Historically, the Pali is a place where King Kamehameha and his warriors unified his reign over all the eastern Hawaiian islands in 1795 with a dramatic victory where 400 soldiers reportedly fell to their death over what is today the Pali Lookout. But that is not the only place where men have fallen.

It was Sunday, December 22, 1985 – the day that changed my life. I was a senior at Iolani School and had recently turned 18. I took the 16 year old girl I was dating to the Pali Ridge. We walked down the Old Pali Road and began hiking up the back of the ridge till we were 300 feet above the lookout. It was dark (as the sun goes down early during winter). It was a free climb. No ropes, safety hooks and latches. I was ten feet from the top when she apparently grabbed on to one of the rocks or roots that I had loosened and fell 20 feet below me. In my attempt to go down and rescue her, I slipped and fell head first, 300 feet.

On my way down, I smashed my head on a rock at least once, because it tore my scalp off. It was hanging on the sides open like a peeled banana. My skull was cracked in three places. My organs were smashed and my left ankle was shattered. My girlfriend said it was eerie. I fell by her head first and didn’t make a sound.

She was miraculously able to make it from her stranded position and was led down to the bottom of the Old Pali Road. Frantic, legs bleeding, she ran up the dark, windy road to the lookout. On that cold night she as she ran screaming for help – typically there’s no one at the Pali Lookout late at night…except this night.

Of all things, there was a group of young Christian missionaries from an organization Youth With A Mission on their way to the Philippines, who earlier that day felt a strong prompting from God to “Go to the mountain and pray.” There they were in the dark singing songs and praying when all of a sudden, the heard a panicked teen ager soaking wet, “My boyfriend, my boyfriend…”

They didn’t panic. Instead, in Christian fashion, they placed their hands on her as a way of identification and blessing and prayed for God to show her where I was. While they prayed, one of the young people said, “I see a vision. A vision of a giant hand has caught him.” Another young person said, “I see that same vision. A giant hand has caught him and another hand has covered him.” The captain of the mission team went to an emergency phone that use to be there. The dispatch said, “We’ll come and pick up the body tomorrow. No one can survive falling that far.” The missionary leader insisted, “No, you must come. I believe he’s still alive. With further persistence a police officer arrived.

My girlfriend ran down the Old Pali Road stops in one place in front of a patch of ginger plants, looked up and said, “He’s around here somewhere.” To their surprise, I was laying the patch of ginger plants in front of them. Only there was a wall preventing anyone from reaching me and there was another 100 foot drop.

This part was shown on television – like rescue 911, the beginnings of reality TV. The rescue men were just about ready to grab hold of me, when I moved and fell another 100 feet. By then they thought I was dead. A helicopter came to shine light while the rescue men rappelled. They were looking for blades of grass that would be laying flat indicating that something heavy or my body was there. To their amazement, when they found me, I was sitting up – moaning. A Hebrew prophet named Ezekiel wrote about God saying, “When I passed by you and saw you squirming in your blood, I said to you while you were in your blood, live…” (Ezekiel 16:6). Those words related to me on that night.

They air lifted me to the Lookout and rushed me the emergency. I was in surgery for 6 hours, needing 9 units for my blood transfusion. Unrecognizable. Tubes in everywhere, the doctors and nurses didn’t expect me to make it through the night. When my mother was led in to see me, even with warnings of how I would look, she broke down.

The next morning, the Captain of the rescue team came to the hospital. He told my parents, “Mr. and Mrs. Yamashiro, I went to the Pali today to see the place where your son fell. The way the mountain is shaped, with his body weight and momentum it was impossible for him to have landed where he did in that patch of ginger plants. The only way I can describe it is that it was like a giant hand caught him and placed him there.

I left the hospital with 70 stitches on my scalp, and a total of 130 stitches all over my body including screws in my ankle.

Later one day, while I was driving over the Pali Hwy. I looked at the mountains that almost engulfed my life, when I heard God’s Spirit speak to me. “Danny, I saved you to go where ever I send you, to tell people about the love and hope and purpose that is found in Jesus Christ.”

When I returned home, I asked my father, who raised me in a Christian home, to lead me in a prayer. I said, “Lord, if you can make something out of a broken person like me, have Your way. I’ll go where you want me to go. I’ll be what you want me to be. I’ll do what you want me to do and say what you want me to say.”

I share this with you from my heart, because its about the mountains we all face…and the one who lifts us when we fall. If you ever wondered, “God, if you exist, make Yourself known to me…He is. That’s why you are watching this program right now and God says to you, I know you and all that you are going through right now. I care about you. You are not alone.