Posted: 3/30/07
More than a day at the beach
By Jennifer Sicking
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
BELTON—Spring break was more than just a day or two at the beach for 40 University of Mary Hardin-Baylor students this year.
They and three university staff members journeyed to South Padre Island to make an impact in lives of fellow students as part of Beach Reach, an annual evangelistic outreach.
“I mainly go to show Christ’s love,” said Robert Copeland, a senior from Huffman. He believes students caught up in the “party scene” are “hurt and crying out in a different way.”
| Students Minister at Spring Break • Beach Reach volunteers immersed in missions service • Baylor fraternity brothers serve God in the Ozarks • DBU students build homes in South Carolina & South Dakota • HBU students take local & global missions plunge • ETBU nursing students put training into practice in Mexico • Students find missions calling through BSM • More than a day at the beach |
His message to them is simple. “I tell them that no matter what they do, Christ still loves them,” he said.
Ashley Ashmore, a senior from Thrall, said a calling to “love on people” compelled her to return to South Padre for a third year of ministry.
“So many times non-Christians feel like the church tries to shove Jesus down their throat. This is not just to tell them about Jesus but to show them Jesus,” she said.
Showing them Jesus includes giving them van rides, serving pancakes or passing out packets of sunblock.
During van rides, Ashmore said girls often would speak of coming to the island to meet a guy to marry.
“They get emotional and say, ‘Why won’t anybody love me?’” she said.
To one girl who spoke about men always leaving her, Ashmore told her about why she followed Jesus.
“His promises will never be broken,” she said.
Such conversations and actions are the reason Baptist Student Mission Director Shawn Shannon has taken the university’s students to the Beach Reach the past four years.
“They have a chance to give their lives away at a time and place where such intervention makes quite a difference,” she said.
Sometimes that difference can be physical, as well as spiritual.
As Copeland and another UMHB Campus Missionary Bear Garza were patrolling in the van to pickup students, they encountered a driver passed out at the wheel of his car at a busy intersection’s stop sign.
When they finally were able to wake him, they loaded him into the van to take him to his house.
“When you pass out your body goes limp,” Copeland said. “But his leg did not, it stayed pushing on the brake so he didn’t go into the intersection and his car get T-boned. This man had just graduated from college, and God gave him a second chance. It was just a complete miracle to me.”
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