{"id":1721,"date":"2018-03-09T19:42:34","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T19:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2018-03-09T19:42:34","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T19:42:34","slug":"youth-for-christ-outreach-basketball-under-the-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1721","title":{"rendered":"Youth for Christ outreach; basketball &#8220;under the lights&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday night my son Jonathan and I played basketball under the lights in Lima, Ohio. \u00a0That didn&#8217;t just happen. \u00a0Several months ago, Jonathan and I volunteered for an evening at a <strong>Youth for Christ<\/strong> outreach called <strong><em>Rally Point<\/em><\/strong>. \u00a0Following the meal and spiritual program afterwards, Jonathan and I went out onto a fenced in basketball court where we played&#8230; in the dark. \u00a0The only thing lighting the court was a quite distant, and just as dim, streetlight down the road. \u00a0On the way home to Bluffton that evening, Jonathan was visibly upset and repeated several times that that just wasn&#8217;t fair to those kids &#8212; especially because there are nice lights on the outdoor courts in Bluffton. \u00a0Jonathan then decided to do something about that. \u00a0He prepared a light project fundraising talk, gave it to the Ebeneezer Church &#8220;Connecting Group&#8221; here, and raised $300. \u00a0I then enlisted a professional electrician, who also goes to Ebeneezer Church, to help with the lights. \u00a0Then last Saturday the three of us went to Rally Point and spent most of the day on the light project. \u00a0It worked. \u00a0In fact so well, the director is now thinking of opening the court most evenings as a safe zone this summer there in the heart of a quite hardscrabble area. \u00a0The director said to me that he&#8217;s currently reading the book<strong><em> Doing Hard Things<\/em><\/strong>, about today&#8217;s teenagers stepping up to do &#8220;hard things&#8221; to make a difference in the world. \u00a0He added Jonathan&#8217;s efforts with all this would definitely fall in that category. \u00a0<strong>Note:<\/strong> \u00a0We did a five year stint in a hardscrabble area of Cleveland doing outreach with the Catholic Workers there. This, too, included basketball, and a <em>whole<\/em> lot more. \u00a0For more on this, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.voteforjoe.com\/urban-youth\">see<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday night my son Jonathan and I played basketball under the lights in Lima, Ohio. \u00a0That didn&#8217;t just happen. \u00a0Several months ago, Jonathan and I volunteered for an evening at a Youth for Christ outreach called Rally Point. \u00a0Following the <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1721\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1722,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions\/1722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}