Well this is just a little fun tid bit. While I was home I got the chance to sit down with some of the local papers. The Cannon Beach Gazette just ran this story..
When it comes to community building, sometimes the board is much mightier than either pen or sword.
The surfboard, that is. Just ask Cannon Beach native Julie Nelson. The 24-year-old surfer has spent her early adult years traveling the world as a sort of humanitarian ambassador for the Oahu-based Surfing the Nations, a non-profit organization that aims to help surfers impact local and international communities through the twin tenets of surfing and service.
During that time, Nelson has seen firsthand the way that surfing ¬- along with generous doses of hope and love - can change lives for the better.
Nelson has made soul friends at falafel stands in Bethlehem, and she's frolicked in the sand with Bedouin youngsters. She's led fellow volunteers on grueling 11-mile backpacking trips and she's watched the sun rise over the Red Sea. And she's only just getting started.
"My parents taught me a love of the ocean, and this opportunity has allowed me to take that love to the nations," she said.
A call to service
In many ways, Nelson's been prepping for her work with STN all her life. Growing up on the North Coast, she was a water baby from an early age.
"I've always been in the water, teaching surfing and just being heavily involved in the surf culture," she said.
Her mother, Debbie Nelson, recalls a "very sensitive and very athletic" girl who loved to be outdoors and was crazy about the ocean.
As a teen, Nelson worked at Cannon Beach Surf Shop, where she washed wetsuits, helped out around the shop, and benefited from the mentoring of owner Mark Mekenas, who encouraged her to hone and share her skills.
"Julie was one of these kids that had drive, so we just kind of kept pushing her to do more and more, and we taught her to be an instructor," he said. "She was always a hardworking kid."
After high school, Nelson attended University of Oregon, where she studied journalism. She'd grown up in a deeply religious family, and when graduation came, she started thinking seriously about how she could use her time and talents to minister to those who suffered. Her thoughts turned to the sport that had shaped her so profoundly, and how she might share that gift with others.
So she got on the computer, Googled "three-month surf outreach," and picked up a trail that would lead her to STN and its octopus of internships, programs and outreaches.
Nelson initially committed to a three-month internship working for founders Tom and Cindy Bauer at STN headquarters in Wahiawa, Oahu. A year-and-a-half later, she's still there, now as a full-blown volunteer staff member.
Nelson currently holds the positions of Leadership Coordinator and Waianae Surf Club Director. Her work with STN has taken her all over the planet, from Egypt, Israel and Jordan to Sri Lanka to Indonesia, but there is also plenty of work to be done right outside the front doors of STN's offices.
‘Surfing is our common language'
Wahiawa, a stop-off on the way to Hawaii's fabled North Shore, is a rough place by anyone's standards. Poverty runs rampant, and local kids often grow up surrounded by drugs and domestic abuse. STN is positioned right in the thick of it, on ‘Ohai Street, known to the locals as "Blood Alley" for its violent reputation.
When Nelson first arrived, STN's main office (house in an old bar) and the apartment complex where she and the other volunteers live were surrounded by a porn shop, a strip club and a market hawking a variety of dubious products.
It was "the ghetto of the ghetto," according to Nelson.
STN has worked to counteract the scourge at home and abroad through a multitude of outreach programs built up around surfing, which Nelson describes as an inherently community- and trust-building activity.
"Tom founded the organization based on the idea of surfers giving back," Nelson said. "We're bringing the message of love and hope through the nations. Surfing is our common language, no matter the nation."
The work of STN changes as the needs of the places it serves change, but reaching out to the youngest members of society is always key. In Wahiawa, STN offers local kids language lessons, hip-hop lessons, swim, surf, life skills lessons, and the benefit of stable, loving role models.
STN focuses on finding simple solutions that respond to basic needs, and the formula is gaining ground.
"We saw a huge need for kids to be mentored and loved on," Nelson said. "We see the needs and we respond. These kids are missing consistency, commitment, love and hope, so through our actions and our lifestyles we show that."
It is work that can't help but change you, even as you're busy changing the world for others. When Nelson describes her adventures since graduating school, the word "blessed" comes up over and over.
Brave also belongs in there: she's negotiated illegal border crossings and mighty language barriers, and she's learned to barter hard, to travel and eat like a local.
Don't mistake the work she does for tourism, though. Nelson and the other STN volunteers live spartanly, and they travel that way, too, with the bulk of their luggage allowance dedicated to packing in gifts and supplies for the natives in the spots they visit.
‘I'm right where I'm supposed to be'
Debbie Nelson loves the fact that Julie Nelson has found a way to turn her love of surfing into a ministry.
"She has wandering toes so I think this suits her really well," she said. "When I came back from visiting her [in Hawaii] the last time, I described her in one word, a verb: ‘thriving.' She's where she should be. These are her people."
Mekenas, too, is proud of the woman Nelson has become. Throughout the years, he's hired and mentored many local kids, but she was one of the first, and he says the success of the local girl he still fondly refers to as "Bird" is a testament to the way a little positive regard can help a kid to turn a passion into a life calling.
"She's making a difference and I'm behind her," he said. "She's a driven person and I have nothing but the highest respect for that kid."
For her part, Julie Nelson is thrilled with the place Wahiawa is becoming. STN is now the largest private distributor of food on Oahu. The owner of the neighborhood porn shop recently sold the building to STN, a change which Nelson credits fully to ardent prayer. They've turned the place into offices and a community area. For Halloween this year, they held a festival in the parking lot for kids who had up till then been too afraid to trick or treat in their own neighborhood. The sketchy market recently shut down, so STN bought that, too. Today, it is being transformed into a family-friendly shave ice shop. Now, they've set their sights on taking over the strip club.
"Before you came, I was scared," one local boy told her. "Now, I'm not scared anymore."
Each night, Nelson goes to sleep beneath a sign given to her by her mother that reads: "I may not have gone where I intended to go. But I think I have ended up where I intended to be."
Indeed, she seems to have hit upon a magical formula, one that encompasses all the things she knows and loves the very best: surfing, writing, faith, photography and teaching.
Nelson can't help but feel she's being guided by the hand of God as she moves forward.
"I'm right where I'm supposed to be," she said. "When we're where we're supposed to be and our passions are lined up with our faith as our drive, there's nothing else to do but go ... We're called to love people."
Surfing the Nations - along with Julie Nelson and her fellow volunteers - depends on donations to do its work around the world. To learn more about volunteering or contributing, go online to www.surfingthenations.com. Checks can also be sent to Julie Nelson C/O Surfing the Nations, PO Box 860366, Wahiawa, HI, 97786. Make checks payable to: Surfers Church. Questions? Email Julie Nelson at Julie.nelson@surfingthenations.com.
If you want to read the article online go to The CB GAZETTE. ( a few pictures to go along with it)
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