SOUTH PADRE ISLAND—During Spring Break, more than 50,000 college students from across the nation travel to South Padre Island to party, drink incredible amounts of alcohol, have sex and indulge in worldly passions. 

But this spring break, 375 Christian students came from universities and colleges from Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Missouri to bring the light of the gospel into that darkness.

The students hoped to share their faith with spring break vacationers through servant evangelism. They served free pancakes each morning at Island Baptist Church and every night in front of a bar, gave fee van rides around the island every night, spent time with students on the beach every afternoon, handed out free sunscreen and prayed in the all-night prayer room during a weeklong Beach Reach event.

“If you watch TV or the media, you would think this generation is utterly lost,” said Buddy Young, coordinator for Beach Reach and director of Baptist Student Ministries at West Texas A&M University. “And I would agree, except for a remnant of students who want to see their generation reached for Christ.” 

The Beach Reach ministry consisted of five teams that ran 40 vans in five different shifts each night.  Texas Baptist Men volunteers prepared the pancake meals.

The efforts were rewarded as Beach Reach volunteers gave 8,414 van rides, provided 6,500 people with pancakes and saw 68 people accept Christ as Savior. Overall, Beach Reachers were able to serve 21,063 people.

“The goal of this week wasn’t to convert people, but to further the kingdom of God and to let God’s glory shine through people,” said Stella Almblade, a senior at the University of Arizona.

Almblade went on to say that she had many opportunities to share the reason for this ministry through the free van rides. 

“Many people were grateful just to have a free ride,” Almblade said.  “When they said that, I would tell them why we were here. It was such an easy way to bridge the conversation to other spiritual beliefs and who they thought Jesus was and what they thought about the Bible.”

To prepare to share their faith boldly, students met five weeks prior to Beach Reach to train in personal evangelism and pray for God’s blessings.

“I just wanted to see him do something ridiculous, to see him do something bigger, and he did,” said Richard Benavides, a senior at Texas A&M University in Kingsville.

In one instance, Benavides shared the gospel and led a prayer for salvation in Spanish. 

“I don’t really know enough Spanish to do that,” Benavides said. “I believe God’s Spirit came down like in Acts chapter two. It was tripped out.”

Late in the week, Benavides met a girl from New York on the beach and had a conversation with her about Christ. 

“She was worried we were going to become the Bible-thumpers, but we got to show her love instead of judgment,” Benavides said. “A lot of what we are doing is breaking down walls built by generations of legalism and judgment.” 

Seeing “how much God himself loves each one of those very drunk partiers, how much God wants to do in them” broke Benavides heart, he testified.

“It opened my eyes to how each one of them is important, just as important as those of us wearing Beach Reach shirts.”

 On the last day of Beach Reach, all 375 of the Beach Reach workers gathered on the island’s main beach. They rushed into the waves of the Gulf of Mexico to attract attention to the baptism service for those who had accepted Christ that week. Twenty-three students were baptized.

One of the prayers of the leaders involved in Beach Reach is that the students who participate will catch a vision to reach their peers and verbally share the gospel when they return to their campuses. 

“We have a generation of students who are not sharing their faith verbally,” Young said. “They share their faith through music or t-shirts, but not verbally. It’s always been our goal at Beach Reach to train, mobilize and empower students to verbally share their faith.”   

Because Beach Reach is based on students reaching students from their own campuses, it is necessary for other universities and students to become involved with this ministry, Young continued.

Many Spring Breakers at South Padre are from universities in Oklahoma or are African-American or Hispanic.  The best way to reach these groups would be to have more African American or Hispanic believers and college ministries from Oklahoma coming to share the gospel, he said.

Since the beginning of Beach Reach in 1980, more than 5,000 Christian students have been trained in personal evangelism, and at least 3,000 people have accepted Christ.

CUTLINES

Buddy Young (left), Baptist Student Ministries director at West Texas A&M University, baptizes a new Christian in the Gulf of Mexico during Beach Reach. (Photos by John Hall/BGCT)

 A Beach Reach volunteer from the Baptist Student Ministries at Texas Tech works the phones during the evangelistic outreach on South Padre Island.

A Beach Reach volunteer prays for God’s blessing on the servant evangelism efforts of fellow students.

BELTON—Nearly 3,000 teens and young adults gathered on the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor campus Easter weekend, setting record attendance for Congreso, a gathering of Hispanic Texas Baptists.

“This is the biggest Congreso we have ever had,” said Angie Tello, Baptist General Convention of Texas Hispanic evangelism events coordinator. “I’m a little surprised that so many teenagers spent their Easter vacation here, but it shows just how dedicated today’s youth are to the Lord.”

They came on charter buses, passenger vans, and caravans of trucks and cars, packing the university’s Mayborn Campus Center. During the three-day event, every breakout session was filled to capacity. At one point, 300 students from 22 congregations committed to an afternoon of missions projects in the area.

For BGCT Hispanic Evangelism Director Frank Palos, it was evident from the start this would be a Congreso for the record books.

