Ryan Graves’ Neighborhood

I am more or less trying to post something at least every other day on her. Get in the habit now so when things get busy it'll come naturally. The main point I wanted to make/say is that I'm thankful for my family, friends, and all of you (however few) that read this thing called a blog. Thanks for whatever reason. Whether you have similar interests or you just like laughing at my so-called journalism. I appreciate it and hopefully you are having a good start to the holiday season.

This thanksgiving was crazier than any other. Me and the wifey went up the night before to Indy and spent the morning and afternoon up there with my family. Stayed up late with brothers and watched The Soloist.

The Soloist

Then woke up around nine to catch some coffee with some good friends. Chowed down on food then drove back home which took an hour and a half to eat some more and hang out with the wife's family. All in all, it was a wonderful day but, the most busy Thanksgiving by far.

Now back to work. Friday and Saturday nights. It's going to be a long weekend. HOWEVER.... only the holidays.... can make you feel that way. That everything is all good, and everything will be alright. 

Just sitting here wondering how in the world it got to be the day before Thanksgiving. That's mad crazy. Sitting in my front room, sipping some coffee, looking at my newly received Malcolm X poster.... hahahaha, and thinking about things.

"One day, I was staring into the sky
What I saw so beautiful, started to make me cry
But what I saw, it wasn't what they've seen
So when I tried to describe it people started making a scene
Telling me, what I should've already known
That our boundaries are smaller
People's limitations are shown

So I wept a second time, but this was for my people
Could our restrictions be seen as a sign of evil? "                                 unfinished poem Th#1 2009

Life is nuts.... that it is. You can get going so fast that you forget to look at the small things. I know I've done that too many times in the past couple of months. When you have so many things on your plate you can even push out the biggest thing in your life. The holidays are great for this reason. For most it gives us a time to look back or even just ponder on life as it is right now. I have a beautiful wife, two jobs, an in'the'process house, marvelous friends, and wonderful family. Not to even mention two newer cars in front of the house. I could complain about this and that but I'm not. Life is good. And G-d is greater. Allahu Akbar. To G-d be the glory.

Collected

K-os

The Yankee Years

Joe Torre

 Today was the first day of the festival at the camp Beit El Wadi.

BFC Team with our friend Shady

Greg, Balloon TW, and Wes

Arabic writing

The church in charge of running this festival is Kasr El Dobara, the biggeset church in Egypt with 7,000 members. God is doing amazing things here in Egypt.  The Egyptian government is based on Muslim beliefs.  I have talked to many of my Egyptian friends trying to better understand the culture here in Egypt.  We are blessed in America in the way that we can be open with our faith without getting badly persecuted.  In Egypt it is ok for a Christian to convert to the Muslim faith but if a Muslim converts to Christianity and if their family and/or government find them out they will be killed.  In Egypt each person must carry an I.D. with his or her name and religion on it. The religion will be Christianity or Muslim.  If a person is found without his I.D. the police will take the person away and question him and may beat him.  Many who are Christian are not born-again Christians who have a relationship with Jesus Christ.  Many in Egypt don’t understand God to be a loving God who desires a relationship.

IMG_0853.jpg

We (Boarders for Christ) get three days to perform and share our ability to skateboard with the people.  Each day we will be doing two demonstrations. Each day consists of different performances such as Dustin, who is one of the world’s best freestyle Unicyclists, and Team Xtreme, which consists of Christian Body builders, Justin, whom is an illusionist, and a Gospel worship team.  At the end of each night everyone who attends the festival gather inside a huge stadium to hear a gospel speaker.  Tonight Nick Vujicic preached and shared his story.  He has no arms and legs.  He said, “I had faith and I prayed for arms and legs. God said no. When God says no to one thing, he says yes to something else.”  Nick shared that if he did get arms and legs that 100,000s of people would not have gotten to hear his story and been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.  In my life God said no to healing my mother.  I asked God for parents, and a family. He allowed me to experience loss and pain but he has also allowed me to travel and share my story to many around the globe. God has allowed me to be broken and to experience healing so that I may be able to preach to the broken and share that Jesus Christ has healed my broken heart and fulfilled the emptiness and loneliness in my heart.  Many who are broken, empty, and lonely need to fill that with a relationship with Jesus Christ because putting hope in the world and going to drugs, alcohol, sex, and relationship with girls or guys will only give you temporary pleasure but never complete satisfaction and joy.

Night Gathering

Tonight 920 accepted Jesus Christ as their personal God and savior at the meeting at the stadium.  This is based on the cards collected by the church.  After our demos we allowed the people to come onto the tennis court where we skated for prayer.  I lead two different people to the Lord today.  I prayed for a young guy who said he needed peace and a personal relationship with Jesus.  The other man who wanted a relationship with Jesus asked for prayer for him and his wife and that God will reconcile their marriage and teach them to love each other.  I felt so unworthy but privileged to pray for their marriage since I am young, 21 years and still single.  God hears the prayers of the faithful and is willing to give to those who ask.  Praise Jesus for this!  Angels rejoiced today in heaven over these two lost souls, plus the many more that 100s of staff and volunteers prayed for after our skateboard demo.  An 18-year-old girl was delivered from a demon.  One of our guys with Boarders for Christ had the opportunity to be apart of an exorcism praying over a girl who was possessed by a demon after the death of her father.  After the demon left her body she immediately gave her life to the Lord and spent time in worship with the men who had been in the room praying over her.  This sounds unreal but it is very real.  We do not see demon possessed people and healing in America as much because many of us are so focused on our luxuries and have little faith.  In the middle-east to have faith comes with a cost.

