In early January I traveled to Hawaiʻi Island for a month of writing, revisiting old friends, speaking and research. By early February I had visited Kailua-Kona, Kaʻū, Miloliʻi, Pahala, Hilo, and North Kohala. Mahalo to Rosemary Miller, Susan Caddell, David “Tiki” McLauren, Ed and Sharon Bernard, Herb Alverez Jeff Rogers, Kahu David de Carvalho, Yolanda Olson, Julia Neal, David Ross, Charles ”Mahina” Kaupiko, Mark and Dayna Blair, Deborah Lee, Kapali Lyon, and other friends for making this trip possible.
Book and Author News
News about release dates, updates and other information about The Providential Life & Heritage of Henry Obookiah, and about author Christopher L. Cook.
Kauaʻi A History – My new book from Mutual Publishing
Kauaʻi A History from Mutual Publishing is becoming a popular book here in Kauaʻi. Over December I signed copies at Talk Story Bookstore in Hanapepe and interacted with visitors from across the mainland fielding questions about Kauaʻiʻs colorful past. About fifty images of Kauaʻiʻs history appear in the book, which I selected to both be new to kamaʻaina readers and informative to malihini readers are included, many in full color. The cover features an image new to me of Waimea folks sitting on a rock wall in front of either a thatched western style store or home alongside a traditional style thatched hale. Featured in the book are overviews of Kauaʻiʻs sugar plantations, town histories, and a look at WWII on the island.
Here’s the back cover blurb for the book:
Kaua’i A History paints a portrait of Old Kaua‘i in words and images, bringing back to life the rich heritage and independence of an island portrayed as the Separate Kingdom by historian Edward Joesting.
The narrative and images concisely offer informed accounts of Kaua‘i’s history, both island-wide and individual towns.
This image of a Boston engravers impression of missionary adventurer Hiram Binghamʻs drawing of his campsite at Nuʻalolo Kai along the Nā Pali Coast of Kauaʻi. This image is published in Kauaʻi A History for the first time since serving as a frontispiece to a rhetorical Sunday school book titled Conversations on the Sandwich Island Mission, First Edition 1829.
The Bingham engraving of Nuʻalolo camping appeared as a frontispiece to the first edition of Conversations on the Sandwich Island Mission…By A Lady, published in Boston in 1829 for the Massachusetts Sabbath Schools. Only a handful of the first edition of this book are known to exist. Unfortunately this copy of Conversations on the Sandwich Islands lacked its cover and frontispiece. I was able to copy the drawing from another copy. Surprisingly, this question and answer children’s book has a good description of surfing in the Hawaiian Islands taken from the journals of American missionaries to Hawaiʻi.
The Concert of Prayer Booklet
Two hundred years prior to the current Asbury College Revival the monthly Concert of Prayer for Missions service, usually held the first Monday of the month, drew a circle of global prayer. In Hawai‘i the American missionaries along with Native Hawaiian and Tahitian Christian joined together to pray for missions and the spead of the Gospel to all peoples, for God’s blessing on the Hawaiian Islands, and for their Christian endeavors in Hawai‘i and mission fields in the South Pacific and Central Pacific.
Find out more in this 29-page booklet provided for free by Pa‘a Studios. Print copies will be available at the upcoming Hawaiian Islands Ministries Conference 2023 at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu March 16-17-18 and at the Mo‘olelo Kūʻiʻo Seminar set for Sunday March 19 at the Kailua Nazarene Church.
Visit Us at the HIM 2023 Conference at the Mo‘olelo Kūʻiʻo Table
Tahitian Mission to Hawaiʻi 1822 Bicentennial Events
The Hawaiian Mission Houses in Honolulu is commemorating from April 26-April 30, 2022 the 1822 arrival in Hawai‘i of Tahitian and London Missionary Society Protestant missionaries. A full schedule of events will be poste soon.
A highlight of the Tahitian commemoration is a concert at Kawaiaha‘o Church honoring Na Himeni Hawaii, the first hymnal printed in the Hawaiian language, as well as the first book printed in the Hawaiian language. The public is invited to the concert in person, and a webcast will be available online.
I will be speaking during a Tahitian mission bicentennial web seminar to be presented on Tuesday, April 26 by the Hawaiian Mission Houses at noon HST. I will update this notice once the web seminar link is listed online. I am scheduled to give a background to the foreign missions movement behind the sending of Protestant missionaries to Tahiti and Hawai‘i during the Second Great Awakening of the late eighteenth century, and the early nineteenth century.