by Dan Kogut  

I don’t remember who came up with the crackpot idea of evangelizing Daytona Beach. No way, evangelize? There are more important and fun things to do over Spring break, especially if we’re going to the beach.  Nonetheless, convinced that the Holy Spirit was at work in our spring break plans, Ave Maria Junior Mark Giszczak and I undertook the organization of the trip. I thought we were both crazy, but 14 Ave Maria College students, one Georgia State student, a Canadian priest, Fr. Graham Keep, and Ave Maria Residence Life Director, Lisa Sanchez, all signed up to go.  This convinced me that even if we were crazy, at least we were in good company.  We left Ypsilanti, Michigan, for Daytona on March 6^th at 4:30 in the morning.  We began our trip by going to Adoration and asking the Holy Spirit to work in us, and use us as instruments of his love. Then we headed down to Daytona.   

That’s when the real adventure began. We started each day with mass and adoration, and then we would head to the beach and evangelize there until the beaches emptied out and our skin was medium well. We spent most of our day evangelizing, but we still had time for volleyball and soccer games, praise and worship - that’s right, praise and worship on Daytona Beach.  

I was really impressed with the courage of our group; most of them hadn’t done anything like this before, and we didn’t have a lot of time for training.  In light of our lack of experience, we were encouraged by Father Graham’s reminder that, “where our abilities end, God’s grace begins”. And so, we stepped out in faith to reach our fellow spring-breakers.  

The funny thing about God’s grace is that He never gives it to you before you need it; you actually have to take that very uncomfortable step of faith and make yourself vulnerable; that’s when the Holy Spirit comes in to give you the grace you need. Approaching people on the beach and talking to them about God was very intimidating; as one of the girls said, “When walking up to an incredibly muscular man twice your size and talking about God, you realize how insufficient you truly are, and you have to surrender yourself completely unto the power of the Holy Spirit.”  We all learned to surrender our pride in order to let God communicate through us.  Evangelizing definitely put into action the gifts of the Holy Spirit we received at Confirmation, and made them come alive in our hearts and our words.  

Our main tactic was to go out in groups of two or three, and approach people by asking them if they would take a survey on love, or sex, or spirituality, or anything that could get a decent conversation started. These got more inventive as the week went on. One of the more popular questions during the week was to ask people how many beers they could name, and then we asked them to name as many 10 commandments as they could, and whether those played any role in their lives. All of these surveys made for interesting conversation. By asking people these fundamental questions, we got them to evaluate their perspectives on life and then challenge them with the truth. Our main goal in this was to introduce them to the person of Christ and His sacrificial love for them.  We got rejected a lot, but there were also a lot of people that listened closely, and all the rejection was worth the experience of being able to give people a little hope, a glimmer of the truth, and plant seeds of Christ’s undying love.  We learned that the Holy Spirit doesn’t depend on our fancy words to communicate His truth and love to people; one girl had an encounter with this love almost before anyone said anything.  In Mark Giszczak’s words: “I looked a girl right in the eye and asked her if she felt like she knew God, and she just started crying.  I knew at that moment that God had touched her heart.”   

We didn’t have mass baptisms or conversions on the beaches of Daytona, but we know that we planted many seeds of conversion in the hearts of many young people who are searching for meaning in their life.  I am very encouraged by how many people were interested in learning more about the faith and about Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ.  We exchanged contact information with a lot of them, so that we could mail them books about The Passion, and possibly help them begin a new life in Christ. 

Our mission didn’t end with Spring break, it only began.  We ask all of you to pray for the conversion of all the souls we had a chance to talk to, and for all those we didn’t.  We would also like to remind you of the Holy Father’s call for the importance of evangelization in the world.  Many Catholics believe that they evangelize by example alone, but this is not enough:  

“Let us go forward in hope!  A new millennium is opening before the church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ.”

- Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte