Home is wherever you make it.
That’s Gordon Wong’s mission as he brings the spirit of his home state, Hawaii, to his San Diego church.
Wong shares his culture through Mission Church by speaking pidgin, a dialect made up of multiple languages, including English, Hawaiian, Japanese and Filipino, gifting new members with a lei — the Hawaiian art form of assembling flowers and leaves into a wearable necklace. He also possesses what he calls the “aloha spirit.”
“Aloha, Mission Church,” the senior pastor says to greet his church ohana each Sunday. “Mele Kalikimaka,” he says, during the Christmas season.
“Hau’oli Makahiki Hou,” he says at the New Year.
There are nearly 4,000 Hawaiians in San Diego, representing about 0.28% of the city’s total population, according to a study by Neilsburg from October 2025.
While Wong isn’t surrounded by many people from his home islands, he said that doesn’t bother him. His intentions, he said, are simply to make a home and invite others into it.
In the church, Wong started “Ohana Sunday,” an annual Hawaiian-themed Sunday, for church members to invite their families and friends. During Ohana Sundays, he reads from the Hawaiian Pidgin Bible, the congregation wears aloha attire and dances the hula, and food from Island Style Cafe is catered.
Wong was born and raised on Oahu Island. He had only been to the mainland once before enrolling at Point Loma Nazarene University in 1988.
“It was freezing,” Wong said. “I could not stay warm.”
He went to culinary school first, then decided to study business at PLNU to one day own a restaurant. San Diego couldn’t do local food right, he thought.
But the meals he missed the most weren’t a reflection of San Diego’s food scene. He missed his mom’s Chinese food.
To remind him of home and his favorite home-cooked meals, he brought one item from Hawaii to combat loneliness and homesickness: a rice cooker. “I’d go buy rice whenever I was missing that part of my life,” he said. “I would make some rice.”
His now-wife, Rachelle, also from Oahu, joined him at PLNU two years later.
After he graduated, he worked as a college pastor at the First Church of the Nazarene, located just off campus. With a business degree, he decided to trade a cold San Diego for a freezing Kansas to pursue seminary.
Then he and Rachelle moved back home to the island, where they planted a church and pastored for 20 years.
He brought his rice cooker with him.
They moved back to San Diego in 2018, when Rachelle was hired by PLNU’s School of Education. Wong became the chaplain at PLNU’s graduate campus, and he loved it.
When he got a call from the Church of the Nazarene’s district office about a pastoral search for a church in Mission Valley, he declined.
“I loved being the chaplain,” he said.
But the district superintendent still asked him to complete a questionnaire to apply for the job and he agreed, not fully knowing why.
“It was like 40 minutes into it — I was like, ‘What am I doing? I don’t even want to do this.’ So I answered — they’re gonna hate this answer. And I submitted it.” He made the top five in the pastoral search and ultimately accepted the position of senior pastor.
While much of his congregation has little direct connection to his home state, those who do appreciate the home he has made.
Wong is hoping to start a monthly service in Pidgin this year to bring people from Hawaii together and build community.
“I really wanna dig deep, and I like start talking pidgin again, you know, because that’s who I am,” he said. “This is real; this is who I am.”
The church offers different classes open to members, including cooking, hula and lei-making, which symbolizes love. All new church members are gifted a lei.
“It gives me a sense of home,” said church regular Dannica Zambrano, a Point Loma Nazarene student originally from Hawaii. “I get to share my culture, and they get to share a little bit about themselves with me.”
Wanda Gonzales was born in the Philippines and teaches and dances hula in the church. “Hula is worshipping through our body,” she said. “I always say the movements are important, but the most important thing is the heart.”
“I’m a big believer in celebrating cultures,” said Gordon Wong’s wife, Rachelle Wong. “I think in some way, celebrating our culture of Hawaii gives people permission to celebrate their cultures.”
“It’s the warmth of inviting people and making sure they feel welcome,” she added. “I think that just resonates in a church setting … I think the aloha spirit — that Hawaii culture — to me, resonates with what Jesus would do, right?”
Wong still has a rice cooker in his house, he said. After a long, tiring day of work, if he’s feeling blue or needs a boost of energy, he warms up water, pours in the grains and waits.
