On July 18
th-27
th, 2008 I was part of a ministry team from the Fellowship of Christian Cowboys that ministered at the 2008 National High School Finals Rodeo in
Farmington, NM. Last year was my first year of attending the National High School Finals Rodeo and if you recall I was absolutely blown away by the response from the students. I was even more encouraged this year!
The ministry started off with our crew arriving in
Farmington on Friday and we spent most of the evening setting up our booth in the trade show. This particular booth was a scaled down version of the booth that we set up at the National Finals Rodeo in
Las Vegas. We had a free table (stocked with Cowboy New Testaments and Bible tracts) and a table that contained a few FCC
logoed items for sale. We also had a testimony DVD showing on a TV that showed a few well known cowboys sharing what the Lord's been doing in
their lives. I was pretty surprised how many students would stop in our booth and just sit down and watch that video (sometimes the entire 30 minutes). The booth was open each day from 10am to 7pm and served as our "office" throughout the week. I call it our "office" because, while sitting in a booth for six or seven hours a day is not exactly the most exciting opportunity (especially during the slow times), we were able to use that booth space as a place to meet with and build up relationships with the students throughout the entire week.
Sunday was the final day for contestants to check in and Sunday evening was the first performance of the rodeo (there were 13 performances total). We held a Cowboy Church Service that morning in the Memorial
Coliseum and there were around 950 people in attendance. That is by far one of the largest services that we have ever held! While that service was encouraging, I was even more encouraged by the students and families who talked to us throughout the rest of the week about the service (either thanking us for being there or sharing with us how they were touched).
If we were not in the booth or sleeping (or at the service on Sunday), then we were at the rodeo performances behind the chutes and in the announcer's stand praying with the contestants and helping out where we could. While at the performances, we each wore a vest that identified us as Rodeo Chaplains. Usually, I'm apprehensive about drawing attention to myself in that manner, but I believe that the Lord used that identification for His glory during this rodeo.
On Friday night (the second to last night of the rodeo) one of the bull riding contestants suffered a serious neck injury. I'm not sure of the specifics, but the doctors had said that his fifth and sixth vertebrae impacted and the result was that his sixth vertebrae was above his fifth. Ordinarily, people do not survive an impact of that magnitude and given enough time (hours in fact) they would definitely be paralyzed. The Lord used two factors to prevent this young man, Corbin, from being paralyzed. The first factor was that a nationally renowned sports medicine neurosurgeon happened to live in Farmington, NM. Within hours of the injury this same doctor had Corbin in surgury and within a day he was already starting to regain feeling in his lower body (he had lost feeling from the neck down in the arena). The second factor, and I believe that this is greater than the first, is that there were literally hundreds of people praying for Corbin throughout the rodeo and the city of Farmington. In fact, several times while we were still wearing our chaplain vests a group of students would stop us and ask us to pray with them for Corbin's recovery. What an awesome testimony...The Lord was using this tragedy to bring genuine thoughtful prayer into the sport of rodeo!
The Lord also used the identification that we had with our vests to lead a contestant to us late one evening so that he could pray to place his faith in Christ. Our team was standing in line at a concession stand after Thursday night's performance and the kid walks up to us and asks, "Can I be saved?" He was so bold and surprising that it took a few seconds for it to register with us what he was wanting. I've never experienced that before!
I left the 2008 National High School Finals Rodeo totally encouraged by the Lord's work there and my head swimming with ideas about ministries and opportunities for the next finals. Too bad it's a year away!
For more pictures from the ministry click here...
Leslie and I had the opportunity to visit our friends at the Homewood Christian Community Church in Homewood, KS this past weekend. Homewood was actually where I preached my first message about eight years ago and they were the first local church to partner with our ministry with Golden Spur Ministries.