A M essage f r om t h e Haw aii PAAM M oder at or WALLS AND BRIDGES
Mama Kahu Linda and I were able to visit China and one of our most memorable memories is the visit to the Great Wall of China. It was built over the centuries beginning in 700 B.C. til 1644 and spans some 5,500 miles. It was built with the main focus of protecting and keeping safe the various Chinese states against raids and invasions. What was built to separate and keep people apart today is actually a bridge and meeting place for millions of people to gather. People from all over the world come together and there is a plaque today which states that it has become a "gathering place" of nations. In many ways we are at a time in the church where many of the walls which have kept us separate from each other are coming down and we're working together to lift up each other 's culture and history. We're excited that Hawaii's Pu alan i M u r ak i is on the UCC National Executive Council. And that we are all trying now to work with various aspects of our UCC church denomination and other religious and world organizations to continue to build bridges of understanding. We are excited that the Hawaii Conference
now has re-birthed the Micronesian Council knowing that we have some 40 UCC related Micronesian churches in Hawaii. That group has now met several times on the Big Island. Hawaii PAAM is going to be hosting a virtual video series on Micronesia beginning on Monday, February 18 at 7PM. (Look for more details in this magazine). At the same time we're also focusing on the rich history our Hawaiian churches have with our Micronesian churches. Together we can help each other grow in many ways. Hawaii PAAM is putting together our own UCC Polity Course with a focus on our indigenous stories and history. We invite not only persons interested in ministry wishing to take a class UCC polity, but all to re-discover the history of Native Christianity in the Pacific which began over 400 years ago. Our Hawaii PAAM Canoe is getting ready to set sail. For such a time as this that the winds of change are blowing. We're paddling together and moving forward. Hoe A Mau! Kahu Rennie Mau Hawaii PAAM Moderator
UPCOM ING EVENTS AND ANNOUNCEM ENTS AHEC Ah a Halaw ai February 8-9 Kalapana Maunakea Church JAPANESE AM ERICAN Day of Rem ber an ce Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Join PAAM at GENERAL SYNOD
Haw aii PAAM Video Ser ies M ICRONESIA 7PM beginning on Monday, February 18th
PAAM Din n er , Su n day, Ju n e 23r d
Hawaii PAAM Facebook Group
Visit ou r PAAM Boot h
HCUCC Ch u r ch Leader s Even t Saturday, February 23
Haw aii PAAM Of f icer s Moderator: Kahu Rennie Mau Acting Pastor, Ewa Community Church Vice Moderator: Pastor Jordan Gallen, Jr. Pearl City Pohnpei Church UCC Secretary: Kaki Benejal
Nuuanu Congregational Church M ICRONESIAN M INISTRIES GATHERINGS March 9-22 various islands WALK TO JERUSALEM Pr oject Begins March 6 Ewa Community Church
Oahu Hawaii Marshallese Church Treasurer: Tammie Kurashige Kawaiahao Church
M ar sh allese Nu cleu r Rem ber an ce Day Saturday, March 9th, 10AM
Youth/Young Adult: Reiko Titong
Kailua-Kona
on the cover: Pastor Jele and wife Kaki with the children of the Hawaii Oahu Marshallese Church
PEARL CITY POHNPEI CHURCH CELEBRATION 10AM, Saturday, March 23 Old Stadium Park - Honolulu
News items and articles can be sent in to Hawaii PAAM for our next issue. Deadline March 15, 2019
PAAM Su n day Apr il 28, 2019
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AHA PAEAINA June 5-8 Kaumakapili Church, Honolulu
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Haw aii PAAM
WATCH PARTY on FACEBOOK Live Haw aii PAAM Gr ou p Haw aii PAAM Video Ser ies on M icr on esia JOIN US on the following dates on our Hawaii PAAM Facebook Group Page for
our "watch party" series and discussions on Micronesia. Dialogue with some of our PAAM leaders. 7PM on the Mondays listed below.
