South Padre Island, Texas – March 11-17, 2017

Submitted by: David Griffin, Baptist Student Ministry Director

Every year, thousands of college students head to South Padre Island for Spring Break. Beach Reach is a Student Ministry designed to help serve the spring breakers and help them survive this chaotic week. Together, with about 1,200 other BSM students from across the state, SHSU Baptist Student Ministry members were there as servant evangelists and prayer evangelists to proclaim the gospel of Jesus with spring breakers, serve them pancakes and gave them free rides around the clock. With around 120 fifteen-passenger vans, and two professional grade disaster relief kitchen set-ups, everyone worked tirelessly to make sure the students were fed and getting home safely.

Additionally, five SHSU students were chosen to be volunteers with the South Padre Island city court. In this capacity, they helped hand out information to students providing options to take care of their violations. Dr. Buddy Young, founder of Beach Reach, was the primary speaker. He spoke about Christian love, service, and advocacy for the Christian faith.

This event provides a great opportunity for teamwork and problem solving. Students don't always have the opportunity to lead out and work together to get things done, but that is exactly what happens at Beach Reach. For example, at Beach Reach, teams of students collaborate to help spring breakers that have forgotten where they are staying, give out pancakes, and organize a crowd of 1,000 spring breakers at 2 a.m. to help them safely and efficiently get van rides back to their hotels.