This Is What Happened to Me: How God saved two pagan scientists in Hawaii

It was my first real prayer as a believer in Jesus Christ. It was the fall of 2009. “What’s wrong with my daughter?”

Our daughter Caeley had just turned 6 and was ill. Not mortally so: no cancer, no strange genetic disease. She was just sick for weeks with persistent, flu-like symptoms.

Earlier that evening, I had met with a friend who had witnessed to me over the past years. I was struggling with my marriage to my wife, Aly, and with my fatherhood of Caeley and our 3-year-old son, Hunter. So my friend asked that night if I would surrender to Christ. I did.

Driving back home, I felt foolish but elated. When I arrived home, it was 11 at night and the house was dark. Caeley was in the upper bunk in her bedroom. Some starlight came through between the leaves of the trees outside the window. She was too tired to wake up, but coughing too much to really sleep.

I laid my hands on her and prayed silently in the name of Jesus: “What’s wrong with my daughter?” God’s answer was immediate. He said, “She’s afraid.”

I again prayed silently: “God, in the name of Jesus Christ, take away her fear.” In that instant, Caeley’s coughing was gone and she was fast asleep.

My mind reeled. I realized then that God is Who He says He is, and that Jesus is indeed His Son. Sitting now on the lower bunk, I saw a dusty, swirling blackness, darker than the night, lift up and away from the bunk beds and dissipate.

How it started

Let me back up a bit.

Aly and I are both professional biologists. We grew up in Hawaii as pagans.

The Islands are spectacularly beautiful. Aly and I were both born here and lived parallel lives, without knowing each other. Our parents went to the same schools. We went to the same grade school. We grew up in the outdoors, loving the mountains, the streams, the ocean. Aly earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in marine biology; I earned my bachelor’s in wildlife biology. We both studied the same rare Hawaiian stream snail and we worked in natural resource science. And, we both learned to believe evolution and deny God.

We finally met in 1999. We “dated,” Aly became pregnant, and we aborted our first child. We were married in 2001 before a judge.

Having then become a Maui police officer, I witnessed life on the street. Yes, even “paradise” has an underworld. My college-induced bubble burst. I was confronted with undeniable evil, including my own, but had no way to deal with it. I had nightmares almost every night and became a user of pornography. And, poisoned by evolutionary theory, which pits spouses against each other, I was increasingly resenting my wife and children.

A long-time friend recommended divorce. Instead, that year God saved us.

The night of Caeley’s healing in 2009 set in motion a chain of miracles too numerous to describe here. Eighteen months later, after careful observation and study of the facts, Aly decided for Christ. Caeley and Hunter followed suit. My nightmares and pornography use are defeated. Our marriage has strengthened and deepened. On our 10th wedding anniversary, we were re-married, this time by our pastor. Aly, convicted by the Holy Spirit, closed her real estate appraisal business and has devoted herself to homeschooling our children.

There have been plenty of ups and downs. There are conflicts and serious mistakes. But God has stuck with us.

The Genesis account

At first, when studying the Bible, we would put aside things that seemed to us to be unscientific. Like, for example, the beginning of Genesis. We decided that God must have used evolution to create the world. This seemed like a nice compromise.

But, as we learned more, and as we experienced more of God’s faithfulness, we found that God’s Word is indeed reliable. In 2012, we circled back again to Genesis and decided to take Him at His Word. We accepted, on faith, that He created the world in six days just thousands of years ago.

We were afraid of what people would say, and with good reason as it turned out. Believing on Jesus was bad enough for many who knew us, but rejecting evolution subjected us to far harsher criticism.

Still, God began revealing to us the amazing truth of His creation. The more we learned the more excited we became.

Samaritan Ministries

In 2011, we joined Samaritan Ministries. Through Samaritan we met the Estell family. They travel the country teaching about fossils and the truth of God’s creation (see “Creation vacation is just the ticket for your family,” April 2014 Samaritan Ministries Newsletter, bit.ly/creationvacation). Aly invited them to come stay with us on Maui and share at our local church. And they did!

We went with them as they taught at churches and homeschool groups. We were deeply impressed by the Estells’ courage, commitment and gentleness, and we became fast friends. But, not having grown up in the church, we were surprised to discover that the creation message was not welcome in all churches.

Aly and I know firsthand the deadly consequences of believing the lies of the world. We are missing our first child because we believed these lies. So we were saddened and angered to discover that belief in naturalism and evolution is a very powerful force in the churches.

Inspired in large part by the Estells’ boldness, in 2012 we started sharing our background, our experiences and our discoveries about how science actually points to God. We began encouraging others to see evolution for the lie that it is, and to embrace God’s Word, even in the areas that may seem crazy or impossible.

In 2013, God gave us our daughter, Hope. Her home birth did not progress, and we ended up at the hospital. This generated far larger medical bills than we had planned for. But we knew we would make it through, because of the members of Samaritan Ministries. Our need was indeed met, just like we knew it would be.

What an amazing blessing Samaritan is. Being able to rely on God’s people, and to dramatically cut our health costs, has been a big factor in our ability to do what we are doing now with what God has given us.

Hawaiian Creation Adventures

Maui has over 2 million visitors a year. They are stunned and excited by the natural beauty here and they want to see more. So they go on eco-tours and do outdoor activities. But there has been nobody here prepared to meet them in what they want to do and share with them Who the Source of this beauty is.

This year, Aly and I started Hawaiian Creation Adventures here on Maui. We are providing van tours of the world-famous Road to Hana. We use our background as professional biologists, and our growing knowledge of the Word, to give God the credit for the amazing creation around us.

We also share about the amazing history of Jesus Christ in Hawaii and the Great Awakening. Did you know that there is evidence that the early culture of Hawaii worshipped one true God before being overcome by idolatry, polytheism and violence? That in one generation in the 1830s the Kingdom of Hawaii went from being a pagan culture of oppression and human sacrifice to one of the most genuinely Christian nations in the world? That in just a few short years, 30,000 Hawaiians—nearly one-third of the Kingdom—passed stringent examination of their faith and character by the community and were baptized? That the largest church in the entire world was in Hilo, with 7,000 gathering? Or that the first Constitution of Hawaii, given by the King in 1840, stated that all laws “shall be in consistency with the general spirit of God’s law”? I didn’t know these things, and I grew up here.

Hope for the future

Auwe no ho’I! How far Hawaii has fallen! But it seems that God has strategically positioned Hawaii, roughly halfway around the globe from Jerusalem, a crossroads of East and West, described by Mark Twain as “the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any sea,” the most geographically isolated islands on the planet, as a place where His Name is again proclaimed to a dying world.

Today there are many people working to remind Hawaiians and the world of the incredible miracles that once happened here. These include the Spiritual Heritage Center of Hawaii project, and HeritageHawaii.org, where you can find more on the history of The Word in Hawaii.

But looking back is not for nostalgia or even regret. It is to encourage us to look forward to our Blessed Hope, and to labor while it is still day.