The Adventures of Steely McBeam

If you don't know Steely McBeam is the mascot for the Pittsburgh Steelers. If you don't know the Pittsburgh Steelers you have probably been living under a rock for several years or in Cleveland and choose not to give them a second thought. But this blog is a place to set all partisanship and rivalries aside and play ball for kids.

Although I often tell stories about the Performing Arts Academy I think it is important to recognize the breadth of Urban Impact and all of its programs. As some of you may know Urban Impact primarily started out as a youth Basketball outreach and soon encompassed all major sports. From this growth a relationship with the Steelers was forged and a football clinic was born. Over the years the football clinic has grown and evolved into something really quite spectacular. A task force of Urban Impact-ites with the help of a local high school football team transform Oliver high school's field into a magnificent a NFL training camp. (Of course as the theatre guy they asked me to set up the stage and help put table skirts on the community group tables. Sadly the putting on the table skirts proved to be quite difficult for Principal Rick and me.)

After all the set up and hot dogs and hamburgers were thrown on the grill, the fun really began. Soon kids of all ages flooded the registration booths and poured into the stadium playing warm up games ranging from Steelers flash card trivia to push up competitions. This was all fine and dandy but what was really great was the emergence of none other than Steely McBeam. This was great for me because I was appointed as Steely's bodyguard and right hand man. I also got to be his interpreter because despite having a rather large mouth Steely is mute. For the most part this required me to walk along side him saying, in an excited and surfer-esque tone, "Hey everybody look it's Steely McBeam! Show Steely some Steeler love." And then loads of kids would mob him while he high fived them and beat them off with his foam steel beam. The latter sometimes required my assistance. Then Steely McBeam almost passed out, so we stopped challenging kids to push up competitions and he guzzled down three water bottle in a matter of seconds. Apparently you sweat a whole lot when you are in 80 degree weather wrapped in layers of black and gold padding.

All of this was tons and tons of fun. The little kids ran the drills laughing while some of the older students ran the drills with intensity that matched the Steelers players running along side them. With all of this in mind the most amazing part came at the end of the night. Several of the Steelers stepped up on the stage and told hundreds of north side kids how despite winning several Super Bowls the biggest moment in their lives came when they accepted Christ into their hearts. How despite all of their strength and all their money they still need help and God is the only one who answers and fill their hearts.

I may be a Cleveland fan, but I thank God for those Steelers.... and Steely McBeam.

Prayer and Praise Requests:

• For "Tuesday Nights", our summer youth program will start June 16th
• Urban Impact Summer Day Camp starts this week
• Please pray for our graduating kids
• That I will not spread myself to thin
• My Grandma
• Support Raising

Thank you all. It means a lot to me.

Monster Foot

This post is not a normal post, but my wife has bugged me to write about it. I will write about the football clinic with the Steelers and my andventures with Steely McBeam soon.

This is the story of Monster Foot

It all started a little over two years ago. It was during finals week at the end of my junior year of college and some of my friends and I went on a late night hike around the reservoir. It was a beautiful night for a hike... or so we thought.

I walked along with my friends laughing and reminiscing about the year that had seemingly flown by faster than the year before. As the night wore on we decided to return back to school and get a few hours of sleep before our final finals. On our way back we came across a large swampy mud puddle with a thin board laying across the murky mess. One by one we stepped onto and off the board. Everyone seemed to to this with relative ease, but when I stepped onto the board my foot became stuck. I lifted my foot and the board rose into the air. The board was nailed to my foot. This is not a figure of speech. A nail sticking out of the board was now in my foot. In more shock than pain I placed my other foot firmly on the board and pried the nailed foot off the board. I immediately went to the ER and they performed an x-ray, gave me a tetanus shot and assured me my foot patched up nicely. But little did they know a monster was born beneath my skin.

Now fast forward eighteen months. In this time I married and moved to Pittsburgh; all the while a monster slowly grew in my foot. Starting out I barely even noticed the little lump on the bottom of my fat foot. It never impeded my walking, but if I poked at it I could feel a little hard speck under the skin. Thinking it may be a wart I decided to attack the little guy with some good ol' Dr. Scholl's. This battle went on for several weeks each day taking off a little more skin, but each day the little speck remained buried in my foot. The little speck persisted until I ran out of Dr. Scholl's. Getting fed up with the whole process, I stopped attacking my foot and hoped the speck would remain just a speck and leave it at that. But I was sorely mistaken.

The speck did not remain speck but soon grew, slowly taking ground and ravaging my foot. What was once my foot now became the lair of a monster which bulged under my skin. It soon felt like an alien trying to rip through my flesh. I could only imagine the devastating havoc caused if I did not redouble my efforts and attack it once again. With my imagination firing off images of my foot slowly devouring the rest of my body, I went and bought another box of Dr. Scholl's, Compound W, and Duct tape. Over the next couple of week I strategically advanced on the monster peeling off multiple layers of skin at time. Through many a sweat and tears I finally came upon the eye of the monster. Now when I looked at the bottom of my foot my enemy looked back at me. I saw a little white ball peeking out at me surrounded by a trench of skin, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. I continued the good fight and the eye on my foot got bigger and bigger. Soon it began to move around in my foot like the little track ball on a blackberry. With this development I knew it was now or never. My wife now came along side me. As I pushed down on the skin built up around the monster my wife pulled at it with a pair of tweezers. Grinding my teeth and turning my head away my wife gave one mighty tweeze and out popped the monster (and a little blood). The monster in my foot was no more. A little white, rubbery ball a centimeter in diameter is now dead.

Epilogue
My foot now feels great. It feels like new and the crater left by the monster has filled in nicely thanks to some off brand Neosporin.