Gary Walton speaks with HCA teacher A.J. Hernandez about life as a missionary kid, God’s goodness during his recent open heart surgery and teaching at Harvest.
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Episode Transcript
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church, interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We have two services at Harvest every week. You can join us at 08:45AM or 10:45AM every Sunday.
We have Japanese and Korean translation during our second service at 10:45AM. We also live stream that service at hbcguam.org. Hbcguam.org. This week, we’re in part four of what’s the big deal about church. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming Pastor Gary Walton.
Hi, Pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey, hafa adai, Chris. We’re taking a few weeks here at the beginning of the fall just to talk again about the philosophy of the church and what the Bible says about why we’re doing what we’re doing. There’s an amazing amount of time and energy and investment that goes into any church, and for sure that’s true at Harvest. A lot of people, are spending a lot of the stewardship of their gifts in caring for God’s church, and so we want to know why. Why is it such a big deal?
Paul said in Ephesians that God or that Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it. And we’ve just been saying if Jesus loves the church in this way, isn’t it something that ought to be a high priority for us as well? And so we’d like to invite you to come. We’re going to finish up the series this Sunday, and I think it’ll be encouraging for you as we finish up talking about what’s the mission of the church, and the Bible’s so clear about that. Well, we have the privilege of having AJ Hernandez in studio with us in Harvest Time today.
Hey, welcome. Glad that you’re with us.
A.J. Hernandez: Thank you so much.
Gary Walton: Glad to be here. AJ is a second year teacher at Harvest. Maybe you can give us a little bit of your story. I know that you’re from The States, but you spent part of your childhood in Thailand.
A.J. Hernandez: Yes, sir. My parents were missionaries in Thailand from the time I was like 13 ish to about 19. So I lived there for about six years.
Gary Walton: Okay. In Bangkok?
A.J. Hernandez: In Bangkok, yes sir. Heart of Thailand, yes sir.
Gary Walton: Great, great. What was that like, you know, moving at 13 to someplace far away?
A.J. Hernandez: It was not easy at all.
Gary Walton: Really?
A.J. Hernandez: I loved it eventually, but moving out there, there was a lot of bitterness, you know, just that friend group I had growing up in Louisiana for a while. Just leaving them was hard at 13. So it took a few years, but God slowly and patiently helped work that anger and bitterness towards moving out there. It was a process and it actually really kind of started going away once I started meeting other people, other missionary kids mostly, that just kind of had the same life experience. And slowly, I just I ended up falling in love with it by the end.
I actually went back and did an internship at the home church that my parents worked at in Bangkok. So I went back for six months. While they were in The States on furlough, I was overseas in Thailand still working and helping out. I loved it. It was awesome.
Gary Walton: That’s great. You and I have talked about this before, but I love Thailand. God’s brought me some connections there over the years. More than twenty five years now, I’ve traveled in and out of Bangkok and in that area, and God’s just given me a really sweet love for that country and the people that are there and the work that God’s doing. It’s really interesting, hearing you talk about that, AJ.
I mean, I’m sure that that experience, you know, your teen years really, so formative in so many ways. How do you think that shaped you? The way that you think, the way that you process things?
A.J. Hernandez: It gave me a big heart for ministry. During those first, like, two or three years there, there was a lot of bitterness that was there for sure. Didn’t want to go to church with my family, didn’t want to really do anything ministry related, but slowly that as I started to do more in ministry, started to meet more missionary kids, started to meet more Thai people that became friends of mine too, and learning Thai and just really just immersing myself, like, where I was at, I fell in love with it. And after I really started working a lot more at the church, so about 18 or 19, like, I decided that I wanted to do missions work full time, wherever that may be. I would love to go back to Thailand one day.
Obviously, here I’m in Guam. I absolutely love it, would not change a thing, but that’s still just like, it has a place in my heart. Right? That was the first place where I really fell in love with just doing ministry. So maybe one day God will send me back there and get to do ministry over there again.
That would be awesome.
