Since joining staff here at KIDS Inc. I’ve been totally blessed to be able to take a bunch of guys to a handful of 1 day skateboarding trips. Most of the time all we do is meet up at Horizon Central on a Saturday afternoon, say, “hey, what do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?” and then end up at Major Taylor, the local skate park. But since school finished I’d really been wanting to do something special for them. There’s an amazing skate park in Kettering, Ohio called the Rob Dyrdek/DC shoe Foundation Plaza Park that all of the skaters have been talking about for a long time now. It’s a skate park that we’re trying to model a skate park of our own after and also caters to the specific style of skateboarding that they do. So this last Monday I took them there!

It was amazing day! It started out by me telling them to meet me at the church at 9 a.m. and guarantying them that I would be driving away at 9:30. At about 8:40 I get a call from one of them and all of them had been at the building since 8:30! No, they didn’t get the time wrong… they just REALLY wanted to go! Just note that these are a bunch of kids who don’t start their day until about 2 p.m.!!!!

We rolled out at 9:30 as promised and went to the Plaza Park! All of the kids had an amazing time! Praise the Lord that no one got hurt…… well….. except for Kyle. He hurt his ankle within the first 10 minutes of being there! Poor guy. We got there knowing full well that there was a really good chance for thunderstorms but did it anyways. Fears gave way to reality and it did in fact rain mid-day. It turned out for the better though because we just took shelter in a nearby, local skateshop and did a little bit of shopping. After the rain stopped we had wait for the ground to dry. So we took some time under a dry pavilion to do a Bible study. I’m totally blessed to see all of the guys now expecting that any time we get together we’re going to do a Bible study. We did a short study of the book of Psalms and Proverbs. We learn in Psalms how to pray and who God is and in Proverbs wisdom on how to live life skillfully. Then, it was time to skate again!

It was a great time for me to spend time with the guys one on one having small conversations here and there and encouraging them when they would be trying really hard to land a specific trick. Not only have I been seeing these guys growing in there abilities as skaters, but also in there desire for the Lord. I’ve been so blessed to see a couple of the guys pray to except Jesus into their hearts and truly grow in their relationship with Him. Those same guys are amazing witnesses for the Lord and bring as many of their friends to church as will come. The others that haven’t excepted Him I see are at least drawing closer. Please keep praying for those!

Not only was this a great time for the guys to skateboard, but also for us to spend time together having fellowship in the Spirit!

-Jake

Just so that you don’t get worried, the hand signals that we’re showing is dw which stands for “Do Work”, meaning, that if you’re going to do something, do it! Don’t be lazy about it! If it’s skateboarding or walking with the Lord, “Do Work”

to see more pictures from the trip just check out

http://picasaweb.google.com/jakemedlong/Ketteringskatetrip