The Sweet Reward of Sacrifice

Sometimes the Lord asks for offerings that seem beyond 10 percent of our annual income. When World War II created a shortage of missionaries in Hawaii, the mission president called local sugarcane farmer Andrew Kamauoha to serve a six-month mission. Brother Kamauoha declined. Ever since the deaths of his wife and father, he had been solely responsible not only for eighteen acres of land but also for his children and his mother. Besides, the sugar cane harvest was approaching.

The mission president asked Brother Kamauoha a second time. Together, the family decided that if he served the Lord, the Lord would take care of the family and farm.

Brother Kamauoha sold his 1946 Ford for six hundred dollars. He bought two suits and a few other necessities, and gave the rest of the money to his mother. After admonishing his children to help their grandmother, he left for the Oahu mission.

At the end of Brother Kamauoha’s six months in Oahu, the mission president asked him to work for six months in Hanalei, which he agreed to do. He then worked another six months in Hanalei. His proselyting became so effective that the Hanalei Branch pledged financial support if he would stay another six months, but both the mission president and Brother Kamauoha knew that he needed to go home after eighteen months of missionary service. He needed to take care of his mother, children, and farm.

When he returned, he found them not only safe but prosperous. The sugarcane harvest had yielded more money than ever before in the family’s thirty-four years of farming. When the neighbors asked Brother Kamauoha’s mother how it was possible, she testified that the Lord blessed the farm because she paid her tithing and because her son served a mission despite his other responsibilities. The family reaped not only a plentiful earthly harvest but also a spiritual bounty of increased faith and dedication.

Illustrated by Gregg Thorkelson