Wendy & Giff Nielsen: Giving Gifts Back to the World
Giff and Wendy Nielsen have been married for 33 years. They have six children and nine grandchildren. They have lived in Houston for thirty years starting when the Houston Oilers drafted Giff in May 1978. He played quarterback for the team for six years before retiring in May 1984 to join the Channel 11 News anchor team.
The WON Heart Foundation, founded by the Nielsen family has served the Houston community and the world. The mission of this family foundation is to find ways to make the world a stronger, safer, more peaceful place…one heart at a time. The Nielsen family firmly believes that there has never been a greater need for traditional family values and open- hearted generosity to help in healing a troubled world. Some of The Won Heart Foundation successes include raising money to help bridge the gap of the latch-key kid revolution, and hosting a charity golf tournament, which has raised nearly five million dollars for the past 21 years funding the building of Houston area parks and a YMCA after-school program.
Giff is on the executive board of the Boy Scouts of America, Sam Houston Area Council. He has been inducted into the BYU Hall of Fame, the Utah Hall of Fame and into the College Football Hall of Fame.
The most important career accomplishment either of them has is their family. The world needs strong families with loving connections and a desire to reach out and share with communities.
Muslims & Mormons: Quilting for Children of Trauma
The Relief Society, the largest women’s organization in the world, was created as a vehicle for Mormon women and interested friends of other faiths, to reach out in relieving the suffering and respond to urgent needs that present in the world.
In Riverside, California, over 100 women, Mormons and Muslims, engaged in conversation and made quilts for Project Linus–an initiative to provide blankets to children of trauma. The second joint service effort proved fruitful for both recipients and participants.
As Cindy Marinez, writer for Press Enterprise, records:
They sat shoulder to shoulder, Muslim women next to Mormon women, hunched over bright fabric as they learned to quilt.
As the conversations grew comfortable, the women discovered their religions, and their lives, had many common threads.
Their worship, community service, husbands and children, good schools, safe neighborhoods — and the list went on for the more than 100 who met Saturday morning at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Riverside.
Many of the Muslim women–unveiled in this setting of all women, originally came from Pakistan but have established residence in the United States.
Bina Majeed, speaking on behalf of the Muslim women, indicated there was common ground; their religion teaches them “humanity” towards all. Aisha, of the group, also remarked on the similarities of those who otherwise have some distintly different beliefs:
“We start asking how many kids they’ve got,” Mateen said. “We laugh and we all have the same problems.”
“You’d be surprised how universal getting a teenager to clean his room is,” many of the women said with a knowing smile.
This is not a unique experience among Latter-day Saints. Mormons join hands in worldwide service partnerships with Catholic Relief organizations, Islamic charities, and other religious and charitable foundations.