Saturday afternoon, 105 beach-goers at Newport were approached by CSP students, 54 heard a presentation of the Gospel, seven accepted Christ for the first time and two rededicated their lives to Christ. According to the ten students who participated, God moved powerfully and lovingly, sustaining them in the 8-hour beach witnessing day.
Pushing through exhaustion, dehydration and a fair amount of sunburn, the students felt God providing for them them physically and spiritually, especially through encounters with other Christians.
"I thought it was really encouraging that almost every person we talked with was a Christian," said freshman Raven Forrester. "It can be frustrating when your goal is to share the love of God with people, but at the same time it's so encouraging to see so many other people who really do know God and love him."
Similarly, sophomore Jose Anaya shared, "God was just sustaining us constantly through the fellowship of the body of Christ. In encountering other Christians we were just so uplifted. Even though we were facing some physical exhaustion and the sun was definitely burning our necks, I just felt God was overseeing what we were doing."
Jose felt God was orchestrating divine appointments to meet and connect with other believers who they could be encouraged by and also exhort to also go out and share their faith boldly. The group felt the need to minister to and rejoice with Christians as well as non-Christians.
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Ten students total participated in the 8-hour witnessing event, eight of whom are shown here: (Top Row) Eric Corona, Jose Anaya, Jack Franicevich, Cree McCook; (Bottom Row) Raven Forrester, Tiffany Torres, Alexa Nightengale, Kaitlyn Morrison.
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Throughout the course of the eight hours, these students also had the joy of seeing the truths of God click in people's minds.
"People tend to know Christian jargon but not exactly what it means," said freshman Eric Corona. "We talked to this one guy named Raymond who knew basic Christian terms and jargon but when we asked him what it meant to him, he couldn't give an answer. He was familiar with how to say it but didn't know what he was saying meant. He ended up understanding what it all really meant and gave his life to Christ. It was literally switching the light bulb on."
