The telling of the first missionaries to Hawaii

By Mary Thurston Hedstrom

All during my childhood, I heard that my mother’s family was related to the first missionaries to Hawaii. I often wondered what that meant. Then in 2010, my older brother discovered that the memoirs of our distant ancestor, Lucy Thurston, had been published and were available on Amazon. Finally, we could read her own words about her life as a missionary to Hawaii!

When the book arrived, I was enchanted by Lucy’s story but challenged by her manner of writing. Her use of Victorian English and frequent passive voice forced me to read her story carefully.

Here is what intrigued me right from the start: Lucy was a schoolteacher, boarding at a town a few miles from her childhood home. She wrote:

Marlboro, Massachusetts, Sept. 18, 1819

“Yesterday, during my noontide intermission, I received, at my boarding house, an unexpected call from cousin Wm. Goodell. He gave me information that a Mission to the Sandwich Islands (the Hawaiian Islands) was to sail in four or six weeks. He dwelt upon it with interest and feeling, and now and then I saw a tear start in his eye. His conversation and appearance made me tremble. At length, he made the proposition. “Will Lucy, by becoming connected with a missionary (now an entire stranger) attach herself to this little band of pilgrims, and travel to this far distant land?’”

Thus began the first pages of Lucy’s 300-page memoir. One week later, she did meet the Rev. Asa Thurston. They spent a single evening together in the sitting room of her family home. The next morning, Lucy announced that she would agree to marry Asa, like Rebekah agreed to marry Isaac in the Genesis account.

Later, after the five-month voyage to Hawaii, Lucy wrote in her journal: “When I gave my hand to Mr. Thurston in marriage, I felt assured of the care and friendship of one precious friend, but my expectations have been more than realized. Of all situations in life, this is what I choose.”

I started and stopped reading Lucy’s book several times. The busyness of motherhood, homeschooling, and church work demanded my attention. But in the back of my mind, a dim candle glowed with the notion that someday, I should re-write Lucy’s story to make it more accessible to the modern reader. In late 2019, 200 years after Lucy married Asa, I worked in earnest and published her story by Christmas of that year.

Many aspects of Lucy’s life amazed me. When Lucy and Asa and the other first missionaries arrived in Hawaii in April 1820, they were aware that the law of the land included idol worship, human sacrifice, nearly naked Hawaiians, and polygamy, as well as strict rules for women (the lesser class). Breaking any of these kapus (later translated taboos) was punishable by death or dismemberment.

However, God arrived in Hawaii before them. He prepared the way for the missionaries by moving the heart of the young king to abolish most of the taboos and forbid idol worship shortly before their arrival. But there was nothing to take its place.

At first, the missionaries needed permission to land. In their company were a few native Hawaiians who had become Christians. They understood the cultural rules and politely requested that the new king allow the missionaries’ ship to land so they could settle there. These two Hawaiians tried to impress upon the new king that the missionaries could teach the king and his people to read and write. However, when the missionaries wrote the king’s name as an example, the king was unimpressed. “It looks not like me nor anyone I know,” he retorted.

The missionaries prayed all the more. Eventually, the king agreed that they could land and that they could settle for one year.

Lucy’s first sight of the natives was memorable. Imagine her as a well-dressed New England lady, leaning over the side of the ship to accept a banana from the beautiful, brown-skinned Hawaiians. The men paddled the canoe in perfect symmetry, and the women had loving smiles that soothed Lucy’s shock that they were dressed, in her own words, as “children of Eden.”

When I consider that Lucy and Asa Thurston had no formal missionary training, no previous exposure to other cultures, and no idea of how to live in a tropical climate, their mature response of Christian love amazes me. They also possessed a tenacity rarely seen today.

At the end of Lucy’s book, there is a tea party for the grandmothers in the missionary family, many of whom have lived in Hawaii for decades. Lucy is in her late 70s now, having served in Hawaii for more than 50 years. She is asked to address these ladies who have all supported their husbands in the missionary calling, raised their children in challenging circumstances, and yet, stayed firm in their faith.

Lucy led the women in this prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, we thank Thee that Thou dost satisfy us with long life. Enable us to yield fruit in old age. May our last days be emphatically our best days.”

Lucy’s attitude toward growing old is admirable. She prayed that God would enable her to bear fruit in her old age. As I read her own words, I am motivated to press on in the race of life and not settle for living out my days in restful earthly comfort.

May that be true of all of us. May God help us to bear fruit in our old age — may our last days be our best ones!

For more information about the first missionaries to Hawaii, you can read “God’s Grace was Sufficient: Lucy Thurston, Pioneer Missionary to Hawaii” by Mary Thurston Hedstrom, or Lucy’s own compilation of her letters and journal entries in “The Life and Times of Lucy Goodale Thurston, Pioneer Missionary to the Sandwich Islands.” Both are available on Amazon.com.