The Contest - January 1st 2007

I’m sure that every single person on our team will post on the same thing, but what the heck. Last night we hosted the first annual New Year’s Eve Concrete Jungle Skate Contest. Like so many things that take place here, you can plan, prepare and hope but in the end, you’re simply waiting to see what happens and then adapt to it. We had intended the first half of the evening to be a time geared towards current participants of our house churches and other people that might be interested in coming in the future. I almost had my heart leap into my throat when because when I first arrived all I saw was children running around. My fears were confirmed (or so I thought) when another friend (one that’s not interested in coming to the house church) arrived with his daughter and told me that he had brought her for the children’s party. Uh-oh.

Thankfully, everything settled out and people started arriving for the skate competition. We started a practice session around 8:00 and began the competition close to 9:30. It turned out to be a lot of fun and went amazingly well, especially considering we only came up with the idea a couple of weeks ago. We ended up having a huge audience for Puerto Viejo standards and most of the kids really gave it a go in front of the crowd. I would say that my only disappointment was with the people that didn’t show up. We wanted to provide the competition as an alternative to the crazy partying that we knew would be taking place everywhere else. It worked well and a lot of the kids we have been working with were there but a few were not that I really wanted to see. Oh well. We finished off around midnight, handed out the prizes and everyone made their way home. I hope that this is the first of many and that in the future, some of the kids that we are working with now are in leadership roles…hosting and discipling…at future events. All in all a great event. Everyone on our team really put their all into it and did an incredible job. The visiting team from Flagstaff also brought a lot of enthusiasm and hard work to the event and helped to make everything run smoothly. I’m looking forward to next year.