M on day, Febr u ar y 18 Bein g M icr on esian in t h e USA an d Haw aii M on day, Febr u ar y 25 M ar sh allese M in ist r y M on day, M ar ch 4 Poh n pei M in ist r y
M ar sh all Islan ds Nu clear Vict im Rem em br an ce Day
M on day, M ar ch 11 Ch u u k ese M in ist r y M on day, M ar ch 25 Kosr ae M in ist r y
For m or e in f or m at ion please con t act Kah u Ren n ie M au @ k ah u m au @gm ail.com
M ar ch 9, 2019 Old Kon a Air por t Recr eat ion Cen t er
begin s at 10 AM Kailu a Kon a, Haw aii Islan d
Hist or y of t h e Gospel f r om Haw aii t o M icr on esia Ron ald Fu jiyosh i, Ju ly 2017 The Gospel landed on Hawai` i Island at Kawaihae on March 30, 1820. But how did the Gospel get from Hawai` i to Micronesia? Much of the story of how the Gospel went from Hawai` i to Micronesia is connected to Hawai` i Island. [Native Hawaiian missionaries played an important role in spreading the Gospel to Micronesia. The knowledge about these ties between Hawai` i and Micronesia should be known so it can build stronger ties for the future.] I first heard the story of how the Gospel got from Hawai` i to Micronesia from the late Mr. Billy Paris of Lanakila Church in Kona. Billy Paris passed away on Nov. 14, 2015. His great-grandfather was John Davis Paris, a missionary who arrived in Hawai` i in 1841 and founded the Kauahaao church in Waiohinu, at the southern tip of Hawai` i Island. His first wife Mary Green died in 1847, just six years after arriving in Hawai` i, leaving two daughters (Anna Matilda and Mary Aletta). The ministry in the Ka` u district of Hawai` i Island was isolated and difficult; there were no other missionaries nearby. In November of 1849, John D. Paris and his two daughters were returning to the East Coast on the ship Montreal. At the Cape Horn the ship got stuck in the doldrums for two weeks without wind to
sail onward. John D. Paris and another missionary Rev. C.B. Andrews heard from the first mate on board that chiefs and people of Micronesia were desirous to have missionaries come and teach them. John D. Paris then drafted a proposal that was taken to the Prudential Committee which resulted in a decision to send five missionary couples to Micronesia. John D. Paris believed that the mark of a mature church was to send out missionaries. Although the church in Hawai` i was just twenty-nine years old (29), John D. Paris included native Hawaiian missionaries in the proposal to send missionaries to Micronesia. This was something brand new. The first two Hawaiian couples that were commissioned as missionaries to Micronesia were Daniel Opunui and his wife Doreka (Kahoolua) who went to Kosrae; and Berita Kaaikaula and his wife Debora (Kimiala) who went to Rohnkitti, Pohnpei. These two couples were chosen from fourteen Hawaiian couples who volunteered to go as missionaries to Micronesia. On July 6th, 1852 (165 years ago!), these two couples together with three Caucasian missionary couples commissioned by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), were voted as the founding members of ?The Mission Church of Micronesia.? The three white ABCFM
missionaries were 1) Benjamin G. and Lydia V. Snow, 2) Albert A. Sturgess and his wife Susan Mary Thompson, and 3) Luther Halsey and Louisa Gulick. Luther Halsey Gulick, being the son of missionaries in Hawaii, was the only ABCFM missionary who could speak Hawaiian. On July 15, 1852, the five missionary couples left Hawai` i on the ship ?Caroline.? Please take another look at a map of Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean. Twenty days from Honolulu the Caroline landed at Butaritari in Kiribati (what was then known as the Gilbert Islands). Eleven days sailing westward the ship sighted Kosrae (in what was then known as the Carolines). The date was August 21, 1852. Can I interrupt and ask you, ?Why did the first missionaries land in Kosrae and NOT on Ebon in the Marshall Islands?? (Yes, the Marshallese people had the reputation of being ?killers of whalers.? King Kaibuke was said to have issued a decree to kill all sailors who came to the Marshalls because of the history of sailors raping Marshallese women.) In 1852 on Kosrae, at the invitation of the king, one Caucasian couple and one Hawaiian couple were assigned to create a mission station. Benjamin and Lydia Snow teamed with Daniel and Doreka Opunui. The Caroline sailed on to Pohnpei arriving on September 10th, 1852. At Rohnkitti, the rest of the missionary couples moved into a borrowed dwelling. Later, Luther Halsey and Louisa Gulick moved to Shalong Point on Pohnpei while Albert
and Susan Mary Sturgess and Berita and Debora Kaaikaula stayed at Rohnkitti to continue the work there. You need to know how difficult it was for these first Hawaiian missionaries. Nancy Morris wrote, ?(T)he Americans experienced great difficulty in accepting Hawaiians as members of the ministerial brotherhood. Ordination of Hawaiians posed particular problems.? Morris wrote, ?The first two Hawaiian missionary families stationed on Kosrae and Ponape were called ?helpers?to the haole missionaries, and, in actuality, were considered to be little more than servants.? Can you imagine two families who could not speak the same language, coming from different cultures, where one is considered the helper to the other, living together in the same house? Berita Kaaikaula requested in a letter on August 21, 1953, ?to separate our eating and a separate house for our children. . . . Hawaiians are unaccustomed to eat together with Caucasians and it is well for us to eat separately.? The letter took more than seven months to reach Hawai` i and the request was denied. There were other incidents recorded in the letters that were written back by the missionaries. If you have a chance, please go to the Mission House Library in back of Kawaiahao Church to read the letters for yourselves. The Hawaiians wrote in Hawaiian but there are translations of the letters on file. Kaaikaula died on the field due to ?copious hemorrhage from the stomach? after serving less than seven years. So in 1852, the first Hawaiian missionaries