“On the first night, we ran out of decision cards,” Palos said. “The hallways were filled, and I couldn’t even get into the building.” 

More than 200 spiritual decisions

By the end of the weekend, more than 200 students made spiritual decisions, including at least 48 young people who made first-time professions of faith in Christ. Many of those who made spiritual decisions described a need for healing in their lives and families. They spoke of craving God.

“I think we are in the midst of a spiritual awakening among our youth,” Palos said. “In the schools—that is where God is moving.” 

Many students present had to raise funds to attend the event, Palos noted, pointing out the average Hispanic Texas Baptist church has 50 members with 15 to 20 young people in attendance.

“Those small churches don’t have the funds to send all their kids to Congreso. The best many of them can do is provide a van or some sort of transportation,” he said.

Even so, it didn’t hold the youth back from giving when the offering baskets were passed. During the event, nearly $6,000 was raised for scholarships.

“Students are very generous,” Palos said. “I’m not surprised that they gave so willingly. They look at other students at Congreso and in their community as family. And we help family when they need it.”

Bands, including Obtain Paradise, Blind 1:11, The Grace Project, The Cockrell Hill Band and Sand Stone, provided the event with a ready-made soundtrack, pumping up the crowd for the 45 seminars geared toward teens from seventh grade and beyond. All were combined to drive home the message of this year’s Congreso—to live an elevated existence.

To the next level

“This year, we were challenged as a staff to move to the next level, and that is what we wanted to pass along to the students,” Palos said. “We want them to live a higher life for Christ.”        

Dallas evangelist Cesar Oviedo drove home that message. On the last day, he reminded the teens to walk differently than when they first arrived.

“You will always be surrounded by people, but we as Christians have to be different,” he said. “When you leave this place, you will be walking at a higher level than you have ever walked before. That’s powerful.” 

At one point, Wayne Shuffield, director of the BGCT Missions, Evangelism and Ministry Team, urged participants to walk with power in Jesus.

“Let’s go show people who Jesus is by the way we talk, live and act,” he said. “Every day is filled with choices. Make the choice to be one of God’s soldiers.” 

VADO, N.M.—Antonia Ocón’s living room has a foot-wide hole in it. Spider webs cling to the room’s corners. The floor would break if anyone jumped. And the windows are peep holes covered by plastic.

Antonia Ocón sits in a room in her home in Valdo, New Mexico. Ocón said she's suffered from skin cancer and is very grateful for the help the Buckner children are offering.

“I spent my life picking chile, planting onions and gathering herbs for a living,” she said, stretching out sand-paper-rough hands as proof. “It was enough to help feed 10 children, but the sun gave me cancer.”

But the idea of death doesn’t seem to faze Ocón, age 69. Her mind is habitually on others—such as the volunteers she hears hammering on her roof.

“God bless them,” she said about the teenagers climbing ladders to paint the outside of her home. “I hope they don’t fall.”

Outside, Alexis Vasquez, 13, clasps a ladder with one hand and strokes a dripping paintbrush along the side of Ocón’s roof. She smiles while she works, but not when she remembers.

“My father got sick and died when I was 9,” Vasquez said. “And my mother’s problems with drugs and alcohol got worse. She told her boss she’d burn down the house when my siblings and I were sleeping in it. So, they took us out.”

Alexis Vasquez, 13, works outside the home of Antonia Ocón during her spring break. Vasquez said she discovered her love of service through Buckner.

Vasquez, who’s been living at the Buckner Children’s Home in Lubbock for a little over a year, said she finds comfort in helping people and showing them someone cares. She said she discovered a love of service through Buckner.

Alexis Vasquez and Antonia Ocón don’t know each other, and they aren’t likely to remember each other’s names. But they are connected in the ways they bless each other. And they are connected through Buckner.

Vasquez is part of a group of seven children from the children’s home in Lubbock, and an eighth child from Midland, who traveled with Buckner staff to Las Cruces, N.M., to help paint and restore the homes of two families living along the Mexican border. This was the first Buckner mission trip to New Mexico.

Each child on the trip has a story of how they ended up in Buckner care. Vasquez pulled hers out and laid it on my note pad.

Patrick Harris, intake coordinator at the Buckner Children's Home in Lubbock, holds up Mathew Simpson.  "You missed a spot right there," Harris tells him.

When Vasquez moved in with Buckner, she learned that she could be a solution to other people’s problems, she said. And if she studied to be a surgeon, she might even be able to save the life of someone like her father, who died four years ago.

“If I’m a surgeon, I can tell the people I do surgery on about God so they won’t be scared,” Vasquez said. “And if I don’t become a surgeon, I still want to help people by doing hospital ministry so I can talk to them about God.”

Fifteen-year-old Stephanie Montiel said she sees herself spending part of her life doing missions.

“If I hadn’t ended up at Buckner, I never would have been interested in mission work,” Montiel said. When she was visiting her mother, “I told her about God and church, and she said that if I get to move home again, we can go to church together.”

