On Tuesday, March 7th during our regular skate time, we hosted the Skate with the Police event. We had so much fun!

We had 63+ skaters. HUGE Thanks to Jack & Debbie Morgan. Skate with a Cop is their vision and idea. They organize the law enforcement officers who join us. They also paid for all of our skaters in honor of Officer Rob Neilsen who is battling cancer. Along with their granddaughter, they also made treat bags for all of the kids to take home.

We were joined by several members of the Genesee County Sheriff Department, City of Clio Police Chief Millstead (who brought his own skates!), Millington Police Chief Oliver (who was our best backward skater of the night), And K9 Ripley and his partner from Huron MetroPark.

Our usual skating volunteer crew was here and ready for our big day minus one of our volunteers who is in Florida. Some of our regular skating families also stepped up and helped out a ton as well.

In place of our normal skate challenges, our challenge to the kids on this special night was to meet as many of the law enforcement officers and fist bump or high five as possible! One of our skaters told me he gave out 15 high fives to law enforcement.

This was a REALLY full floor with lots of families who have not skated with us before. BUT – things really went pretty smoothly considering how big of a crowd we have. Somehow, no one got hurt, I don’t even think we passed out any ice! And, we didn’t run out of any particular size skate! We didn’t break any skates! God makes a way!

After skating, we made a smooth transition into our ice cream social thanks to the many men & women of our church who just knocked it out of the park! Thanks to a last minute run to get more ice cream and we doled out just about 100 cups of ice cream (there were a few kids who got to have seconds!) There were so many helpers and we are so appreciative! There was a major team in the kitchen who pulled the ice cream social together very efficiently. We also had volunteers and our skating families who helped tremendously getting tables & chairs out.

It was a really great evening of skating and it was so awesome to see our Fellowship Hall absolutely full of people. Our thanks are with all of the congregation who have been praying over our skating ministry every Tuesday night & beyond as well.

Thanks to a last minute assist from a congregation member who took a bunch of pictures and videos of skating & the interactions with officers, our evening ended by seeing a snippet covering our event on the 11pm news on TV12! It aired again on the 6am news.

What great publicity for our church & for the police who were so interactive with the children and families who came to skating.

Thank you church for pulling all of this together. Thank you to Jack Morgan for having this vision, organizing all of the police officers & promoting the event. Thank you to all of our skating families and community who attended the event as well.

This was a night where we as a church really brought a lot of people from our community together and it felt really, really good. Surely the saints who have made roller skating possible at Bethany UMC – Harold, Ruby & Dan Boyse – smiled down upon us seeing how our community came together over roller skating.

Here’s a video recap of our event for your enjoyment!