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Note: To receive a daily prayer email from this trip, email info@christiansurfers.com and title Lyle's Prayer Letter.
With summer in full swing, the focus of the surfing world has shifted from its winter North Shore orientation to the Mecca of high performance surfing: Indonesia. If you are a surfer with intentions of traveling there, you are confronted by a number of choices as to how you will experience Indo. There's the boat trip option: live like a surfing rock star, complete with gourmet meals, A/C in the staterooms, video games and DVDs in the main salon. There's the land camp option: everything from gritty G-Land to the 5 star Nihiwatu resort in front of Occy's lefts. There's the Bali option: drive a scooter, hit the night club, get a $5 full body massage.
We're going to Indo this summer, and we are going none of these ways. We're going...Low carbon footprint. No diesel motors of the tour boat. No scooter gridlock in Kuta. No land camp lodging in what used to be a rain forest. Our tour will be "home stay." We'll live with an Indo family in a rural village, taking our meals with them, sleeping under their roof, doing chores with them, and playing backgammon and dominos, I'm sure!
Cheap. We'll be looking at 18 days of Indo adventure for under $1800, which includes our surfing guide, who has lived on the island for five years and has an intimate knowledge of the world class breaks there while also directing us to some hidden gems that few have seen, let alone surfed.
As a family, we are convinced that there are things we can do---experiences that we can have---that can actually transform our lives forever, causing us to love, respect, and trust each other in deeper ways, which will mold our sons into men of character and courage. Experiences that deliver this tend not to be a trip to Disneyland (or even a surfing Disneyland). They tend to be adventures where there is a little danger, a little discomfort and a lot of connecting with people who are under-resourced. Poor people. People who make less than $2 a day, most of whom can neither read nor write. But the lessons they teach can change us in profound ways. And best of all...
On a Mission. Our desire to go moves beyond surfing great waves to sharing Good News. The Good News of Jesus has not penetrated this island. Over a million people live on this island. None of them have seen the Jesus film. None of them have been to a church (because none exists there.) None of them hae read a Bible in their dialect (because none exists.) So...what would happen if a family from California were to spend two weeks living there with the people, loving them as Jesus would, praying for spiritual transformation-partnering with a courageous young family from Huntington Beach, CA who live there full time? I guess we are going to find out.
Do you want to travel with us, through words and images? In conjunction with Shema tours, Dana (the mom), Austin (the college kid), Tyler (the high school kid), Caleb (the other high school kid) and I invite you to pray for us and spread our story as we return.
Yours truly,
Lyle Castellaw
Board of Directors, CSUS
About Lyle Castellaw
Lyle is an Orange County native and resident with 35 years of surfing under his belt. He has made the typical surf travel stops (Hawaii, Baja, Cabo, Costa Rica, El Salvador) but his passion for adventure and desire to assist the poor has led him to spend time in some of the most desperate places in the world: Haiti, India, Iraq and Afghanistan. Lyle is training to get his weight back to what it was in high school in preparation for the trip. He prefers riding a 6-4 x 19 x 2.5 Simon Anderson thruster.
