CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Margaret Kim, 82, historian of the Christ United Methodist Church in Makiki, sat recently in front of a stained-glass window in the church's sanctuary that depicts the 1903 immigration of the church's founders to Hawaii from Korea.

Margaret Kim’s life is inextricably tied
to the history of her church

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By Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.com

G ala community festivities get under way this weekend to mark the centennial of Korean immigration to America, but for the congregation of Christ United Methodist Church, every time they gather to worship is a celebration of the 1903 event.

The Makiki church is the spiritual heir of Protestants who arrived on the first ship on Jan. 13, 1903. Many of the immigrants recruited to work in Hawaii sugar fields were already converts to Christianity. According to records, 50 of the 102 people who boarded the ship Gaelic were members of the Methodist mission in Korea. And by the time they docked in Honolulu after 10 days at sea, the number had grown to 58, said Duk Hee Lee Murabayashi, vice chairman of the Korean Centennial Committee.

A stained-glass window in the sanctuary of the church at 1639 Keeaumoku St. depicts the immigration, an abstraction of blue sea, white sails and triangles linking one land with the other.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARGARET KIM Margaret Kim's father, Hak Sun Ahn, came to Hawaii on the Gaelic in 1903.

The window glows in the new sanctuary, which was dedicated in 1998. The building, with wood features that evoke the immigrant ship as well as a traditional Korean temple, was just the latest of a series of church buildings that date back to 1903.

For lifelong Christ United member Margaret Kim, 82, this isn't church history, it's her story. Kim's father, Hak Sun Ahn, was on the Gaelic, and her mother, Kyung Soon, came as a picture bride 11 years later, bringing the Bible her mother gave her.

"The first boatload went to Waialua, the second group went to Kahuku. By March 1903 they had started a joint worship service," Murabayashi said.

The Korean Methodists set their sights on an empty plantation village house as a prospective church, Kim said, but plantation officials and Honolulu church board authorities balked because it was in disrepair.

"The determined Koreans begged to use the house and offered to repair it themselves. All they asked for was lumber and tools," Kim wrote in a history of the church. Once it was finally approved, "The women immediately scrubbed the entire place in and out, even the outdoor toilet. The men started repairing walls, floors, windows and the roof. Flowers were planted and a vegetable garden started.

"Soup bowls were used as collection plates. Benches and orange and apple crates were used for pews. The hymns were sung without musical instruments because no instruments were available. This did not bother the Koreans."

"The kitchen, visible from the pews, was supplied with pots and pans on the left and sacks of potatoes and onions on the right. Pastor Park used a small cooking table to prop his Bible, held up against a meat cutting board."

Within months the church board "realized how much the Mokuleia Korean immigrants needed and wanted a church," she wrote. A new church, on land offered by Castle & Cooke, was built with the help of the Methodist mission board and dedicated on Nov. 10, 1903. The date is memorialized on a lava rock monument on the Makiki grounds.

Kim said she started her chronicle as a child, listening to anecdotes from the first generation of immigrants. The church's volunteer public relations director, she was delighted when the church recently printed even an abbreviated version of her history in its bulletin. At the drop of a question, she is able to recite dates of events long past and names of friends, teachers and pastors long gone.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MARGARET KIM Margaret Kim's brothers and sisters -- from left, Rachel, Robert, Stanley and David Ahn -- all grew up in a Wai-alua plantation village of Korean immigrants.

"I was fascinated with writing since I was 6 years old," said Kim. "My intermediate school teacher Myrtle King encouraged me to write. My mother came from a family of scholars. Her father was a scribe with the monarchy, an editor of the scribes."

Kim's maternal grandmother became a Christian in Korea. On her deathbed, she passed her Bible on to her young daughter with the admonition to "go and find Jesus," Kim said.

"My grandfather wasn't Christian, but when his daughter reached puberty, he enrolled her with the missionaries because it wasn't a subject that a father could teach his daughter.

"My mother raised her children as Methodists," said Kim, and the church was a center of activities for her as she grew up in Waialua plantation village, the sixth of eight Ahn children.

Kim followed the first Korean church as it moved from the country to Rooke Avenue and then a Fort Street location. Christ United Methodist Church in Makiki eventually combined several of the early Korean churches. Meanwhile, Kim graduated from Farrington High School and married Kyung Wha Kim, whose father also came on the first boat.

The Rev. Eun Chul Lee is senior pastor at Christ United Methodist now. He and the Revs. Paul Hwal Joo and Kyu Woo Nam officiate at Korean-language services and Sunday school attended by about 700 adults and 100 children, primarily people from the latest wave of immigrants. The Rev. Gordon Marchant leads English-language services attended by about 150 people.

Margaret Kim, a bridge across time for the congregation, is equally at home in either language.

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