Merry Christmas video from STN

Christmas Fun 2011 from Surfing The Nations on Vimeo.

The wonderful Joel Schat, visited us a little while back and we used his video skills to make a fun christmas video....it was all done in one take!

I sent this to my mom to remind her what I looked like. She didnt think that joke was very funny at all.

our attempt at a christmas photo shoot...

when you live with people and work with people....and in the middle of the pacific ocean...this is what your family christmas pictures look like. insert a bag of doritos and some lights and this is what you get....

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas...

somebody turned 4 today...

celebrating lei':)

it's time to start bloggin' again......

wahiawa is great and one of the perks of being a part of the community are all the cute local kids. our community impact team organized a bbq at the apartments down the street and a couple of us were able to go out and hang out with our neighbors and eat some good food (also a perk). it was quite the chilly night, and i learned that it actually gets cold in wahiawa and while complainin' over the weather, a swede told me...."if you were born a swede that wouldn't be a problem." as if i could fix anything about that. i also learned that there is such thing as a blind man's camera, shell and kristin (the couple in the front) are blind and the whole time this picture was being taken he was makin' fun of cobe tellin' him that he doesn't even know how to work a blind man's camera....the camera actually talks and tells you what to do.

the cute little girls pictured above (well, besides me...) are selena and jazminn. selena is a dear and has a big surgery on her vocal chords next week, and jazminn is a big bunch of sass and likes to make you chase her around.

a new day:)

another glimpse into stn off-time....plus this is a great song:)

some wahiawa lovin'

God is doing some amazing things in Wahiawa, and I just wanted to take some time and share a little bit of history of where I live and work. When I first flew out to Hawaii, I was asked where I was going and when I answered, "Wahiawa," the lady sitting next to me offered me to go to her place and told me not to go there. Little did I know that God would lead me there several months later. HA! Wahiawa is the gateway to the North Shore, and has been avoided due to the drugs, violence, and sex trafficking that takes place (directly on the street we live on). Most people avoid walking the streets and just last night, I listened to one of our Aunties (who grew up here) share about the gangs that would just walk this street with their guns, this has always been a place where you don't want to tell people you live....and I live right in the center of it, and LOVE IT. so it was pretty exciting when Tom Bauer (founder of STN) pulled out this sign, and our hope is to get more local businesses to sponsor the I LOVE WAHIAWA campaign and show their pride for this town and bringing back the hope of transformation to this community. As we walked over, a couple of the Ulupono kids followed and were so excited and already striking poses in front of it before Tom even had it up. It was adorable to see these kids with the biggest smiles on their faces, pose in front of this sign, and be proud of where they live and the positive change that is happening here. we expect EXTRAORDINARY things for Wahiawa and hope that one day you can come visit and be a part of the change:)

support for bangladesh....

The countdown to get support for Bangladesh continues.....and for a limited time I will be selling headbands, here is a preview of a few....if your interested in purchasing one, you can email me at venessa.rude@surfingthenations.com and I will post up some more pictures once they are finished. if you would like to help me go, you can donate at www.surfingthenations.com.

baloha!!

support me in going back to bangladesh:)

the bangladesh team leaves stn in exactly one month, which means that God is going to do a HUGE miracle and blow me away by providing $2,100. i have been selling baloha shirts, headbands, journals, jewelry....and i even made my debut dressed as a Oreo Cookie at the fair taking pictures with kids. my next step, is to ask you, my supporters, friends, and family. please partner with me and surfing the nations and help get me back to bangladesh.

if you are interested you can donate at www.surfingthenations.com and enter "support" and "venessa rude" in the note. any amount of support would work, prayer support or financial support....pray for a miracle....and please be a part of this miracle! i will keep a countdown going til the day of departure.......thank you and baloha!!

how we spend our lunch breaks....:)

so emily thought it would be fun to teach le'i how to leg wrestle...we each took turns and it was a great way to end our lunch break and i just had to capture it all on video:)

restoration

still in the process of cleaning out the old porn shop and today we got to put our stn seal on the window. its incredible watching the restoration of this old building and in the last three weeks so much has changed in the building. we have a team from high desert church in victorville, that is volunteering their time to tear down walls, paint, and clean out rooms. last night, we were praying in the corner of a little room (that i had never stepped foot in because it was covered in boxes) during our all-night prayer, and i was dreading praying in the middle of the night because i used to get so spooked in that building and how dark it was. i felt so much light and overwhelmed at all that God has done through people that take the time to come out here and give their sweat and their hearts to the transformation of these buildings and this community.

