Big Break 2012

Dave travelled with students from RPI and Siena for a week of Big Break at Panama City, Florida.  Our students spent their Spring Break listening to great teaching, engaging in practical training, worshiping passionately, and walking up to college students who had come to do this beach for one thing: party.

Ray was having a fantastic time.  He really was.  He was looking for a concert on the beach and he asked us if we knew which hotel it was at.  We had been asking God to lead us to people he had prepared for us to interact with, so we took Ray's question as an answer to prayer. Ray was shocked that people had come to PCB to talk about God!  He easily opened up about his life and admitted that he had been wanting to make an effort to move closer to God but so far he hadn't.  "I grew up in a Christian home, and it will always be a part of me, but I've been putting it off for too long and I really need to start lining up better what I think and how I'm acting, you know?"

After another 45 minute conversation with three surfers during a perfect early evening on the beach, Dustin wanted to know how he could keep learning about God.  "You guys are going to go away but I still want to be looking in to this stuff.  I've been wanting to get in to the Bible some more.  I think I'm going to start in John."  I assured him he was making a great choice, and I learned one of his friends already knew Jesus.  "Hang out with that guy."

Not everyone was as quick to talk with us, but our students had been practicing the art of listening and asking good questions and many Spring Breakers were grateful to have "...the most meaningful conversation of my entire week..." with a patient, genuine Christ-follower.  We also practiced bringing the needed content, not the content we wanted to bring.  Nevertheless, our students were bold to speak the Gospel on many occassions and about half of them witnessed God bringing someone in to a relationship with himself through them.

Trips like this almost guarantee wonderful things will happen interpersonally too!  Couped up in a car for 24 hours?  Things are going to come up!  Exhausted after a long day at the beach intiating conversations?  Someone's going to get cranky!  Good stuff and junky stuff rose to the surface.  It was powerful to see the Gospel applied to our lives too, and our team grew significantly as a result.  We'd been hammering away this semester, specifically during the month of February, on the importance of teams going on mission together on campus, and it was just like God to give the students a first-hand experience with Christ-centered team during our week in FL.