landed in Micronesia, just thirty-two years after the Gospel was brought to Hawai` i. All together, seventy-nine (79) Hawaiian missionaries were sent abroad serving in what are now the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia (between 1852 and 1909). Most of the church history books do not include the names of the Hawaiian missionaries that went abroad. We are indebted to people like Rev. Tuck Wah Lee,
Simeon K. Nawaa and especially to Dr. Nancy Jane Morris who wrote her PhD history thesis in 1987, Hawaiian Missionaries Abroad, 1852-1909, a 436 page thesis written mainly from the letters of the Hawaiian missionaries in the Hawaiian language, letters Dr. Morris translated herself. I have prepared a chart of the early missionaries to Micronesia and the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia for you to have in your library so that these names will not be forgotten. 1. The sending out of missionaries was considered a mark of a mature church. Simeon K. Nawaa, one of the outstanding lay pastors in Hawai` i and himself the child of missionaries who went to Micronesia, wrote, ?In 1851, a practical conviction developed in Hawaii that the islands could not rise to an independent existence as a Christian nation without developing the spirit of foreign missions. . . . It was proposed to establish a new mission in one or more of the groups of coral islands westward, called Micronesia, 2000 miles distant. It was believed
that the Hawaiian churches would support the missionaries sent from their own number.? And they did! ?In the period of fifty years, the Hawaiians themselves raised $112,000 for the Micronesian and Marquesan missions, besides sending one-fourth of all the ministers who had been ordained among the Hawaiians, a total of thirty pastors and missionaries, to this splendid work.? Reverend Titus Coan, pastor of Haili Church in Hilo suggested that the Sunday School children take shares as a means of obtaining money to build a mission vessel, the first Morning Star that arrived in Honolulu on April 24, 1857. 2. Although we may not want to admit to some hard negative realities that play a large role in this work, it may be helpful for us to name these realities. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus sent his disciples two by two out into the world. Upon their return Jesus said to them. ?I send you out as sheep among wolves. Be wise as a serpent and innocent as doves.? (Matthew 10:16) The negative realities of racism and greed have been present in history and affected the mission of the church of Jesus Christ in various ways. 3. Evaluating the effectiveness of the first Hawaiian missionaries is difficult to do from the information available. The two Hawaiian couples chosen from among fourteen Hawaiian couples who volunteered to be missionaries must have had their own talents. Very little is known of Daniel Opunui. He was educated at Lahainaluna and the support for him came from the students and graduates of Lahainaluna. He was not ordained. We know a little more about Berita Kaaikaula who was born around the year 1800. When Berita was about 44 years old, he sailed with his wife to Oregon to work for the Hudson Bay Company. He managed to save six hundred dollars, no small feat, since the average wage paid by the Company was ten dollars a month. Returning
to Hawai` i, Kaaikaula became a deacon for Rev. Lowell Smith at Kaumakapili Church. Kaumakapili Church sponsored and supported the Kaaikaulas, but they were forced to leave their two young children behind in Honolulu. One thing that we know is that upon the death of Berita Kaaikaula in Pohnpei, his widow Debora Kimiala returned to Hawai` i. A younger man, Hezekiah Aea from Puna of Hawai` i Island asked her to be his wife as he needed to be married to be sent on the mission field. The seven years experience of Doreka Kimiala on Pohnpei (Ronkitti) must have served her well as the Aeas spent twelve productive years as missionaries in the Marshall Islands from 1860 through 1872. 4. Finally, John Davis Paris would probably have returned home for good had he not heard the first mate share his story on board the Montreal and felt that this was God telling him to write the proposal to send missionaries, including the first Hawaiian missionaries to Micronesia. Instead he married Mary Carpenter, a woman he had known when he was in seminary in
Bangor, Maine and returned to Hawai` i and is known for the number of churches he built. Sometimes humans may be at their lowest point when God sends his Holy Spirit to revive and empower his disciples to be witnesses to the ends of the earth. Amen? [I hope there are some budding historians here who will add to this history of the Gospel being taken to the ends of the earth and share it with the world. I will leave for the JRD library two charts. One lists all the known Hawaiian and Caucasian missionaries between 1852 and 1909. The other lists the known early missionaries that came to the Marshall Islands. I also have pages from the thesis of Nancy Morris on the Hawaiian missionaries that came to the Marshall Islands, and pages from Nancy Morris?new book that she is writing about Hawaiian pastors.]
