05/12/2026
Canterbury Wyoming is just an an amazing Episcopal ministry.
"This past spring break I had the privilege of traveling to Oahu with Laramie’s Canterbury Fellowship to provide disaster relief at Camp Mokuleia following Hawaii’s historic rainstorm of March 2026. During our week in Hawaii, we would dig holes, fill sandbags, rescue wild and farm animals alike, pick exotic fruit, and grow our individual faith in the lord, as well as each other.
I would describe this trip as one large trust fall exercise... that really started around the early morning hours of the 5th day. Around four or five AM, when Allen, woke us up with news that flood waters were rising around camp... Since we were at the bottom of the valley the flood waters had washed out the road from camp to town. Word of houses that we passed days ago were now floating in the street. The real worry began when our phones began to buzz with the same warning, “dam breach imamate.” When reality began to set in, we packed bags as quickly as we could and sought shelter on higher ground.
As light began to creep in through the storm-ladened morning sky, it became clear that only now, the real work was to begin, only we couldn’t be there to see it through. Resort style cabins that I wished we'd had slept in only nights ago were washed out to sea. Huge sink holes around the sea wall had opened like hungry faces.
We would make it out of the valley and into the city clear of the path of destruction. Most of us were little shaken but all of us were in good spirits. For the folks at camp and the rest of O'ahu, the work was only beginning...
I learned that there is a great virtue Hawaiian’s have surrounding disaster. I met a man whose car had been completely crushed by a downed iron wood tree. I met a woman whose chicken farm was underwater... All these people shared a similar virtue that I cannot place. “Unshakable island-time” is the closest I can come to describing it...
All those people I mentioned had the right to be angry, to be bitter, but they weren’t. The people who live and work on the islands are not props for an island adventure Instagram post, they are holy, salt of the ocean people."
-Austin