Video Update......:)

forgot to post this video up....:)

surfer's cafe

the grand opening of our surfers cafe was a great success! we kicked it off with our alive art show which included some STN artists doing a live painting and vendors that filled our market. to top it off, we had the pleasure of having Josh Garrels fly all the way out from portland and perform. the coffee lounge was packed and full of warmth and laughter! what formerly was a bar is now a place for people to come and take a break and have a conversation over a cup of coffee or an acai bowl:) looking forward to holding more events in our coffee house, plus its such a great perk walking down the stair of our apartment and having our very own place to get caffeine.

baloha

working on some new shirts to sell to help me raise support for bangladesh in september. these shirts were created to spark the baloha spirit amongst our communities. baloha fuses together STN Hawaii's island spirit with the warmth of the Bangladesh Surf Club. It comes from the word "aloha" which means hello, love, and life and the bangla word "balo" which means good.

i will be selling the shirts at the alive art show on july 18th (with some other creations). i am also doing mail-orders and if your interested in buying one to help support me in going to bangladesh then you can e-mail me at: venessa.rude@surfingthenations.com and you can either write a check or send money to me through paypal, and send it to hopevenessa@gmail.com or at : venessa rude; c/o surfing the nations; p.o. box 860366; wahiawa, hi. 96786.

the shirts are $20 plus an additional $2 for shipping and handling:) i will post up more pictures soon of the other stuff i made.

aloha!!!!

forgot to post this up, but thought i would share it now.

we have a live art show coming up in a couple of weeks and i will be selling a few things at it to fundraise my way back to bangladesh:) i will post up some of the stuff this weekend and if your interested in any of the things you can contact me at venessa.rude@surfingthenations.com

after hours....

i had so much footage from this last week, that it led to this lil' video. it covers our graduation with the interns, after work hours, our local prayer time, and feeding the hungry.

we leave tomorrow for our big sls adventure trip on the big island. we will spend a few days backpacking on the south side of the island, so please pray for our safety and the unity of our team.

in other news, my madre got married this last weekend! dave and her tied the knot at a chapel in vegas, i will have to post some pictures from their special day....i was disappointed i couldn't be there but hope to go home in september for her 50th birthday!

if you could also throw up some prayer for me, its been a rough couple of weeks and i have not been fully present here in my heart, so pray that i would serve wahiawa with my whole heart and for preparation for bangladesh in september!!

the last two weeks......

so i am trying to be better about making videos every few weeks of stn moments....most of them are on our time off, but i have a little on here from our colors of hope art show (which includes a clip of some of my pictures) and a parade we were in for the pineapple festival for wahiawa. a couple of our ulupono kids hopped in the truck with us and joined us and we all volunteered nd took surveys at the fair. hope to get more of these up:) enjoy:)

big wednesday!

we do this wonderful thing called "BIG WEDNESDAY" on wednesdays, and a person gets the opportunity to share about something they love or are passionate about for about an hour....so since cinco de mayo was the following day, i decided to do mine cinco de mayo style...pinata and all!! this was the first time for some of our swedes to experience how great a pinata is....here is a video from our day!

our art show...

so i made this little video on my phone of our art show, wanted to give you a taste of our night!

our 'ohai ho'ike art show was a hit and not even the rain could keep the people from showing up and the kids from dancing. the bar where we usually meet was turned into a coffee lounge with live music by two of our wonderfully talented interns and our new building that was once a porn shop was transformed to a art gallery and a stage for the kids to perform their tahitian dancing and music. the kids had the biggest smiles as they walked around the walls that displayed their beautiful art. the rooms were crowded and the atmosphere was perfect and we are excited for the recognition our kids got last night. we are stoked for our next event! thanks to everyone who made it out!

5th Annual Freedom Surf Contest!!!

We just wrapped up our 5th annual freedom surf contest and it was a huge success! we were so blessed to have some amazing sponsors who were so generous to donate brand new surfboards, paddles, and clothes! the crowd and contestants were great and all of our sun-burned volunteers worked their butts off but still had joyful attitudes!

i was assigned to kid's activities, so we ran the games every hour for the families. we had tug-o-war, water balloon tosses, and a dance-off....it was hilarious watching people! i will be posting up more pictures up soon from the event and the new video that the media team is working on!

what we will be hosting this weekend!

Freedom Surf Contest 2010 from Surfing The Nations on Vimeo.

Here is a clip of the annual Freedom Surf Contest we are having this weekend in Waikiki! We have been hard at work getting ready for this event so please pray for us!! Its a great ministry outreach and we have some amazing sponsors and prizes!!!

our new building!!

thought i would share more about the new building we just got. what was formerly the porn shop is now surfing the nations headquarters. it is right next door and we are so excited about the new space we have....it has been quite the extra work but we are cleaning it out and were able to move our offices over and we now have a pantry in there for us, and extra storage for our Feeding the Hungry program. hopefully, now we will have less cockroaches in our apartments now! and now we have more room for staff housing and we will be opening up the building next weekend for the big art show next week for our ulupono program with the kid's artwork! so everyone has been working extra hours but the lack of sleep has been worth it! i cant tell you how much of a blessing/miracle this new building has been and we are praying for wisdom for the best ways we can use this building and give back to our community! here are some pictures of the work so far that is going on, a big chalkboard was donated to us for potential use for a coffee shop we may open someday!! i will post more pictures this week of the work they are doing, and of the upcoming art shows:)

aloha!

