March 24, 2003

Chickens and pancakes provide
ingredients for spring break mission
___Boxes of frozen chicken and plates full of pancakes don't sound like ministry tools to most folks. But for participants in two spring break mission projects of Wayland Baptist University's Baptist Student Ministries, those ingredients were key to the mission work.
___Three students and a sponsor headed to Arlington for spring break to serve at Mission Arlington/Mission Metroplex. Another 11 students and two sponsors pointed their van to South Padre Island for a week at Beach Reach.
___In Arlington, the Wayland students joined 400 others from a variety of schools to perform service projects for the mission and its apartment ministries. The first day was spent hauling 40-pound

WAYLAND sophomore Angie Wilson of Hobbs, N.M., leads Rainbow Express participants in motions to the song "Deep and Wide."

boxes of frozen chicken to one complex, where the students gave the food to interested apartment residents. The student volunteers also placed fliers on hundreds of doors advertising Rainbow Express, a Bible club for children.
___During the afternoons, the group traveled to Irving to lead a Rainbow Express at an apartment complex. An average of 26 children came daily to the four-day afternoon Bible club, which featured songs, games, crafts, Bible stories and puppets. The students shared the Christian gospel with the children, and two professed faith in Jesus Christ.
___"Those kids didn't know much about love. It floored me to see how some of those kids opened up to us just in those four days," said Angie Wilson, a sophomore from Hobbs, N.M. "In the end, they didn't want us to leave. And it broke my heart too, to get to know them and then have to leave them."
___The students also learned that missions work isn't all fun and games.
___"When I got there, I knew it would be fun and hard work, but God really helped me do an attitude check during the week," Wilson said. "I learned that you don't always get to do fun stuff. Sometimes you have to do stuff you don't want to do, and when you're obedient, God chooses to bless you."
___Wayland's Beach Reachers helped operate a free shuttle service on South Padre Island, giving them time to counsel spring break revelers while keeping intoxicated drivers off the road.
___"That's the furthest spiritually stretched that you'll ever come," said Wayland junior Kyle Parker, who drove one of the shuttles. "Once you cross the causeway, you're entering a whole different world. It's spiritual warfare, and you're tempted with so many things. You are exposed to things a lot of people may never have seen before. It's difficult to stay focused on why you're there."
___Parker said he struggled to be loving to the partiers without being judgmental.
___"We thought a lot of people would just shut us out, but 90 percent of them are very receptive to what you have to say," he explained.
___"The one big thing students learned was that you have to be intentional about evangelism. It doesn't just happen," said BSM Director Donnie Brown. "We also learned about the power of prayer. There was prayer going on constantly. We had 50 people come to Christ, and the gospel was presented about 5,000 times over the week. We learned that the results were really left up to God. We were just doing what we were commanded to do."
___

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