One of the joys of aging is to see a program\/ministry develop over a long span of years.\u00a0 Such is Beach Reach.\u00a0 In the past few weeks, during spring break, thousands of university students were trained, motivated and equipped to spend their spring break on Padre Island, serving God and ministering to others.\u00a0 As a result, they recorded 10,014 spiritual conversations, prayed with 7,750, saw the recommitments of 86 and the conversions of 246, baptizing 87.\u00a0 All from such simple beginnings.\u00a0 Six decades ago, my friend Jerry Johnson, who was the Director of Missions for the Lower Valley Baptist Association and I (when I was the Baptist Student Minister at Pan American University), arranged to have the Texas Baptist Mobile Medical Clinic on Padre Island during \u00a0spring break.\u00a0 I recruited several dozen Pan American students to serve in and around that clinic.\u00a0 We treated a lot of sunburn and jellyfish stings, as well as a few cuts and bruises, and in the process, shared the Good News with hundreds of university students.\u00a0 In the years that followed, other universities and ministries came to the Island.\u00a0 Multiple services \u00a0began from free food distribution to free van rides, and each year the numbers increased.\u00a0 Thanks to those who have taken the torch and over the years, \u201crun with endurance the race \u00a0. . .set before us\u201d (Hebrews 12:1) — from such simple beginnings to God be the glory.<\/p>\n
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One of the joys of aging is to see a program\/ministry develop over a long span of years.\u00a0 Such is Beach Reach.\u00a0 In the past few weeks, during spring break, thousands of university students were trained, motivated and equipped to spend their spring break on Padre Island, serving God and ministering to others.\u00a0 As a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3651,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3650\/revisions\/3651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}