thought i would introduce some of my roomies and our kitchen! we are missing two drawers and luckily, i am far enough away that you cant see the ants and cockroaches:)

we had a graduation for a couple of our interns last thursday night so i will be posting pictures and telling stories more about that later this week. the top picture is from the graduation outside our bar with good ol' fuzz.

and the bottom picture is a familiar sight, who doesn't get tired of a double rainbow?!! and i love that its right over our new building that we are currently fixing up.....im hoping tomorrow to get pictures up of the inside of it:) also i will be adding things to pray for!

its one of our busiest weeks, and we are working the big surf contest all weekend so i am going to get stuff up on here this week since i will be insanely busy this weekend.

welcome to wahiawa:)

just finished my first week in sls! it was quite the week of busyness and i still am processing all the information that is given to me...and im exhausted!! so this is what a full-time job feels like! we worked on saturday for the food bank, we stood on street corners with orange vests, some people were dressed like spam or dinosaurs and held out nets for cars in order to raise money for the food bank. it was a long weekend, but well worth having monday off and enjoying a wonderful hike with the girls...i will have to post some pictures from that adventure later this week after i have introduced to you my new home!!

so this is wahaiwa...we live on ohai street in that beautiful picture of the apartment complex with the rainbow next to it. all the photos were taken by the talented mike slagter. i live in the room on the top floor on the far right overlooking the great view of a parking lot and shoes hanging from a power line ha!! the bottom picture is the front of our Surfing the Nations headquarters at night. we are the lime green building on the left and we live in the apartment complex right behind it. we use the main room with the windows (it used to be a bar) as our meeting room, we do worship, after school tutoring and programs, surfer's church, and big events in that building! and as of a few weeks ago, that beautiful yellow building in the middle is now ours too!! it used to be a big porn shop, and now it will be used as storage for our feeding the hungry, a pantry for us, offices, and possibly a coffee shop ministry, and meeting rooms! i will write more about that and post pictures of it as we do construction, it has been such a blessing!!

this week i will be posting more pictures of our property so you can see where i live, and i can post pictures of all the programs we are doing so you can get a sense of what we do here and my supporters and prayer partners can see what i do here!! and if you havent gotten a chance check out the video below:) we have another art show coming up for the kids in two weeks!!!!:)

Wahiawa Is Awesome! from Surfing The Nations on Vimeo.

just wanted to share a video of what God has been doing in wahiawa. i arrived on monday with surfing the nations and my adventure has begun. i have a lot on my plate but im excited to see the growth here.

A NEW CHAPTER.......

some BIG news: i'm moving to hawaii to work with surfing the nations in a little over a week. so this blog will be used for more updates and hopefully i can keep up with some of my creations on the side.

starting april 14th, i will be joining sls (surfer's leadership school) and committing a year to join staff with stn. after spending the last three months in their internship, i felt God tugging my heart to this next big chapter.

what exactly will i be doing the next three months?

"Surfer’s Leadership School (SLS) is a 3-month program designed to better equip our new staff members as they enter into their commitment to serve with Surfing The Nations. Each student will discover their unique strengths of leadership, team building, and how they can impact their community most effectively. The program involves class discussions, guest speakers, teamwork activities, event planning, and an apprenticeship within STN."

what is surfing the nations?

"Surfing The Nations impacts local and international communities through the sport of surfing and selfless service by meeting needs and changing lives. We live by our motto of “surfers giving back,” and our desire is to see lives changed, of those who we serve, as well as of the individuals within our organization serving. Our hope is that as they learn to love and serve others, they will grow into positions of leadership and maturity themselves.

Locally, we have one of the largest food distribution sites on the island of O’ahu. Feeding The Hungry caters to Hawaii´s needy, disabled, homeless, and working poor populations. We also reach out to at-risk youth in our high school and college outreach programs, and make annual trips to the neighbor islands of Hawai’i, Lana’i, Kaua’i, Maui and Molokai. Internationally, Surfing the Nations makes annual trips to Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Israel and Egypt and bring clothing, toys, supplies and the serving surf culture."

i am really excited about this next year, the only thing that has freaked me out about this decision is the fact that now i am a full-time volunteer...which means, i get to raise support. so please be praying for me, and for creative ideas on how to fundraise. my goal is to raise $900 a month. if you would like to support me you can go here and put in the note column that is support for venessa rude. all donations are tax deductible on the website. or you can send checks to the address below. also your prayers would be very much appreciated!!! pray that i surrender my ALL to the lord and to trust his plans for my life. pray for comfort for the times i may get lonely and miss what once was my home. and if you want to write me letters (this would make me so happy!!!), send them also to the adress below:

Venessa Rude
c/o Surfing the Nations
P.O. Box 860366
Wahiawa, HI.96786

top picture: my baptism at pipeline on the north shore. i couldn't have asked for better people to baptize me.

bottom picture: our annual freedom skate contest in moloka'i.