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Beach Reach helps spring breakers |
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Written by Leah Kientz
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Thursday, 19 April 2007 |
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Reza Zadeh rolled up his pant legs and slowly walked into the Gulf of Mexico, the waves washing the sand off his bare feet. The evening was gray, dreary even.
Thousands of miles away from his home in Fort Collins, the 29-year-old pastor raised his hands to pray, to meditate on the reasons he was in South Padre Island, Texas. He stood in the tide for several minutes before turning and walking back to the dry sand.
Zadeh chaperoned 45 young adults from Colorado, most college age like me, to the spring break hot spot to take part in “Beach Reach,” an annual outreach to the town and tourists alike.
“I look forward to this trip every year and every year there are fresh faces willing to sign up for a week to selflessly serve people that are there on spring break,” Zadeh said.
Fresh faces like mine.
Our trip started at Timberline Church in Fort Collins. I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I pulled into the church parking lot, but those doubts began to fade during the course of the next week.
The trip is an outreach to help “spring breakers” without any strings attached. By serving the people vacationing, we became a support system and a type of safe haven.
“We head down with thoughts to simply serve people free pancakes, so that the alcohol they consume won’t be fatal. We give free rides on the island so that people don’t drink and drive. … We provide water on the beach so people have something else to consume besides alcohol. And we are a safe place for those that are having a hard time,” Zadeh said.
We had vans to shuttle tourists around. As that went on, about 30 missionaries sat inside the Island Baptist Church praying — praying for the tourists, the safety of the vans, and any other specific requests that came up during conversations in the vans.
This serene prayer room became the heart of the missions trip.
“The prayer room is the furnace of the Beach Reach Ministry,” Zadeh said.
Early in the week, a young girl stepped into a van filled with missionaries from the University of Texas.
Rusty Teeter, the campus minister for the University of Texas, realized she was from Colorado State University. She began to open up and express her desire to
become involved with a church in her community, so Teeter told her about our team from Colorado.
The next afternoon, Teeter told our group about the girl, but it seemed we wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet her.
Later that night, she again stepped into a van and was surrounded by the missionaries from the University of Texas.
Again, we weren’t nearby, missing another opportunity.
The next evening we began to drive the tourists from one point to another, but Zadeh’s van made personal pick-ups for some of the people that we had already met that week.
His group drove to a popular hotel to pick up people waiting for a ride. A group
of six jumped into the van. As the conversations began, Zadeh realized that out of the thousands of tourists in South Padre, the one girl our team prayed for the entire week was finally sitting in our van.
Coincidence, you say? Could be. Instead, I believe we were meant to connect with her. And this is just one example of how we were able to lend a helping hand and also witness the unexpected.
“My idea of outreach has changed dramatically,” said Zadeh. “Beach Reach is a wonderful opportunity for the church to show the true heart of God.”
Leah Kientz is at student at Colorado State University and a reporting intern at NEXTnc.
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HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Beach Reach began in 1980 when Buddy Young, a Baptist Student Ministry Director in Dallas, took a group of college students to South Padre Island in Texas. The mission trip has grown rapidly since 1980, and now about 400 people from Texas and Colorado travel down to South Padre, a popular spring break spot for college students, and provide support and assistance to the town and the spring break tourists. | Only registered users can write comments.
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