How 1 night in Hawaii Changed my Ministry Forever

In the year 2000, my parents took our entire family to Hawaii for their 30th wedding anniversary. On one of the nights, we made reservations for one of those Luau / All-Inclusive entertainment night things. The plan was for the Luau Company to pick us up at our hotel around 4 pm, I think, and return us to the hotel at around 1 am, after a full night of partying of course.

I’ve never been the party type (aka, I don’t drink) but I do love a good party, but the thing that has stayed with me the most from that night wasn’t the Hawaiian Culture or the food or the party atmosphere, it was our Bus Host, Kulani.

When we got on the bus at the hotel, Kulani greeted each of us, asked us our name and where we were from. At the time, we were living in Indiana, so we responded, “Matt and Sarah Keller, from Indiana.” A few minutes later, he walked down the aisle of the bus handing out some sort of note card for us to indicate if we were having the beef or chicken and as he came through the aisle, he started looking at each of the 60 passengers and remembered about 1/3 of their names.

For the next hour he told jokes, made us laugh and tried to get us to ignore the rather ugly industrial park surroundings we were headed toward where this Luau was being held. When we reached the party and began exiting the bus, he stood at the steps and wished each of us a great night and then called us by name. All 60 of us… by name.

For the next 5 or 6 hours, hundreds of people partied like they weren’t going to be sick in the morning and then at around midnight, we were all instructed to reload our buses for the ride home. As we approached our bus, Kulani greeted us by saying, “Matt and Sarah Keller from Indiana, how was your night?” Needless to say I was blown away.

For another full hour, he did stand up comedy and kept us entertained and then, one last time as we reached our hotel and exited the bus, Kulani called all 60 of us by name, from memory and thanked us for participating in the event.

That night forever changed me… here’s why:

Up until that night in Hawaii, I always used to say, “I’m just not very good with names…” I would see church people, or other pastors and would easily forget their name and just blow it off under the guise of, “I’m just not good with names.”

But that night, when Kulani was able to remember the names of 60 drunk people who he would never see again in his life and call each of us by name, it changed me.

So for the last 10 years, I’ve worked hard at developing the skill and attention to remember people’s names. I’m not perfect at it, but I’ve developed enough of a skill that occasionally someone will ask me how I remember so many people’s names.

So, tomorrow, I want to share with you some of the secrets I’ve learned to remembering people’s names.

If Kulani in Hawaii can do it, so can we… no, so must we.