It’s a day I look forward to every year, the Youth For Christ (YFC) annual golf outing fundraiser. It costs me about the same for one day of golf as my twenty-play season pass at the public course I play with my buddies. But this day is something special.

For twenty-seven years, YFC has held this event at various venues in the Racine County area. For the past several years, we’ve played at the Meadowbrook Country Club in Racine. I’ve participated in over twenty of these events in a foursome organized by my friend, Chuck Hall. What’s interesting about this foursome, is that we don’t see each other at all except at this outing, so when we get together for the luncheon that precedes golf, we catch up on each other’s lives. I learned that our youngest member retired this year, all of us were in relatively good health, and Ard (not “Art”) was not only the oldest member of our group at eighty-five, he won the prize for being the oldest participant this year.

There’s always good food, lively conversations, and happy reunions, and we enjoy hearing about the ministry of YFC through the personal testimony of one of the high school students who are served by it.

The weather was ideal, the course was in great shape, as all one hundred twenty four golfers made their way to the tees for a scramble start. We laughed, we cried, we groaned our way around the course, always full of hope on the prize holes that somehow our mediocre skills would yield the impossible shot. (In all twenty-seven years of this event, only one hole-in-one has been carded, and I was witness to it as my friend Ron made the improbable shot to win a five-thousand dollar prize.) Afterward, there’s pizza and awards, before we head home. I make my annual promise to my friends that I’ll play better next year, God willing. But, God willing, I plan to play again, both to support YFC, and in the hope that my play will be a help and not a burden to my team.