Gary Walton: That’s awesome. That is really great. Seeing the way that God planted in you a sense of the needs around the world, international connection, so that’s cool. Tell us just about your salvation story. How did you become a child of God?
A.J. Hernandez: Yeah. So at about the age of 12, my parents were already missionaries. We were already in ministry in a way. We were on deputation. And I clearly remember a night where I was just, I knew I was a sinner.
I knew I deserved to go to hell for my sins. I just asked for forgiveness from God, asked Him to come into my heart, forgive me for my sins. Obviously, that was not a smooth journey, and then soon after moving to Thailand, that bitterness. And, there’s a bit of anger towards God, and then funny enough, was anger moving to Thailand, and then there was anger leaving Thailand coming back from college. And about 20, I just kind of full went the other way.
I didn’t really care about God, didn’t really want anything to do with Him. There was actually a girl that I dated for a while that, she wasn’t a Christian, was going to get married to, like I had a very AJ plan set out. And I remember specifically before I started dating this girl, I told my dad that I respect God, He’s powerful, He can do what He wants, but I want what I want more. And I thought I could do ministry and help people, mostly just help people, and then have a non Christian life at the same time kind of thing. And God showed me that’s not that’s not how that works.
And so, I ended up breaking up with her, like, in 2023, and, that’s really where my walk just kind of really took off. God was patient through those years of me running. But, yeah. And then after that, like, it’s been nonstop. 2023 ended the relationship and, fully just going after what God has for me.
And he’s been he’s been so good. I can’t imagine where I’d be if I wasn’t following him all these years.
Gary Walton: Yeah, that’s cool, AJ. You’ve got a good way about you. Just your view of life. We’ll get a chance to talk about some of the challenges that God’s brought you through. You have a genuineness to your spirit, sense of genuine love for God and a care for people, and I know that’s shaped by a lot of different things, in your life, but sometimes those hard journeys are part of it where you have to really figure out, what God means and if it’s gonna be real to you.
And I appreciate your willingness to Yeah. To share that. You’re, now in your second year teaching elementary, fourth grade, at Harvest. What drew you into teaching? And maybe even while you’re answering that, what have you, discovered that you really love about working with kids every day?
A.J. Hernandez: Really just Thailand kind of started that love for teaching. At our church, we would teach English for free. It was one of the outreaches we’d have. It was like, Hey, you come, we’ll teach you English for free for an hour. We just ask that you stay fifteen minutes extra and we’ll do a little Bible lesson.
Got really involved as far as teaching there with my parents’ church for English, and I taught high school, I taught kids, I taught adults, pretty much any age group. I taught English there for a while, and I would coach soccer or futsal, technically. I just loved teaching. That’s kind of what it came down to. That really planted that seed.
And then, yeah, what was the second part of the question? Sorry.
Gary Walton: Yeah, just what do you love about working with kids every day?
A.J. Hernandez: I, they teach me so much sometimes. I love my class this year. They’re good kids. I enjoy getting just to see the growth.
So, last year, I had my heart surgery about six months into the school year, so I didn’t get to see that last bit of growth, which was sad, but it was cool coming back started this year and seeing just the seed that I had planted in water and just seeing how much they’ve just grown. I mean, physically they grow so much between fourth and fifth grade, but just talking with them, like it’s so cool seeing just that jump from where they start in the school year to where they end the school year. And then knowing that I got to be a part of it and actually got to plant and teach these kids about Christ and point them to Christ and all of it too, which is a blessing.
Gary Walton: Yeah. You kind of threw out there casually, had my heart surgery. We’ll come back to that in a minute. That’s got to be part of this story for sure. Before we get to that though, because I know people are going to want to hear about what God did there, it’s been pretty cool watching you really embrace life on Guam.
What surprised you most, when you when you moved here? What have you come to love about living here?
A.J. Hernandez: I was surprised at how beautiful the island is. Get to see the mountains and the ocean from right outside my classroom. The island’s beautiful, the culture here is beautiful. I absolutely love just the church. I just love being a part of a ministry that’s so active in in all the communities out here.
