HAWAII CALLS

It wasn't just my Mom and Dad who left Hawaii and Canada to take the Gospel to their people on the other side of the ocean. I realized, as I was looking at the old photographs. One of them had me sitting on the lap of my mother, Kimiko, who was from Hawaii...and standing behind her was her Uncle Matsusuke Nagata, who had retired in Hawaii and also come to Okinawa to help out my parents in their missionary endeavors. And standing behind him was Mildred Kiyuna, a trained missionary from Hawaii also. Hm; come to think of it, the only one in that photograph NOT born in Hawaii and called to work in Okinawa was ME. But I was born in Mommy's tummy who was born in Hawaii...does that "count"?

The church believers called her "Kiyuna Sensei," but we just called her "Aunt Millie".

Here she is leading songs in the village of Kombu--pretty close to where I live now.

When my parents started work in Okinawa, altho' they were both in their 30's, they were considered youngsters by the neighborhood people.

My Mom had asked her Uncle Nagata to come from Hawaii to help them. He did, and it was his presence that gave them the needed respectability and credibility they sought among the Okinawans they ministered to.

Ancestor Worship has such a strong hold on people's hearts. But Grampa never let it phase him. His help in dealing with the elderly was invaluable. Apparently, he would listen to talk for a little bit then say, "You worship your ancestors."

"I worship the CREATOR of your ancestors." Grampa never made himself seem anything big, but I realize now he's in so many pictures. our first Shuri church (the converted public bathhouse), he's in. Oh--that's Aunty Millie sitting next to him.

That's Grampa again waving in the Uken Church groundbreaking ceremony when all those villagers came out to build their own church; and Grampa surprised us all when he joined the young people's team in the outer island boat evangelism. Yup, that's my stepmother, behind Grandma Urata, and she was still single at that time, unaware God had chosen her to be the new Mrs. Oshiro.

I didn't know or care about any of that. I hear when we were in our first house--this would be 1960--so it was before I could walk; whenever I'd get in trouble with Mommy or Daddy, I'd find my way over to Grampa's room and wiggle my finger in a knothole at the lower part of the door, calling him. Grampa would always open the door and take me in, and no matter how naughty I'd been, he'd cuddle me until I fell asleep.

Grace. From the time I was little and before I even knew how to sound out words, I knew about it. Thank you God, for Grampa.

NO STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION

"Thank you, but I want to get my exercise," Grampa said. Mommy had invited him to live with us, but he'd insisted on sleeping in a one-room apartment at the foot of the hill so he could walk up the hill every day. He would do the gardening; have meals with the family; take a bath and relax; then go "home" for bed every night. We loved Grampa.

But coming out of the shower one evening, he'd seen my sister's soft-bodied doll. Her 2nd-grade mind had felt the doll needed a haircut and had snipped most of it off, and of course, dolls have implants in polka-dot fashion, so this doll ended up with a head of polka-dot fuzz.

"There's no way you can call that cute, not by any stretch of the imagination," we could hear Grampa muttering.

I'd thought the doll lovable until that moment, when I saw it objectively and realized it was nothing to look at.

And the Holy Spirit seemed to whisper to me that we're nothing to look at either, but God thought we were worth His Son dying for.