The Amazing Grace Race, a two- to three-day race across the state, where kids can experience a once-in-a-lifetime trip within their own state, discovering places they’d never seen and exploring places they may have heard of but had never visited. But we didn’t just want it to be all about fun and games, so we filled about half of the race with missions-minded service challenges to expose our youth to some ministries and organizations who were making a difference in the world that would hopefully inspire them to make a difference when they got back home.
This year, with a brand new group of young youth students (7th-12th graders) and a team of adult volunteer drivers, we had four teams of five people set out for the Outer Banks, completing 12 challenges on day one and making our way through Rocky Mount, Enfield, Ahoskie, Edenton, and Elizabeth City to name a few and ending on the beach of the Outer Banks. The challenges included stocking shelves at the InJoy store in Rocky Mount, touring a peanut factory, numerous scavenger hunts, helping out at nursing homes, building kites, playing disc golf, and eating a flaming hot turkey wing (there’s always a food challenge). Our hope was that as we returned to “normal” by returning to the race, we would also return the love of Jesus and joy of life to the areas we visited, in hopes of our youth returning one day themselves.
Overall, the goal is to explore and discover the wonder of God’s world in their own state and hopefully see the love of Jesus through the various partners who help us out and share/show the love of Jesus by doing some good through the service challenges along the way.
Thank you so much, John, for helping out with our Amazing Grace Race this year! Your stop was truly special to the groups. Many of our racers have commented about how neat the InJoy store was and how they would like to start donating their stuff to that store on a regular basis. I appreciate your hard work and dedication to making it a very memorable stop. Thank you again for all you did for our students. May God bless you in return for your help.
Kaden Williamson
Sandy Creek Church
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