I just it’s so cool just getting to see all that God does out here. That’s probably my favorite part is getting to be a part of so many different ministries like Harvest House, teaching, obviously, just at the church. I think that’s what I love the most, just being a part of an awesome community out here.
Gary Walton: It really is amazing. I mean, I know we talk about this a lot because I don’t know how you could not. Harvest is a special place and God is at work in a, I just think, an unusual way. And a long time ago, I heard somebody say, you know, whenever you find, the wave that God is creating, make sure you ride that wave. And it might be a little bit superficial, but it does feel like that.
There’s this wave of God’s blessing and it’s really cool to be right on the middle of seeing what God’s doing as He’s changing lives and you and many others are a big part of I’m really thankful for that. Okay. Go back to that heart piece, right? So last year took a turn that you weren’t really expecting. You had some concerns about this, but really learned that you were facing a pretty serious heart situation.
Tell us about that.
A.J. Hernandez: So I knew I was born with a heart defect. Like about 12 we knew I had a heart defect. It was a, it’s called a bicuspid aortic valve. So my aortic valve was enlarged, we knew it was enlarged, but we didn’t know how big it was. Partially on me for not keeping up with my appointments like I should have.
Gary Walton: So you’re supposed to be testing this a long
A.J. Hernandez: was supposed to be going like every year and then year and a half went by, two years, I think about 2020 it’s 2026, so like 2024, 2025, I went into a doctor and they’re like, Oh, well, your valve is definitely enlarged and it’s kind of getting up there, so you have to be a bit more on top of it. But they told me about a year’s between checkups was okay. So, that was summer of twenty twenty five because then I came out here. And they told me a year gap would have been okay, but my parents, I came back, I went back stateside for Christmas break. And they had went ahead and helped me get an appointment scheduled.
They’re like, You’re already here, might as well get it done. No sense in just pushing it off in case you want to stay over in Guam over the summer or whatever that would look like. So I said, Okay, went to the appointment and found out it had grown a lot more than they thought it was going to grow in that timeframe, because they didn’t have a way to reference how fast it was growing because I wasn’t upkeeping with those appointments. So I went for my appointment, they did the scan. A week later, they did my second appointment and they were like, You’re going to have surgery for your heart within the next, like as soon as possible.
They were not upset about me going back to Guam, but they were definitely like, You might want to talk about just staying here, just in case on the off chance something happens. Well, not really off chance, on the chance something happens sooner than they would expect, they wanted me stateside just in case. But came back here, had a job and trusted God. So, back here and ended up working with insurance. I went back from my surgery in February.
Had my surgery well, I went back for appointments in mid February. Surgery was start of March.
Gary Walton: Open heart surgery.
A.J. Hernandez: Open heart surgery.
Gary Walton: Yeah,
A.J. Hernandez: full thing. So they took my bicuspid valve out and they took the root out of it too, because that was worse than they thought. They couldn’t really tell on the scan. I went in at a perfect time. But they took it out and they put in a mechanical valve for me. You can actually hear my heart click.
It’s one of my little classroom things. I say if it’s level zero volume, you ought be completely quiet, you should be able to hear my heart tick. They can hear it into the back of the class, some of them.
Gary Walton: Maybe later, we’ll do that right
A.J. Hernandez: Yeah, here. You might be able to with the microphone. But yeah, so they did the surgery, replaced it. God was good either way, had surgery gone good or bad. He was good no matter what.
Yeah. But it went perfect. I didn’t have to get blood transfusions. I was in and out quicker than they expected. They told me that they hadn’t really had, like, that was the most perfect surgery they could have had as far as how things went.
The nurses were awesome, the doctors were awesome. I went to a great hospital, God provided financially for all of it, like, he gave peace throughout of it. I mean, just recovery. Like, I couldn’t do anything for two months. And, like, he was just so good.
