THE MARIN FAMILY

 
 

QR CODE FOR
OUR GIVING PAGE

 

CURRENT PRAYER REQUESTS:

  1. To find a spiritual community to be a part of and be poured into.

  2. For the time, health and focus to make disciples.

  3. For God to provide through new financial supporters.

God used action sports to reveal His goodness and plan for our personal lives.
Now, we get to allow God to do the same for others through us.

We are the Marín’s! Julio & Joanne, along with our son Julian and our daughter Juni.

After coming to know God personally through faith in Jesus and understanding that He had a good plan for our lives, Joanne & I by faith walked away from secular careers to begin a life of full-time ministry; for her as a stay-home mother and for me as a Jr. High school youth pastor. Although, at that point, neither one of us had had any formal training as ministers; little did we know that both us were being trained for ministry long before taking those steps of faith.

Shortly after surrendering our lives to God, both of us felt naturally called to serve and share about Jesus with the youth in our community. Through Christian Surfers, we hosted and led a weekly Bible study while also hosting and leading a bi-weekly ministry at our local skatepark, both of which went on for years.

As a stay-home mom, Joanne became a full-time educator to our children for the entirety of their school careers while sharing and serving a community of home-schooled moms and families, not to mention, the many teenagers that came through our home.

For me as a youth pastor, I went on to be discipled and mentored not only by career pastors but also, by a community of men who loved Jesus and shared some of the same passions I did for surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking, snowboarding and young people.

During those years, we learned that everything God called us to was preparing us for whatever He had next. So, after many years of local action sports outreach and 10+ years of full-time ministry as a pastor, God called our family to become missionaries to the Japanese (that’s a whole other story) which embarked us on a journey from Palm Bay, Florida to Long Beach, California. 

In Long Beach, we found ourselves mainly serving the Japanese student population at Cal State University Long Beach and once again what proved to be an effective tool in our hands for sharing Jesus and seeing students' lives transformed was action sports. It was mainly through surfing and skateboarding, we found favor with international students who had come here not only to study or work but to live the California dream.

But in March 2020, it all came to an abrupt end as the Covid pandemic swept across the world. Needless to say, all international students had to go back home, not to be allowed to return for 2 years. In the meantime, all of our ministry went online which proved to be a real challenge (for me personally). It was then that we began praying and looking for new opportunities for ministry as God was clearly bringing that season of our lives to an end. Nevertheless, as God was closing one door, He was opening another with Ride Nature.

After 2 years of mostly online ministry, we received a call from Ride Nature to assist in an upcoming outreach in the LA area. During this time, we took part in 3 different skate outreaches in Long Beach in addition to having the privilege of sharing a little bit of our God story for the filming of the California episode of their To The ENDS Film series.

It was at the end of that time that we started to consider and pray about the possibility of being called into full-time action sports ministry with Ride Nature, especially since Mark (founder of RN) had shared the vision to establish Ride Nature in southern California, and it is the mecca of action sports.

As we considered this opportunity, we thought, “Why not! It was from California that the world has been and continues to be changed through action sports; why not continue to radically change the world from California through the good news of Jesus.”

- Julio and Joanne Marin
julio@ridenature.com
321-806-5553 (Cell)

FInancial Needs:

  • Monthly Support/Salary for our family: $5,500.
    This amount will be fully supporting our family while we are serving alongside the organization and helping to lead the Ride Nature California headquarters.