WHEATLAND – Known for his appearance in the American Ninja Warrior television series, Daniel Gil who is competing this year in American Ninja Warrior 12 is coming to Wheatland via video feeds for Impact’s summer youth camp and then just a few weeks later will be actually making an appearance daily at the Platte County Fair.
Gil, known also as Kingdom Ninja leads worship in Houston, Texas, and also is a trainer at Sam Sann’s Iron Sports Gym. According to Gil’s website, he writes, “I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. I have always been a fun-loving adventurer, and as a kid I always loved playing outside, climbing trees and participating in team sports. In high school I began to focus my attentions on new passions such as singing, dancing and the performing arts. During that time, I also began leading worship at my home church, Dwelling Place Church.”
The church that is bringing Gil in is Impact Ministries, Inc. which is an Assembly of God church located at 956 Maple Street, Wheatland, pastored by Jeremy and Lori Haroldson. The reason for bringing Gil in is described by Haroldson as a focus on the community.
“Community has got to be the focus of the church,” Haroldson said. “The church doesn’t survive inside the walls, it survives outside the walls, and so my thought is, what’s our biggest issue in Platte County? We just don’t have enough for kids, so I said, ‘let’s start doing something different.”
Haroldson said that 8 years ago the church started implementing activities for Platte County kids around Octoberfest. This last year, the plans were updated and tweaked.
“Last year, I said, ‘let’s build a warrior course,’” Haroldson said. “At that time, we built about 65 feet of the warrior course and set it up for Octoberfest right in the middle of Main Street and ran it for the kids. We had over 300 kids that went through the course.”
It was a “hurdle jump” to their vision of going bigger in 2020. At Impact’s summer day camp to be held July 15-19 at the fire training center, the kids will be meeting from 9:00-11:30 a.m., Wednesday-Friday and teens will be meeting from 7-9:30 p.m. in the dual-age camp. Saturday will be competitions where kids will be able to run the course (kids in the morning, teens in the evening) and then Sunday morning will be a combined awards ceremony.
There will be a special setup of the warrior course July 14 with added obstacles along with obstacles used in last year’s course. The course will be over 100 feet long.
In accordance with COVID regulations, each child will have their temperature taken before entering the event and all children will be monitored for signs of sickness. The course will be fully sanitized after each participant goes through the course. Masks will be optional.
“I will say this, that I will not allow any kid to wear a mask while running the course,” Haroldson said. “Because that’s dangerous for them to exert that type of energy while trying to breathe their own oxygen or lack thereof.”
The goal and mission of the camp is to bring awareness that in addition to running the course, the kids must be not only physically fit, but also spiritually fit and emotionally fit. Their message is to be in the best shape they can be in spirit, soul and body.
“When we contacted Daniel, he said that he would love to be a part of this,” Haroldson said. “So, we started down the process of making that a reality. Daniel and Abby Gil were originally going to be here for the final Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the camp, but because of filming dates, they just announced, it actually conflicted with our camp.”
Plan B was to have Gil record and give the campers “Daniel’s Devos.” During their snack time they are going to be watching a personalized message from Gil daily. He will also be sending an intro video that will be shown to the kids on the day of their competition. Each student will then receive a voucher to have a private meet and greet with Gil during the Platte County Fair when he will be on-site.
The Platte County Fair will be held July 24 – Aug. 1 and Gil and his wife will be in Wheatland during the entirety of the fair and will be helping to run the warrior course at the fairgrounds.
For more information about Gil you can visit his website at: https://danielgil.ninja/ or for more information on Impact Ministry, you can go to: https://www.impactwy.org/ or call the church at 307-331-7544.
