Free Coffee and Prayer: A Story from a South African Beach - 11 Jan 2008

“It was great mixing mission with our 24-7 prayer tent”, writes Darryl Reid from South Africa.  “We took 40 young people, aged 18 to 35 to the beach resort of Kenton-on-Sea.  We set up a prayer space amongst our tents and prayed 24-7 through the mission. It was amazing, God went before us and prepared the way, it was really easy because He did all the work!"
 
"We split the group into teams and had two main ventures: Beach games and a free Café.   In the mornings we sent teams to the beach to get some games going (beach volley ball, touch rugby etc.).  We all had red shirts, so you couldn't miss us. On the beach we would interact with guys and mostly just make people aware of our presence. We received a donation of one thousand two hundred bottles of mineral water, so after a few games we split up and handed out water telling people who we were and what we were doing there. It was an easy way to get conversations started.

"On the beach we told people about our coffee shop called "CORE Coffee". We set up a five by 5five metre tent about twenty meters from the local club, on the road everyone had to walk down to get home. We ran the coffee shop from about 22:00 to 04:00, handing out free tea and coffee.  The local club would close at about 02:00, leaving all the drunken students with nowhere to go but home via us! We invited people in and they were obviously intrigued about why we weren’t charging so the standard response was,"What’s the catch?" Our reply was, "A conversation, about God." That really got conversation flowing.
 
"On New Years Eve there was a massive party organised 4km outside of town. We soon realised that everyone wasn't going to be at the local club, which meant we would have no customers at our free shop and no one to share Jesus with.
 
"So, we had the radical thought of setting up our coffee shop at the New Year party, which had probably the biggest band line up in South Africa to be enjoyed by an estimated 3 to 7 thousand people. We decided to go see the organisers and try our luck, maybe for some bizarre reason they would let us hand out free coffee at their party.

"We found the organiser, told him what we are about and what we wanted to do, and his response was, "Where would you like to put your tent?" Just like that, not even a 30 second conversation, and we had free entry into one of the biggest parties in the country!
 
"The New Year's Party was great and we were able to share Jesus and pray with many young, drunk lost souls. And it has opened a door for future years.
 
"The prayer tent was a key aspect to the night’s success: it brought and kept God's presence with us for the entire week. A common theme that came out of the prayer was that God had gone before us and we had nothing to worry about and many people had some great encounters with God.
 
"One night while the group was having a time of worship, a guy called Luke was left in the prayer tent doing his hour for the day. The Lord spoke to him and said that there would be a guy called Nick at the coffee shop that night, and God wants Nick, He has plans for him and that night He was going to do something in Nick’s life.

"That night, one of the guys in our team was sitting on a stone by the shop, when He felt the Lord say that Nick was standing in the group of guys across the road.  He stood up, wandered across to the group and said,"Hey guys, any of you named Nick?"  One guy chirped up and said, "Yes I'm Nick." At that moment the lift the group of guys was waiting for arrived. Garvin realised he only had a matter of seconds to say to Nick what he needed to. Nick said, “Why do you wanna know who I am?"  Garvin replied, "If you'll listen I'll tell you." "I'll listen", Nick said. "Gods got a call on your life!", shot back Garvin. "Huh, what’s that?", stammered Nick. "God wants you.", explained Garvin. As he spun around to follow his friends, Nick stammered, "Oh... okay..."
 
I'm sure he didn't get much sleep that night!  That is just one example of how God used the prayer tent. I could write a book with all the stories from the mission.   What an amazing week it was, we'll definitely be back next year.”