Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Well our 4:20 outreach was amazing. Janine Jones & our wonderful little church did an outstanding job visionearing, packing, & passing out 1,000 bags filled with water, chocolate, candy, & a note saying, “Jesus thinks you’re awesome & so do we;” & “Come to our free BBQ Wed. night.

So we get to our UCSC on campus housing drop off place. It takes us about 15min to unload our stuff, & set up our table & tent right next to the main trail heading to the field where 2,500 students are going to get high at 4:20. Well, no more than 5min goes by & a police officer approaches us & says, “Do you have a permit to hand these out?” We don’t so we say, “No.” He then lets us know, “If we see anyone handing these out on campus without a permit we will give them a ticket.” What?!!? Uh…officer, there are 2,500 students 100 yards away from you who are about to smoke an illegal substance!! Anyways, we figured we would get the officer back & do the worst thing possible to him: We didn’t give him a bag or tell him about Jesus!! (Just joking). So, we pack all our stuff & head off campus before they close the campus to all traffic (this is literally a huge deal in SC—I met people from Davis, Fresno, Stockton, etc…). We then set up stations along the sidewalks heading up to UCSC & were able to pass out all 1,000 bags within an hour & a half. Wow. Everyone’s response to our gifts was amazing (as usual—Linda & I used to hand out Hot Chocolate at Shasta College 10yrs ago & we’ve yet to have a bad experience). There were actually people who took our bags & then started shouting to everyone else around us that we were giving away free water & candy (remember it was really hot, so water was a huge deal). We had a great time & what was most amazing to me was the group who helped pass out the water with us from our church. Not everyone who passed stuff out with us is totally convinced Jesus thinks they’re awesome. This was so cool to me. When we gathered at the end for prayer I was amazed to see who joined us & I could tell they had all just experienced God; you could see it on their faces.

There will be more, but I wanted to write something. Please pray for our BBQ tomorrow night. We have no idea how many people are going to show up. Obviously by putting “Jesus” on our invitations not everyone will show up to hang out with His people, but we believe many desire to come & see what it’s all about. Please pray.

Lastly, we weren’t the only Christians out there. This is an incredible photo. If you look hard enough you can see a student blowing smoke into this dude's face! Now if stoners go to Hell this guy might be hosed 'cuz you know he's gonna' get high!!



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(Add on) Laben had a classmate say something to him. "Thanks for the free stuff yesterday. What you guys were doing was totally awesome, thank you so much for the munchies." Where this goes somebody knows.
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For more, check this out: http://cruzjones.blogspot.com/

4 comments:

~bean said...

SEAN, WE ARE GOING TO MAKE THIS EVEN BIGGER NEXT YEAR!!!!! WHAT AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY!!
Oh! I wish I could have given a picketer a munchie packet!

Jessica said...

I think the picketer needs to take a couple hits to loosen up... But then again, I'm probably a lot less holy than those guys...

I can't wait to hear about the BBQ... Been praying for you guys all week!
Love ya!

Jesse Arlen said...

Hey Sean! So good to hear that it went well! I was so busy that Monday with work and school all day, otherwise I totally wanted to be there.

So guess what?! I found out today that I got into UCLA! Yes! So glad it was a part of God's plan. If I ended up staying here at UCSC, I was planning on becoming a part of your church and mission here in Santa Cruz. I'll continue to pray for you and the wonderful work you are doing in this city! Love ya brother.

trisha loves to paint said...

let me know the next time you are in Redding. I will hook you up with some art for the church. I think I forgot to respond to you awhile back!!!