The Youth Ministry started its very first Youth Life in the Spirit Seminar (YLSS) in the summer of 1986, brought on by the desire of the BLD Community members to share the experience of a Christian life with their teen-aged children.Two more YLSSs followed that year. Weekly prayer meetings and teachings were organized to provide a venue for the Youth's Christian growth. Eventually, the YLSS became a yearly event and with it were outreach YLSSs undertaken in the BLD Districts of Bacolod, Zamboanga, Cebu, Los Baņos, San Pedro, Bulacan, Laoag, AFP-PNP, and Tugegarao.
Aside from the YLSS and prayer meetings, BLD Youth has also staged a number of productions and concerts. Their very first production, "Joseph, the Dreamer" was staged in the years 1987 and 1989. A Christmas musical entitled "Everlasting Light" was presented to the community in 1991. The two runs of "Five Loaves and Two Fish", a benifit concert, was organized as fundraisers for the victims of the Ormoc Flood and Mt. Pinatubo Eruption in 1991. BLD Youth had the privilege of serving in the 10th World Youth Day in Manila via the concert "One in Hymn" in 1995. A repeat series of the concert followed in 1996.
But not only in songs and dance are the youth spreading the Gospel. They have also done this through visits to different charities and partipation in the Jimmy Carter Work Project of Habitat for Humanity. BLD Youth also organizes an annual Sportsfest during the summer.
It was the third day of Febuary 2001 when the BLD Youth conduct a concert titled, "Rewind: A journey Home" a homecoming concert in celebration of its 15th aniversary.
On the same year, right after the annual summer YLSS batch 21, the BLD Youth conducted their first Caliraya Youth camp at the Caliraya Recreation Center, Laguna.
To this date that this history was written, the BLD youth Ministry holds prayer meetings every Saturday afternoon at the Don Bosco hall of Don Bosco Technical School, Makati.
The BYO history from the First Author’s side.
i’ve been a programming ever since i could remember. and since i don’t remember very well, i don’t even know how far back my obsession with programming goes. however, i do remember asking about whether the BLD Youth Ministry had its own website, since, at the time, i was extremely interested in exploring the potentials of the HTML markup.
that was… about a few months after my LSS graduation, back in 1999. i was answered, unfortunately (or fortunately, in hindsight), to the negative.
a few weeks after, while on the way home after a family affair, on board a van with a bunch of my cousins, i proudly proclaimed: “I WILL BUILD THE MINISTRY ITS OWN WEBSITE!”
well, i didn’t exactly stood up and shouted that, a la majestic proclamation of some important royal decree, but you get the idea.
and so i did it. the project took off flakily enough (to say the least), and it took me quite a while to be comfortable with a particular design and design tool.
i don’t want to bore you with technical details, so suffice it to say that i settled on a design and design tool, went about my business and finished the site.
oh how i wish that was true. it would’ve made the next two years a lot easier to live through.
as it happened, being the uber-geek that i am, every time i get close to finishing the site enough to warrant an actual publishing, i come up with a crazy idea that warrants a(nother) rewrite from scratch. and i do mean from scratch.
or at least a major code change.
this system of almost’finishing-and-then–rewriting went for sometime. without anyone even noticing. until sometime in mid-2001 when i finally tired of the project, and decided to pass it over to someone who had the ambition and the energy to actually finish a presentable layout.
if you’re reading this, that means Bheng Magsino has done his job of actually publishing BYO—something i wasn’t able to do, for personal reasons.
he was the logical choice—not because he is my cousin, but because he was the only one that expressed, in my not-so humble opinion, real dedication for the site. he seemed like someone who would actually care as to how BYO turned out, so i gave it to him.
as for me… well… i’m still me.
The new webmaster's veiwpoint
It was the summer of 1999 when Neil told me and my cousins about his plans of putting up a website for the BLD Youth. From his ideas, I have come to decided to help and join him in this project even though I have no depth knowledge about html. My interest was used perfectly as I decided to be the BYO's 2nd-in-command having the task of the brainstormer.
It was a little grudgy at first but until we have come to the design and the possible content, everything goes down. We have come to finish the website but decided to hold it down a little for Neil sees other potential and probably, other functions and specifications applicable to the website.
Right after our first posting of the website, then came new knowledge of some beautiful facts about Ate Baba Gonzalez' unfinished website. Her intention of putting up a website and making it online never reached full implimentation for some technical reasons. From her work, we re-write the site and make it based both by her work and the BLD community's website.
Everytime Neil and I decided to changes everything and re-write the whole site from the start comes a new knowledge on html that we want to impliment. In these times, the BYO development runs slow
It came a time when we also have the dry season. In these dry season, we almost forgot the whole BYO thing and only later we realize that the BYO needs to be back online again but these time, we never released any changes.
For some reasons, Neil gave up to the BYO Projesct and handed it down to me. I though it was a loosing fight for the very man I thought has the knowledge and creativity as he did will totally weaken the development team partnership will go down to one man team.I thought it was gone for good because right after the handover, I need to go to college. BYO stagnates to the very first year of my college life. No updates, No changes, no further realeases and it was left unofficial.
It was the 28th of March 2002, right after the YLSS #21 that the BLD Youth sponsored, I have come to my senses about the forgotten project. It was a mixed experience of joy, happiness and exitement relived my BYO heart back pumping again.
From the old templates that we have use, I made the full rewite of the whole site.
And until this day, the BYO is already in Version 2.0 but still in A stage.