Su n day Sch ool Cr af t Ideas Submitted by Kelcey Bufil, Haili Church Materials Needed: -
Coconut fronds Glue Craft Glue Popsicle Sticks
Instructions: 1-Soak the fronds in a bucket of water until it?s pliable enough to cut. 2-Wipe off any dirt or debris. 3-Shape into form of a canoe and glue it edges together. -
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Use clothes pins to help hold it in place. Leave it to dry on open air,. Using a clothesline is helpful. Use a small piece of clay and glue it on the middle. This is to secure the sail. Use a popsicle stick to hicks the sail in place. The sail is made by using the softened leaves by shaping it and using a scissors to cut into the shape of a canoe sail. Air dry completely. Spray with shellac to give it a realistic look.
After making your canoes - sing the song, "Hoe A Mau!" (Pull to the Shore!)
YOUTH REPORT f r om t h e PAAM Con vocat ion - New Yor k First and foremost, I want to thank God for making it possible for the Hawaii PAAM YYA delegation to attend the National PAAM Convocation in Stony Point New York. I also want to thank our friends and families that came out to support the HPAAM YYA fundraise for the Convocation in Stony Point New York. The convocation that was held at Stony Point New York was a very different and great experience for me. Pastor Cedino and his church members along with Pastor Chris Ponoraj did a great job planning the workshops and activities for the convocation. Everything was well planned out and easy to follow. The food that was serve during the convocation was very healthy since it was locally grown in the back yard of the Stony Point Center. Instructions with transportation and the rooming service was also very easy to follow. We had no problems from the beginning to the end. My favorite part of the worships was how every region that spoke different language was involved in the worship service. Melody Neir, the YYA national officer did such a great job planning out the workshops and curriculum for the Youth and Young Adults. Most of the YYA activities that was done during
the convocation was geared towards being one in Christ regardless of our differences. The YYA activities made it very easy for all the Youth and Young Adult to bond with each other, unlike past convocations. After this past convocation, I feel that this should be a time for the HPAAM YYA to be revitalize with new members, new leaderships, and more activities that will allow more bondings. We should invite more youths and young adults to our monthly meetings and concentrate more on leadership trainings for the HPAAM YYA. I believe that with more leadership trainings and activities, our Hawaii PAAM membership can increase. Pastor Cedino from the Pilgrims church made a great comment during our stay at his parsonage. He said that, we should not wait for convocations to meet but we should do monthly or yearly meetings with other PAAM churches to create a strong friendship. Pastor Cedino and his family did such a great job hosting us after the convocation. They made us feel very welcome and at home. - Reiko
You t h REFLECTION The past PAAM Convocation that I went to was my first PAAM Convocation. I had a really great time with great people. I've made a lof new new friends from different places around the world. They were really nice as they made me feel as home. The first day we got there I was really shy and wouldn't talk as much but then we did some activities based on getting to know each other like what do we have that are similar and different between us. Throughout the whole convocation the that that stood out most to me was Sana's message. He was talking about how God sent one of his disciples to save the peple and his disciples asked God, "What do I say if they ask who sent me?" God replied, "Say - I am sent you!" The disciples were asking "Ia m who??" Then Sana said that God left that blank on purpose because God is whoever we need him to be. I would like to thank everybody for giving me a good time, but mostly God. Because if it wasn't for him. Then none of this would have been possible. Landon
San a Su n ia
In lovin g m em or y of Au n t Haleak a M ar t in w e dedicat e t h is Haw aii PAAM M agazin e