Alicia and I are genuinely in agreement that we want to live with open hands: that includes our time, our space, and our house. We view hosting a student like this as a very small sacrifice for the chance to let someone come and possibly have a life-changing encounter with God. And I keep coming back to this: The eternal weight of that is not small.
Alicia: And honestly? It’s also just fun. It forces you to explore your own city. You finally do all the things you keep saying you should do and never get around to. Dollywood. Tubing down the river in the Smokies. (Eva didn’t even want to get in the water at first- no swimsuit, wouldn’t budge. But by the end she was tubing fully clothed, totally fearless, grinning the whole way down!)
Aaron: I even got to dust off my high school Spanish, which… let’s just say it needed the workout.
Alicia: These are investments you will never regret. If you have the chance to open your home to a Young Life exchange student this summer, we’d just say: Don’t overthink it. You might think you’re just filling an empty room. But God has a way of filling that space with something eternal- and with young people who just might send your kids Christmas gifts from Madrid and remind you, long after they’ve gone home, that you were a small part of something much bigger than yourself.
NOTE: Young Life is looking for CSPC families to host exchange students again this summer. If you have interest, contact Samantha Beltran at sbeltran@younglife.org.