By Jonathan Smith, Managing Editor

From hitchhikers to homosexuality and from Honolulu to Honduras, Spring Break Campaigns 2004 spread out across North, Central and South America last week, dealing with a plethora of issues in 30 different cities or countries.

Some campaigns had detailed plans about the work they would be doing. Some of those worked out, and some didn’t. Some groups did not even know where they were going, but all had a common goal.

“The campaigns are about spreading hope,” said Garrett Pruessner, senior English major from Richardson and member of the Seek and Follow campaign. “I am trusting God to put me at the right place at the right time when somebody needs some hope or somebody needs to be ministered to-that we’ll be there for a crucial moment.”

Pruessner’s group was there for one of those crucial moments when the Seek and Follow campaign, which chooses its destinations and its ministries as it goes, picked up a hitchhiker the first day.

“We were trusting God to give us wisdom on who to pick up and who not to pick up,” Pruessner said. “We talked to him for a minute and decided to give him a ride.”

Pruessner said he believes God led them to the hitchhiker, named Billy.

“He said himself that God sent us to him at a crucial point in his life,” Pruessner said. “He just needed some people, just needed encouragement right then, and he got it.”

Billy stayed with the campaign the rest of the week, doing all the service projects with the group, and came back to Abilene, where he’s intending to settle for a while.

“One of the most amazing things is that he became part of the campaign almost immediately,” Pruessner said. “Very quickly it shifted from thinking of him as the hitchhiker we picked up to thinking of him as one of us.”

Challenges in S.F.

Some groups who thought they knew how they would be ministering were surprised by the outcome.

The campaign to San Francisco, the city on which much of the debate involving gay marriage has centered and where gay marriages were performed until recently, dealt with this issue first-hand.

“A lot of people have lived sheltered lives, and our eyes were opened,” said Sarah Johnson, sophomore art major from Austin and co-leader for the campaign. “We actually talked to people about their homosexuality. That’s such a huge breakthrough.”

Johnson said that seeing how the campaigners grew spirirtually in facing the challenging situation was the most rewarding experience.

“To me that’s where you see character really shine through, when people are put in different situations and how they react to that,” she said.

Although many campaigns go to minister to people in need, sometimes the campaign members come back the most blessed.

Cherie Miller, senior English major from North Richland Hills and co-leader of the campaign to Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, said the most memorable moment from her campaign was being fed dinner by a church couple close to filing bankruptcy. Yet, Miller said, the couple expected nothing in return for the gesture.

“They just wanted to be gracious to us and talk about what a blessing we were,” Miller said. “Of course we felt like they were a bigger blessing to us. It taught us about generosity and how to be hospitable.”

Only a week

One hurdle many campaigners must pass is how short the campaign must be; some groups leave after a week never seeing the full effect of their work.

Miller said her group was lucky because they were able to see results while still on the campaign after passing out flyers advertising the church in Laredo.

“It was really fulfilling because we got to see a lot of the fruits of our labor so quickly,” Miller said. “They had some responses while we were there. There was an elderly man that got the flyer, and he was really lonely and searching for God, so he called the next day.”

Miller said even though leaving after only a week is sad, it also creates excitement with the prospect of being able to come back the next year.

Pruessner said he appreciates the week for what it is but does not want to see the work stop there.

“It’s a very focused week of what we should be doing all the time,” Pruessner said. “Campaigns are only a week out of our lives. It only serves as an example and a focusing point that we shouldn’t just be limited to then.”

He said one of the things he enjoyed most about the week was letting God use him.

“It’s a week of paying attention to people’s needs and paying attention to how God can use you,” Pruessner said. “It’s not so much about exactly figuring out which direction to go as it is doing God’s work wherever we happen to be, just taking it as it comes.”

The work comes quickly on campaigns, leaving little time for rest, which is what many other students do during their break.

“Campaigns aren’t exactly restful because you come back and you are completely trashed as far as energy,” Pruessner said. “But spiritually it can provide a lot more spiritual rejuvination and spiritual renewal that in a way is more restful in the long term.”