You can’t forget Godstock.

John Bouk won’t let you.

A desperately sick child, a family in need — John has to do something about it. With your help.

Christian outreach director at the South Rowan YMCA and founder of Godstock, he believes people want to be part of something that does make a difference.

So he gives them a chance, and three annual events are coming up now.

• The first — the Bradley Barnhardt Soccer Tournament — on Saturday.
• The Adam Myers Golf Tournament on Saturday, June 16.
• And the annual Godstock music-food-fun weekend that gave birth to the organization seven years ago, on Aug. 18-19.

The Bradley Barnhardt Soccer Tournament will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday at the South Rowan YMCA.

Bradley, the 19-year-old son of Terry and Stacey Barnhardt, played soccer at South Rowan High before he died of cancer on Jan. 2, 1996, and later Godstock raised more than $33,000 in a two-day event to help his family pay the bills.

This year, his high school soccer teammates are coming home to play soccer against current and past West Rowan High players.

Many of them are those same high school soccer teammates who shaved their heads in 1993 because Bradley shaved his when chemo made most of his hair fall out.

They’d be domeheads, too, they decided, so he’d know they were with him. If one was bald, all would be bald.

And by next year, John says, David Linker, who helped develop the Rowan Rage soccer program, plans to get the Godstock game sanctioned in North Carolina “so we can sponsor a classic soccer tournament for teams from all over the state” on Make a Difference Day in fall 2002.

The Adam Myers Golf Tournament on June 16 will be four-man captain’s choice at McCanless Golf Course. You can sponsor a hole for $100 or $300, play for $160 a team — or donate a door prize.

The event usually raises about $12,000.

Adam Myers was the child who prompted the first Godstock event in August 1994.

“He died the next day of leukemia,” John says, “and we started a fund at Brenner Children’s Hospital (part of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center) in Winston-Salem in his memory.”

It helps families of children in the hospital pay their bills, maintains a toy locker at the hospital so parents can get gifts for their children without cost, gives children treat bags when they enter the hospital and coupons for pizza deliveries so parents can stay at the hospital with their children.

And the annual Godstock event will benefit local children, though they haven’t been named yet.

It will include fun for children — moon walks, face painting, bands, concession stands and more on Saturday, Aug. 18, and an outdoor contemporary music service Sunday, Aug. 19, at 11 a.m. led by the Rev. Rodney Hagans of Central United Methodist Church, Spencer.

Both programs will be on the South Y’s soccer fields.

And with $5,500 in the bank from the second flag football games April 7 and 8, money is still coming in for the family of Kaitlyn Brooks, daughter of Roy and Kim Brooks.

Godstock had a benefit for her when she became ill with leukemia in 1995. She has been in remission but just suffered a relapse.

“And two weeks before the relapse,” John says, “her mother had a baby boy with Down syndrome.”

The family need is great — and so was the game, John says. Fourteen teams came from as far away as Wilmington, and Catawba College and South Rowan sent football players and coaches to officiate.”

Flag football will be an annual event from now on.

Godstock was born in 1994, John says, “to get a Christian band and get kids from the local area together.”

But the Rev. Gene Bost of Grace Lutheran said if they’d raise money for the Adam Myers family and another anonymous child who was living with HIV, the Lutheran Brotherhood would match it.

They made a little over $5,000 that became $10,000 — and the Godstock ministry was here.

Its mission, John says, “is to provide financial and spiritual support to chronically ill children and their families” through fund-raisers and support of the local community and churches.

The money, he says, helps pay the bills of a family whose world has been turned upside down by a critically ill child.

“We don’t pay medical bills, but pay living expenses” so a parent faced with the dilemma of going to work to make sure the mortgage gets paid or spending time at the hospital with an ill or dying child can stay with the child. And Godstock doesn’t give money. It pays the bills directly to whom they’re owed.

And the events vary.

“We keep doing different things,” John says. “The ones that work, we keep, and the ones that don’t, we drop and try something else. We want to do a lot of different things so we’re not going after the same people all the time.”

People can help by attending, with money, by donating prizes or sponsoring holes for the golf tournament — and by spreading the word.

All you’ll get in return, he says, is the incredible feeling that comes when you help a family buy precious time with a very ill child.

If you — or your group — want to know more, call 704-857-7011. John wants his phone to ring. Or go to his Web site at www.godstock.org .