Uncle Robert was 100% kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian). He was a physically imposing figure, with hands about three times the size of mine...

But even more imposing was his aloha, his love... the size of his heart.

When the Hawaiian people gathered on Oahu to lawfully reinstate the Hawaiian Kingdom under international law, what was their first official act? They asked Uncle Robert to pule - to say a prayer for the proceedings that would follow. Rae and I were blessed to be among only 5 hauli (non-kanaka maoli) observers present to bear witness to this historic occasion.

At the time the Kingdom was being lawfully reinstated, I was on sabbatical for my own healing, and had long been living life with a spiritual vow of poverty, but as a citizen of the newly reinstated kingdom, I scraped together the little money I could to fund the official public announcement in the newspaper that completed the required process to formally reinstate the kingdom government of the islands.

Later, I was able to attend the coronation of the new king at Iolani Palace. With perfectly clear blue Hawaiian skies, a light refreshing mist descended on our gathering on the palace grounds. We call that a Hawaiian blessing. White birds also flew overhead as an aumakua, or sign from heaven through the animal kingdom.

I remember one time sitting next to Uncle Robert in a local meeting about the kingdom, I had an intense neck ache. Without words, he simply reached over and grasped my neck with one of his massive hands. No words would ever do full justice to Uncle Robert's healing presence, even without using his manna through his hands as he did. Those hands had cleared his family's land, built the rock walls on three sides of the property, and planted the trees and gardens that fed his large multigenerational ohana.

When Pele's lava came and took nearly all of his village of Kalapana, the lava flow respected Uncle Robert's stone walls. It stopped a foot or two before the wall began on all three sides of the property and never approached the makai (ocean) side where there was no wall. The pahoihoi (hot, ropy lava) even piled up to heights a couple feet higher than the height of the stone wall, but the flow itself diverted to the ocean, adding many acres of new land, and a new black sand beach at the shore. Soon after the lava cooled, Uncle Robert and his ohana had already planted coconut keiki (babies) around the new beach, and in any pukas (holes or depressions) that the lava afforded.

A testament to the spiritual power involved in Pele's respect for Uncle Robert's stone walls was the fact that the heat of the glowing molten lava just feet away burned all the bushes growing along the wall. As a traditional Catholic, Uncle Robert had place blessed woolen scapulars on the top of the wall at the corners of the property. Those were not touched by Pele. 

I am reminded of the events surrounding the lava flow that was heading directly for Hilo town back in 1935. Hilo is the second largest city in an archipelago with only one large city, Honolulu on the Moku (island) of Oahu (the gathering place). Hilo is on the Moku of Hawai'i, the healing island. With the town being threatened, the army tried dropping bombs on the lava flow with absolutely no effect... Pele continued the flow unabated, and without changing course. A Hawaiian Princess was called in from Oahu. She and her entourage made there way up the pali (slope) to the front of the advancing lava flow. They prayed and chanted for hours with no change in the lava flow. As sundown approached, the princess was told that a room was prepared for her in Hilo so she could sleep and return the next morning to continue her efforts to communicate with Pele in order to spare Hilo town. She was having none of those plans. She ordered her entourage to bring her bed there, right at the front of the active flow. Insistence on considering safety by her handlers was as futile as the bombs dropped by the US military. They eventually did bring the bed and set it up just ahead of the lava flow. By morning, the flow had stopped.

Uncle Robert's wife, the well-known Hawaiian singer Auntie G-Girl, had passed away a few years before Uncle did. She was on a singing tour in the States and suddenly became very ill. The family contacted me for healing assistance while she was in the hospital in California, and I was able to do a remote Biofield Analysis, but sadly there was not enough time to get the essential remedies to her...