Greetings from Sunny Florida!

What a summer it’s been, and we’ve only been on Beach Project for 3.5 weeks! God has been very much at work down in Ft. Walton. Thank you so much for your prayers thus far for the 120 students (including 46 Samford students!), and I ask that you would continue to especially pray for these students for the next seven weeks while they’re down here. Here are some of the highlights:

• Three students on our project have become Christians since coming down here- David, Stephanie, and Hayley, with whom I had the great privilege of explaining just what Christ’s life, death, and resurrection means for us. Please pray that they would continue to grow to understand the depths of the gospel and what it means for them.

• Students from every campus are encountering God in His Word. It has been so encouraging to see how excited they have been to read the Bible on their own, to really discuss what they’ve been learning, and to engage in authentic, vulnerable Christian community.

• One of the major things we’ve been trying to teach is how people, until they see the grace of God as truly free, either approach God like the “younger son” in the Prodigal Son story, running after all the world has to offer, or like the “older son,” outwardly obeying, but secretly only wanting the Father’s things (For more, please check out the book we’ve been studying- Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God).

• This has led to many students seeing how, even as Christians, they have so often tried to “earn” God’s favor instead of trusting in the perfect record of Christ. Since then, they’ve been truly learning and growing in how to truly fight to believe the freedom we are promised as God’s children, purchased by Christ’s sacrifice & resurrection. These have been some of the most encouraging conversations I’ve ever had.

• All of our student leaders, and especially my three guys- B Land, Jared, and B White, have been incredibly faithful to pray for, think for, love, and serve the men and women in their small groups.

• In crazy economic times, God has provided jobs for all the students of our Beach Project as well as the 80+ students on another Beach Project sharing our hotel.

I cannot thank you enough for all your faithful prayers and support. I have no doubt that God is using you mightily to impact eternity as we are down here this summer. Please continue to pray for us, for my two talks (On how to deal with sin personally, and how to live in Christian community) coming up, that God will continue to bring students to Himself, and grow us all in our understanding of Him & passion to follow Him.

God bless,
Matt Francisco
2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”