Each Saturday morning Judi and I have the joy of connecting with our three children, their spouses and their children. It is always fun to observe the playful interaction between our children and their families.
Each Tuesday mornings judi and I connect with this coordinating group the oversee the discipleship courses offered all across Europe. This call covers 13 time zones ranging from Kona, Hawaii at 7:00 am to the Ukraine at 8:00 pm.
Each week since we began the campus shutdown, we have connected with our staff who are scattered all over the world, as they returned home to shelter-in-place. Those 200+ connections take place on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings at 8:00 am. They include updates on what is happening, as well as sometimes teaching and worship.
Each Sunday morning Judi and I have been able to attend online church services in Kansas City (at 6:00 am), and our Kona church service online at 9:00 am. Following the Mokuaikaua service in Kona, we stay online to visit with other church members. It is a great time to re-connect during the sheltering-in-place restrictions.
On April 4th we had planned a major celebration marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Mokuaikaua Church. But, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we postponed the event and had a small online event marking the day. It began with the old church bells ringing 200 times. Several pastors and friends spoke online to commemorate…
As the campus was closing down, I had the opportunity to debrief a counseling school class just before they deported to return home. It was a challenge for them, because many of them were planning to continue on to future schools to complete a degree.
On Friday March 13th we announced to the several hundred students at our Kona University of the Nations campus that instead of going on overseas assignments at the end of the month, all those trips have been cancelled and the students are returning home. The campus is setting up an online mechanism, so the students…
On March 9th I spent a morning with the students in the Kona Ships Ministry training school. They are preparing to leave in a few days to minister in various places overseas. The picture is of a time Judi and I were there a couple of years ago. Their center is located right on the…
In February I received a phone call that my mother had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance after an episode where it seemed she had stopped breathing. By the time I was able to get there, she was already released and back home. For a 100-year-old woman, she bounced back amazingly. I was…
Shortly after Judi and I arrived back from England in early December Judi had a doctor’s appointment from where we were instructed to take her directly to the Kona Hospital Emergency Room with an irregular heart beat. She spent five days in the hospital where they worked on reducing the amount of fluid that had…