Honolulu Speech and Debate

Our Story... Trusting God is sometime scary, but can be so much fun!

In the summer of 2017, my wife -- Maile and I moved our family of six back home to Hawaii, after being away for nearly 24 years. We moved from Washington State where we both attended college, got married, started working and began to putting down roots with our wonderful four children -- three boys -- Nate, Josh, Andrew, and our wonderful sweetheart -- Joy Anna.

For many years Maile and I had always wanted to move our family back home, but we’re a little risk averse by nature, and we would talk ourselves out of it. Whenever we visited it would spark a desire to want to move, but then Mike would begin looking for jobs, and we began doing our research. While Hawaii is a beautiful place to visit the reality is that there are less software related jobs than in Seattle, and the cost of living is a lot higher. In our minds our “cons” list would always be a lot longer than the “pros” and we would soon enough talk ourselves out of the idea of moving. One truth that resonated with us about God was from Proverbs 3:5-6 where it says “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding...”.

Fast forward to the summer of 2018, and God began setting some things in motion related to speech and debate. He put Maile into a leadership role with the organization that our club is affiliated with - National Christian Forensics and Communications Association (NCFCA). We also saw a need to try to help grow speech and communication opportunities for Christian Homeschool students in Hawaii, so we trusted in the goodness and safety of our Heavenly Father, and started Honolulu Speech and Debate club. We started the club with our two older boys - Nate and Josh, and we said to each other that if anything we’ll have two students in our club. It was amazing to see how God brought people from all areas of Hawaii - Eva Beach, Pupukea (North Shore), Hawaii Kai, to our Club.

The heart of our club is one of love, grace and honor. We all know how scary and intimidating speaking in front of strangers, let alone family and friends can be, so we start with those three key ingredients and try to encourage new students to do the best that they can. We teach the basics of giving a speech, and build upon it through lots of practice and gentle feedback by both the coaches as well as the other students. The beauty of encouraging the students to share their feedback is that they learn the precious skill of how to lovingly give constructive feedback that builds up.

 ...