September 15, 2023
“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
~ Lamentations 3:21-23 NRSV
When we first arrived in Maui, we felt like strangers in a strange land. We were! We were over 4,000 miles from home, in a tropical climate, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a one-way ticket. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes that first morning was one of the biggest cockroaches I’d even seen, on the ceiling, directly over my nose. The people I met seemed to be speaking English, but I couldn’t make out more than a few words because of the accent sprinkled liberally with pidgin.
We started visiting churches the first Sunday after landing. The closest Brethren in Christ Church (the denomination we’d spent most of our adult life in) was 2,500 miles due east. We visited a Methodist church on the one Sunday a month that held a joint service with their sister Tongan Congregation. The Tongan men wore skirts of grass. We visited a Nazarene church that met in a room at the local recreation center. We visited an Episcopal Church. We visited Makawao Union Church, the home church for plantation owners back in the 1800’s that split from congregational churches over the issue of slavery.
Then one fateful Sunday we visited Po’okela United Church of Christ. An older man introduced himself as Bob Johnson, and we discovered we lived within a few blocks of each other. He asked for our phone number. The next morning, he called to invite me to join the weekly bible study lunch that met in his home. I knew no one aside from Rod on island. I was in seminary, via the internet with people from the mainland. I was a lonely stranger in a strange land. That was the beginning of our journey with the United Church of Christ. People were friendly in most of the churches we visited, but Bob was the only one who reached out with a gesture of friendship.
It’s amazing 22 years later to realize that one phone call, one invitation to a stranger changed so much. God’s steadfast love and mercy touched me, touched Rod, on what seemed like a random morning. Great is God’s faithfulness.
Mahalo nui loa, Bob. Thank you very much Bob. God bless you!
Wayfinding 