Update

Aloha friends and family! It has been a couple of days since I posted last, so I have a lot to catch you up on!

Thursday we had a “youth night” Bible Study at Waianae Baptist Church. Cool story about Waianae Baptist… For years, a state run preschool has rented facilities from the church.  Recently, the preschool told the church that they needed to stop their homeless ministry or they would move the preschool to a different location.  The pastor told the congregation that for 20 years (don’t know the exact number of years) the church had relied on the preschool to support them financially, but now they were going to depend on the Lord to provide for their financial needs.  The preschool pulled out, and now there are empty rooms available  for ministry use.  The Pastor of the church opened up those rooms for us to use with the Chuukese ministry.  It was a fun evening… it is exciting to see how the Chuukese youth respond to activities that I have been around for years. For the 1^st time, these kids are experiencing a “youth group”.

I also had discipleship time with my girls on Thursday. We were talking about serving others. The most exciting moment was when two of my girls started cleaning up and sweeping the living area without even being asked.  They were living out what they learned. 

            Friday, I took Lesleen and Maile to go Ice Palace for ice-skating.  With confidence, I can say that I was one of two people in the Ice Palace visiting from the mainland. The second person was, JD, who had come with us too! The girls had a lot of skating.  These tropical Chuukese girls are much better skaters than me.

            Saturday morning, I had breakfast and got to meet with Nozania. It was a wonderful few hours where I got to hear Nozania’s heart and see her courage. I will have to write more about Nozania in a later post. That afternoon, we took several of the Chuukese to the Swap Meet and then out to dinner to celebrate Celleste’s time with us in Hawaii.  

            This morning, I went to Mt. Kaala  for worship. I am very thankful that I went because I was able to see parts of Waianae that I have never seen before. I also had the opportunity to meet Mr. Haynes who is my connection to Hawaii.  Afterwards, we had a team meeting to prepare for the week. After the meeting, I went to see Manoa Falls with a friend from back home who is stationed here on Oahu.  It was a good day of worship and fellowship!

            Finally, in closing so many of the my experiences here are in Hawaii are hard to capture in words and especially capture on paper. Learning more about the Chuukese culture and investing more and more time with the these precious children and teenagers is a wonderful and rewarding experience, but it is hard to process. I am sure that I will be processing far after I return home in a few weeks. Psalm 73:16-17a  says “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God.”   Now, I would not describe my experience as oppressive at all, but the more I work with these people I learn some of their struggles and hardships. Some of them are hard to grasp and understand. When I don’t understand, all I can do is turn to the Lord.  I am so thankful that we can take our worries, cares, and concerns to Him and rest in His presence.  He gives us His peace that passes all understanding.  

I fully intended on posting pictures today,  but this post has been written over a period of 13 hours.  During this time I have had some sweet conversations with some of the teenage girls. It is now 2:37 in the morning and I have got to get some sleep. I will post pictures ASAP.

Much love to all!