New Hope in Hawaii

• We were greeted by no less than 15 authentically happy people. 
• We were blown away that the set up crew starts setting up in the middle of the night TWO days before the services. (5 weekend services plus 5 additional mini-meeting options.)
• There was no morning high school meeting so our son attended the main service with us - smart.  That means hundreds of young people are folded into the service so the message must target them also - did I say smart?   (High schoolers meet together on Sunday evenings in a separate meeting.)
• Our 12 year-old daughter needed an escort to her class so a nice man named Jonathan Smith offered.  He later went on to preach at all the services that morning.
• There was a special worship song done by 8 or 10 hula dancers - very local.
• The bathrooms were dirty.  That was my favorite part.  Light bulbs sticking out of sockets, grafetti in the stalls, water on the floors.  I guess when you're serving 10,000 people at a time, sometimes things get messy.  (Proverbs 14:4)  No doubt they leave it nicer than when they arrive.
• Everyone was in "come as you are" mode.  Not sloppy, not fancy - just come as you are.  At least 5 individuals accepted Jesus' offer for forgiveness of sins at the end of the service.
• Finally, when we had to depart, we were in need of a taxi back to our hotel so a passerby, Elwin Ahu, phoned one for us.  He turned out to be the executive pastor.  Ok, so he recognized my husband, but he would have done it for anyone.
• We went back to our hotel and checked out their website where we got to re-watch the hula on their excellent multi-media page.  It includes six other options for experiencing online church.

Greatest compliment: I wanna go back.  Isn't that our goal with guests?