This past week I've been at the American Royal in Kansas City ministering at the youth rodeo. We were able to pray with the students behind the chutes at several of the performances and help a local church Cowboy Church, Open Range Fellowship, with a booth in the trade show.
If you've known me for any amount of time then you have likely heard me talk about the American Royal. I've got quite a history of performing, trick riding and ministering at the Royal. In fact, when I was riding with the Rodeo Kids I had the opportunity to perform in the Royal's educational shows from 1986-1999. As you can see from the chubby picture above, there is even a life-size picture of me from my Rodeo Kids days in the American Royal Museum and Visitor's Center. In 2000 our college trick riding group, Flying Flamboyance (I have no idea why we selected that name!?!), were asked to trick ride in the American Royal Wild West Show. Since then I have been helping Paul and Linda Scholtz with cowboy ministries and Cowboy Church Services during the Royal's annual rodeo. The Scholtz have been ministering at the Royal since 1979 and have never missed a year. Our partnering with the Scholtz at the American Royal has been awesome as they are looking to phase into retirement from the Royal and we are looking to become even more involved.I say all of this because this year our ministry at the American Royal was dealt a pretty heavy blow. We found out just a few short weeks before the Rodeo was to start that there was no place in the schedule for the Cowboy Church Service. To the best of my knowledge, this was just a scheduling problem as the American Royal administration simply couldn't find facility that was available during the times we had for the service. As you can imagine we were pretty bummed about this. In fact, I went through half the week feeling like a failure...It was even worse as people kept coming up to us and asking when the service was!
As it turns out, I was able to further our relationship throughout the week with the leadership of the American Royal and, hopefully as a result, this should help us become even more involved with the rodeo next year. I'll be having a meeting with the American Royal leadership in January to discuss some specifics about our involvement next year! Please be praying for this as we would like to not only hold our services and pray with cowboys behind the chutes, but I also hope to be able to help with the American Royal's youth rodeo committee. Pray also for our continued relationship with the Open Range Fellowship cowboy church as they also have a heart to minister at the American Royal. (The picture above is the booth that their church put together for the Royal's trade show.)
