Tuna Fishing and the Way of Life

Basically, this tuna fishing is not just to go out and get the tuna and make some money. That is not the central point at all. This is good basic training for the rest of your life. If you apply the principles you learn faithfully, you can make a success out of your life. Do you understand? Like anything else you do in your life, you have to put a lot of time in. Study everything, discuss it with others and read it again, then put in concentrated effort.

Actually, I didn’t have the time to come here, but I felt so much that I wanted to give you a good start, so I came yesterday and went fishing at four o’clock in the morning. Today I am here with you. Tomorrow I may go out too, but that will be the last day. I cannot stay with you all summer, so please, do your best. The last ten years, I devoted every single day of the season out on the ocean. Rain or shine, I went out. Literally, rain or shine. There were storm warnings and still I went out. One time there was a storm coming and everyone could see it clearly, but in the middle of the night I said, “Let’s go.” The captain obeyed and we went out. I’ve gone out in the midst of a frenzied ocean and endured it. And then, in the morning I came back in, having won over that.

While I was in the boat waiting for the tuna to come, I thought over and over again of the providence in America and planned what to do. I thought about the problem of world hunger and planned what to do step by step. I didn’t just think one or two years ahead, not like that. Instead, I thought about hundreds of years to come and what to do to prepare for that. I thought about how to farm the tuna and how it could be nurtured and used for millions of pounds of nutritional food in the future. I thought like that all the time. There is nothing that I didn’t think of in the long hours while I was waiting for the tuna to come.

Every morning I went out, no matter how early. I was always full of hope and expectation for that day. I came back when the sun was setting, returning with elation that I had done my very best for that day and wondering what the next day had in store for me. I expect you to take pride and to go the same path that I have gone. You are now privileged to tread the very same path that I have walked these past ten years.

Ocean Church and America August 28th, 1982 — Provincetown, MA

The One Hope boats have to go everywhere so that people will see them and come to respect what we are doing. It’s a dream, and I am holding onto that dream in my mind. That means that it is in an invisible form, but it will become visible. We will see it in the future. We will see it soon. A man who believes can do anything. A man who acts can achieve anything. “Believing man and Doing man.” That is how I am and that is how I envision you to become. Actually, it isn’t a dream. It is what I know.