For many years, Melinda Smith has been looking for the particular Christians her parents had described. “Look for the Christians who have a sparkle in their eyes,” they instructed. This search has given her quite an interesting life. Although she only recently moved to Molokai, it is not the first time Smith has lived in Hawaii.

After raising three children and starting a water purification business in the early 1980s, she came to Hawaii for two years to become the head tennis coach at what is now Hawaii Pacific University. She also volunteered as a tennis instructor of the Hawaii Deaf Program, the Wheelchair Tennis Program and the Honolulu Correctional Facility. Because tennis is not her only interest, she was also a teacher at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.

Later, she accepted a tennis teaching position with Georgetown University and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., which meant she could alternate the tennis seasons between Georgetown and Hawaii for several years. This ended when she became a tennis instructor at the military base at Pearl Harbor. Through all those years, she still had not found that “sparkle.”

In the early 1990s, Smith thought that maybe she could find it in a new interest in the art of Tai Chi after she moved to Mexico. Becoming a Tai Chi master provided winter employment. Water aerobics and tennis lessons became the summer job during the 12 years she spent in Mexico. During this time she attended several Christian churches and traveled to India and Burma to learn about eastern religions. There still was no “sparkle.”

That all changed last December when Smith moved to Molokai. She longed for a “church home” and began checking out the 26 churches on the 38-mile-long island. A local family invited her to attend the two-week “Gospel Festival” by Evangelist Art Bushnell at the Molokai Adventist church, which she did.

“My parents were right. I have found the Christians with the sparkling eyes,” says Smith. “I am now home.”