I just realized that while the title of this is Day 2, it’s not really our 2nd day here. It’s like our 4th. But it’s our 2nd day on the beach, and I guess that’s how I’m keeping track of things.

My days haven’t seem to gotten drastically better. But that’s just from my perspective. I have no idea what’s really going on down here in Daytona, b/c only God knows. The sun did come out to play today though, and the temperatures, while not amazing, were comfortable and warm.

After getting the lunches packed and the vans loaded, we headed to sun splash. One van parked in the parking lot, while the other rolled down to the beach so that we could set up and have lunch easier.

We set up the volleyball net in the sand, and then I just relaxed for a bit. After 5 or so min a beach patrol truck pulled up and told us that we needed to move the net to the other side of the traffic lane (closer to the water) b/c we were taking up premium parking spots. While it did make sense, it was sort of stupid. We did end up moving it anyways.

I then went up to pray and read the bible. There were no trumpets, so blatant revelations, so I just tried to continue to trust God.

One thing I’ve been struggling with is just all the dirty old men that come to sun splash. There’s just there to look at the girls on the beach. It’s pretty depressing. Especially when you talk to them, and they know it’s wrong, but don’t care. That’s just the way they live their lives.

So I just sat and waited for the Spirit to lead me to talk to someone. I noticed an old man further down the park, and decided to try and talk to him. I took it real slow, sitting next to him first, and then slowly working up the courage to talk to him. The conversation was real choppy and one-sided at first, with me asking, and him responding. But he soon warmed up, and moved from facing the ocean to facing me.

The guy I thought would be a nice little old man wasn’t quite so nice. Not that he was straight up mean to me, but his lifestyle wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. He’s 88, and lives by himself. He’s retired, married twice, but his last wife died 7 years ago. He pretty much does whatever he wants, reading a lot, or going to parks and such. But the doing whatever he wants part relates to his sense of morality too. Whatever feels good, just do it. He’s even got a 30 year old prostitute. I never really took the conversation in a blatantly spiritual direction, but we did discuss marriage, and his definition of marriage was just sad. He said it was all about the bedroom, and it was just about a piece of paper. He seemed to think that those relationships where all about sex, and the commitment to working through problems and such wasn’t quite that important. While I was saddened by that, I continued to talk to him. The conversation wasn’t exactly a failure, but it wasn’t what I envisioned when I sat down.

After that, my view on the male sun splash attendees wasn’t improved much. Especially considering the fact that every 30 seconds or so he would take a look at some of the sunbathers below us.

I went back down to the beach, talked with Erika about it a bit, and then got a drink of water. I noticed 2 girls seeing how high our net was, but by the time I started walking towards them, they had walked away. Liz decided to go after them, and we played for about a game. They were from MIT, and on spring break. They left, but told us they were getting the rest of their friends.

When they all game back, there were about 8 or 10 of them. Most of the guys were from the same frat, and played on MIT’s volleyball team. Two of the girls were also on the women’s team. We played a couple games with them, and then sat down to talk. We were in a pretty big group, and while trying to move it towards a spiritual direction, they would just sort of ignore it. They were your typical college spring breakers, just down here to have fun, relax, and not really think. It was pretty disconcerting at first, but after they split up to go in the ocean and get some food, we were able to have some more personal conversations. Laruen, Dan and I were able to talk with Eugene, and while he tried to avoid our spiritual questions, they really pressed him for his beliefs. For me, it was really encouraging to see. I had already sort of given up on them, not wanting to press an issue they weren’t interested in talking about. He warmed up a bit, and did respond honestly to some of them. We didn’t get really deep, but I’m sure we have him some food for thought. They may or may not come back today, but I’ll leave that in God’s hands.

My prayer request for the rest of the week is that I won’t be so discouraged any more, and that I can continue to trust God in his all perfect will. I’ve lost some faith in humanity, and yesterday I just felt like it was all hopeless. Also pray that I can have a spirit of power and love, not of one of timidity in fear.