As the teenagers worked outside, Ocón worked inside her house. She lives in a trailer home with room additions made of mismatched pieces of wood, brick and concrete. Her husband built the home over the years, but he died from lung cancer, she said. Now, she shares the house with her son, her daughter-in-law and their newborn baby.

Kimberly Johnson, 17, paints a wall outside the home of Ocón.

“We lived a happy life here,” she said, remembering 15 years spent in the home. “My husband and I raised 10 kids and saw them grow up and get married.”

As Ocón walked in and out of her house doing chores, she covered her head and neck with a black cloth and wore five layers of shirts and sweaters to protect her from the sun’s rays.

“It stings my back,” she said. “I try to get up several hours before the sun so I can do dishes outside and other chores because my sink doesn’t have water.”

But water is on the way. The Buckner group from Lubbock teamed up with a small group from Mesilla Park Community Church in Las Cruces to make life easier for Ocón and her family.

The Mesilla Park group connected with Buckner through Jerry and Ratha McClelland, who have worked for seven years with the Buckner children during their mission trips to El Paso before they moved to New Mexico.

“We had been afraid that once we moved out here, we wouldn’t be able to work with Buckner any more,” Jerry McClelland said. “But then we learned that Buckner wanted to start working in New Mexico. It worked out great.”

And the Mesilla Park small group is also getting ready to re-roof the house and hire an electrician to do some work.

Ocón said she is grateful for the help she’s getting, and she is happy with the way she has lived her life.

“God has blessed me,” she said.

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Buckner International made history in Peru when officials from the Ministry of Women and Social Work and the Texas-based agency placed eight Peruvian children into the country’s first foster families.

It was the first step of many in an ongoing pilot foster care program. Organizers hope to place 60 orphans and at-risk children into families by the end of the year.

“We interviewed 43 families to choose these first seven,” said Buckner Peru Director Claudia León Vergara. “All the families are well adjusted and stable, with a lot of love to give. They are eager to help these great kids.”

León and her staff have faced overwhelming difficulties to bring the term “foster care” to life in their country. The term didn’t exist until they gave it a name: acojimiento familiar, which literally means “to admit into your house as a guest” or “to offer protection.”

“People frequently think that this concept is similar to adoption,” she said. “In that sense, it has been hard work to make them understand and accept foster care as a possibility.

“Ultimately, we hope to develop this program into public policy. We hope to persuade the government to consider foster care as an alternative to placing children into orphanages when they are in a crisis situation.”

In addition to foster care, Buckner Peru also is providing transitional services for 27 young women and mothers who have been raised in the orphanage system.

Junior, 8, hugs his new foster parent Pablo Vargas as his wife Maria Guadalupe looks on. Junior is one of the first eight children to be placed into foster care in Peru. Photo/ANDINA/Carlos Lezama)

Two homes have been purchased—in Lima and Cusco—where these young women will live and study for their careers, which includes anything from baking to business administration to fashion design. Another home for teenage mothers will be supported at Reina de la Paz orphanage, near Lima.

“All the girls who take part in the transitional programs come from families living in extreme poverty conditions,” León said. “They have been victims of abuse, abandonment and sexual violence. For them, violence was a normal part of life. These homes will allow them to live in a calm environment and focus on their future careers.

“They will also be reinforced on issues like responsibility, Christian values and self sufficiency in order to encourage them to face the real world and its daily challenges.”

For more information about Buckner ministries in Peru, contact Leslie Chace at lchace@buckner.org .

NOME, Ala.—Each spring, racers pack their sleds and hook up teams of dogs to challenge the Alaskan landscape as they race more than 1,150 miles for the Iditarod championship.
This year, a little bit of Texas hospitality was waiting for them at the finish line.

A team of 14 from the Texas A&M University Baptist Student Ministries  volunteered as part of a larger group to support the race, specifically helping visitors in Nome, Ala., where the race ended. During the day the group provided free hot chocolate, coffee and Bibles to people throughout the town.
At nigh

Katherine Jaynes, Elizabeth Sobol and Jeff Turner work on the concessions team during a Texas A&M BSM mission trip to Alaska.

t, they helped keep the streets safe in the “Mardis Gras of the North,” where bars stay open until 5 a.m. The volunteers provided vouchers for free cab rides and helped people make it home safely.
“We averaged about four hours a sleep a night, we were so busy,” said Chris Boule, an intern at the Texas A&M BSM.
The Texas A&M team also staffed a concession stand for a basketball tournament for Alaska natives, with all the profit going to help a local women’s shelter. Before the tournament was through, the group had raised $10,000, which was going to be matched by a grant.
God honored the team’s servant attitude and allowed them to enter into spiritual conversations with people, Boule said. In all, 45 people professed faith in Christ.
“Alaska is not like the lower 48,” Boule said. “It’s a totally different world. But the people are amazing and so gracious. You just fall in love with it immediately.”