Skateboard Demo area

I interviewed my Egyptian friend, Ehab Fawzy. He says he sees the Holy Spirit present here at the festival and that God wants to do more.  He says the Lord is happy and that he can see Jesus smiling and crying for the lost, both Muslim and Christian unbelievers. Ehab says, “God will do miracles with those who put their life in His hands.”

I asked Ehab what impact has Boarders for Christ made in Egyot.

Ehab-“Something so different…We only see skateboarding in American movies. People come to see the sport, and emotions, its so amusing. It’s wonderful.  Anyone who shares his story like Wes, and the others, it shows the people they have problems too and still trust in Jesus…Make them think to accept Jesus.  Egyptian people like anyone from outside the country.  An Egyptian and American can have the same story, but people love outsiders to come and speak.

I asked Ehab how we can join in to specifically pray for Egypt and this is what we came up with. PLEASE JOIN IN TO PRAY WITH US FOR THE COUNTRY OF EGYPT AND THE MIDDLE EAST!

PRAYER NEEDS: People who are poor (upper Egypt), Government, unbeliever Christians, Unity of all Christians (Coptic, Orthedox do not like Evangelical)

Today our team set up the skateboard park on the tennis court at the camp.  We started our morning with breakfast and then worship and prayer with the festival staff, volunteers, and performers.  The festival starts tomorrow. It will consists of a skateboard demo, professional wrestling, Team Xtreme(body builder), Marshal arts, and will have a rope course, and a place for kids to hang out and play.  After all the performances each night the people will meet in the stadium and will get to hear the gospel message from the pastor who works at the church here in Cairo.

Skatepark

PRAYER NEEDS: Pray for safety of the performers, and speakers. Pray for the safety of any muslims who may try and come to the festival. As a muslim you will be persecuted, maybe even killed if you are caught at a Christian festival.  Pray for us to have open doors to speak one on one with the people who attend the festival. Pray for our team as we will speak twice a day for three days.  Tomorrow Is the one year mark/date of my mothers death on November 20th, 2008.  Pray for me that I may keep a clear head and trust in God with my emotions and be able to preach clearly tomorrow and speak with boldness as I share my story.

Our skateboard team @ Boarders for Christ is headed to Egypt for the second time.  Check out the video recap from last years trip below.

Last year I was planning on going to Egypt and canceled the day I found out my mother was dying of cancer.  My mother had salvation and understood that things did not end when she would die here on this earth. She knew she would be with Jesus and experience beauty far beyond what I could see being here on this earth. She understood the beauty within skateboarding and the creativity that it involved.  I remember my mother driving up 2 hours to meet me in North Carolina last year just to drop off a pair of Nike skate shoes that she bought me from Bluetile Skateshop.  My mother supported me in skateboarding and was supportive of others within our local skate scene within Columbia, South Carolina. She supportive me so much as to tell me not to drop of the tour until the end, even though she knew she was dying of cancer.  She did not even tell me how critical the disease had become until I returned home from tour. As I lay by my mother’s bedside for those last two weeks, she spoke words of wisdom into my life.  She spoke to me saying, “Wes, God created you for a purpose to fulfill his will. The creativity through skateboarding was the outlet that God had chosen to give you to share with the world.”

She knew that she would soon die and she asked me to go to Egypt for her, to be apart in the skateboard demo at the festival and not to give up on serving others and God.  She passed away from stage IV cancer on November 20^th, 2008 in the early afternoon.

That same day I called weeping over the phone telling Chris at BFC headquarters the news and asking him what I had to do to still come to Egypt.  All the other guys had their funds raised and tickets book way in advance.  It was Thursday and I had to get my money in by that Monday in order to go to Egypt.  He said I needed to raise $3500.00 to cover the expenses for the flight.  That Monday we had my mothers memorial and just by word of mouth from others the amount for my flight plus extra was raised.  My ticket was booked and I made my way to Cairo to meet the rest of the Boarders for Christ team the Friday after I lost my mother.  The bible says, “Through Christ strength all things are possible.” At the festival I got to speak to about 2,000 people how I surrendered my idol of skateboarding to have a loving relationship with God and to serve him by living a life that reflects the face of love.  God has a bigger plan for the lives of those who choose to surrender their plan to follow after Christ and His plan.  It was by Gods grace I was still able to go to the festival in Egypt and share my story to the people of Cairo.  Being in Egypt seeing the need for salvation within such a dark country took away all my complaints within my current circumstances.  My heart began to break for the lost and for those who had not heard the gospel of Jesus Christ so I along with Boarders for Christ have decided to attend this years festival located in Cairo at camp "Beit El Wadi".  God is bigger than our current circumstances and pains and when he calls us to surrender our plans and to "go" we must be willing to go wherever he may call us and do whatever it may be even if it means going to a country to skateboard and preach the gospel even if its the week after loosing the closest person you have ever know. 

Life is filled with tears from pain and stress creeps in so easily but who is to say it is in vain?  I believe that God has allowed pain and suffering to challenge his followers and strengthen them in their faith and in character.  This year has been a painful challenge and the tears I have shed are many.  I am encouraged greatly now and have been getting truth spoken into my life by God himself and many mentors and brothers and sisters he has intentionally placed in my life.  God has taken so much from me and has stripped away everything I put hope in so that he could gain my attention and teach me how to rely on Him alone and be content with my relationship with Him, finding rest in Him.