World champion unicyclist imparts life lessons at KVCS

Spinning in circles, dancing, riding down a flight of stairs backwards, juggling fire, all the while riding unicycles that range in height from five to 10 feet in front of a room full of elementary-school kids.

Don’t worry - he’s a professional.

World Champion Unicyclist Dustin Kelm visited the Kootenai Valley Christian School on Tuesday, where he was greeted by cheers, laughs and gasps from both students and teachers.

Kelm is more than just a competitor, he also blends an inspiring message with entertainment.

At KVCS, Kelm told that at the age of 10, Kelm asked for a unicycle for Christmas. He said he had quite a few things in his Christmas list that year, but the last item on the list was a unicycle.

He received his gift, but as most skills go, he had to practice quite a bit.

Weaving in this story with his show, Kelm read a biblical passage from Isaiah, “Young men stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will reveal their strength.”

He told the students that he started to learn the unicycle by placing his faith in God, but somewhere along the line he started to feel lost.

At the age of 15, everything looked like it was going really well for Kelm. He was winning awards and setting records, but he said he was “peddling his unicycle in reverse.”

He said that he felt like that because he had a lot of issues going on at home. His father was divorcing his mother, and he didn’t understand how his Christain family could be torn apart.

After watching the movie “Chariots of Fire” when he was a teenager, he was inspired to follow in the footsteps of movie’s main character and real person, the 1924 Olympics winner Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who ran competitively, while simutanously spreading God’s message to his fans.

“When I watched that I remember thinking, this is a tool that I can use that gets people’s attention and gives me the opportunity to share how God has changed my life,” Kelm said.

Now, Kelm travels around the world spreading the Word.

“At one point, the unicycling was a performance,” Kelm said. “Now, I do it because I want to make Jesus famous. He’s the reason I ride, he’s the reason I live. There were times in my life where I felt like there wasn’t anything worth living for, and I thought the only thing to end the pain I had was to kill myself. But I know that Jesus saved me, and he gave me a reason and a purpose to live, and to share the hope and joy that he’s given me with others. That’s why I travel around and do this program, whether it’s here for 50 kids, or in some places where we’ve done shows for 5,000 or 15,000 — it doesn’t matter.”