Welcome to Puna - A Time To Celebrate Jesus in the islands of Hawai’i

It all started for hawai’i when…

The history of Hawai’i is very fascinating and quite exciting. Throughout 2020 and 2021 we have celebrated the arrival of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in 1820. The first Christian missionaries to Hawai’i traveled the ocean on the ship Thaddeus. The Thaddeus left New England, USA on October 23, 1819 bound for Hawai’i. It arrived on March 30, 1820 at Kawaihae, Hawai’i and anchored in Kailua-Kona on April 04, 1820. To learn more about our history and culture you can go to the American Minute

Oral tradition, as well as contemporary archeology, tells us that the Hawaiian people migrated from Polynesia, and likely Tahiti around 600 AD. There is also considerable oral tradition that tells us that the original people of New Zealand, the Māori people, migrated from Hawai’i a few hundred years after the Hawaiians started living in the Hawaiian islands.

A great seafaring people, the Hawaiians, have always impacted and been impacted by the ocean. In 1818, the first known Hawaiian Christian, Henry Opukahaʻia, found himself homeless on the Big Island and jumped on a New England whaling ship bound for Massachusetts, USA. When he arrived in the United States he expressed his desire to become a Christian and share his faith in Jesus Christ with his Hawaiian family. His memoirs initiated the greatest missionary effort the world has ever seen. By the middle of the 1800s, Christianity had become the predominant cultural faith in the South Pacific. This was due to Henry’s desire to evangelize Hawai’i with the Gospel of Jesus. He did this by starting the first alphabet of the Hawaiian language and translated Genesis and two of the Gospels books from English into Hawaiian. His memoirs became a world best-seller in 1818 and greatly funded the missionary efforts throughout the South Pacific. He died at Yale University shortly after initiating these works and never saw his beloved Hawai’i and people again.

But his dying wish was fulfilled and by 1850, 98 percent of Hawaiians had heard the Gospel of Jesus and could also read and write both Hawaiian and English languages.

To read more about Christian missionaries to Hawai’i and the great evangelistic efforts that were undertaken in the name of Jesus within Hawai’i and also mirrored other mission works around the Pacific Ocean. You can also read more here https://www.hcucc.org/bicentennial or google it online.