And it was cool because there was nothing I could do for him. I was stuck in bed. I mean, they have to saw your sternum and go in there and do their thing. I literally could not really I wasn’t walking more than twenty minutes, thirty minutes a day. And so I couldn’t do anything for God to earn anything, but He was still just so good to me, so merciful and gracious and patient.
Even when things got hard, He was right there with me. It was cool to get to experience God in a way that not many people get to experience, especially at my age. I was the youngest on my floor about like thirty years. It was a blessing. It really was a blessing.
Gary Walton: You know, AJ, I mean everybody that’s listening knows this is a pretty serious health crisis, and you uncertain. I mean they’re going open up your chest and do some pretty significant replacements. When this becomes clear, I mean I know I talked with you multiple times right around here and your spirit was always so positive, but if you could let us in a little bit, what’s going on in your mind when you really heard, Here’s what’s going on, and this is what the surgery’s going to mean?
A.J. Hernandez: There was definitely a bit of fear just not knowing how things were going to look with surgery, especially when the doctor said it was going be such a turnaround. Originally, when they first found out about my diagnosis when I was 12, they told me like 40s or 50s was when I was going to have surgery, not 26 or 25, almost 26. So there’s a bit of shock, I think was probably the biggest thing. There’s definitely some fear. The closer the surgery got, there’s a little bit more fear.
A little bit of frustration trying to figure out all the details and things like that.
Gary Walton: Yeah, most people don’t have on their agenda at 26 years old to stop your life, really. I mean, started new life, new direction.
A.J. Hernandez: Yeah. And then the closer surgery got, it was good for me to deal with some fears. And God, again, was just so gracious. His Word just has encouragement in there everywhere. I think was reading in the Gospels at that time and just reading how good Jesus was to all those people and just comfort that he was going to be good to me as well.
I mean, that’s who he is. And just trust. I mean, he’s dragged me out of some horrible situations before. So, like, heart surgery is a big deal, but he’s already proved himself before. The Bible says, Taste and see that the Lord is good.
I have seen that God is more than good. He’s beyond good. He’s too good to me. And, I don’t know, like, yeah, it’s scary, but at the same time I know who’s with me and who knew it was gonna happen. It’s just hard to sit in that fear at times, if that makes sense.
Gary Walton: Yeah, it does. Well, sensed all through it. I mean, there really was a maturity to your perspective, a spiritual maturity. But for sure, you know, going through something like that at the age that you’re at, it’s gotta change your perspective. You’re talking about this a little bit.
Let me push a little bit further. What did God teach you about faith? About fear? Yeah. Anything about that?
A.J. Hernandez: Even when things like get hard and things come up like that, there’s just this there’s a confidence that can be had that God’s going to deliver, because faith’s trusting without seeing how things are going to work out. And I will say my faith was not that strong at the start. It feels like sometimes looking back it’s like, I trusted but did I fully trust? Was still all those fears there. Think fear and faith are just kind of the opposites of each other, right?
So there’s like a fight for both of them. And it’s always easy looking back, like, oh, yeah. No. Of course, God was gonna be good. But having that faith in that moment was very difficult.
Just God’s just gonna deliver. I don’t He’s always going to deliver, no matter what the outcome is. Actually, the guy after me was also a Christian, and his surgery went completely opposite of mine. Did not go well. But God was still good.
And getting honestly, was an encouragement getting to hear from his wife and his pastor were there as well and getting to hear their faith that like, Hey, this did not go as we planned it, or as we planned for it to go, but just this trust that God was still good. That was the biggest lesson for faith, just seeing even though God was good in my situation, I feel like it was a bit easier to have faith. Seeing someone who did not have as easy of a situation as I did, that showed me that, yeah, God’s good.
Gary Walton: That’s really good. Yeah, thank you for sharing and your transparency and openness And about all so many people were praying. I know you were encouraged by that. Not just here. I mean you have friends from all over the world.
Over the world, literally, yeah, praying for you. And we really believe in that power of prayer and thankful. Little health report. You’re doing good, right?
A.J. Hernandez: I’m doing great. I’m still like endurance is still coming back, but overall I
Gary Walton: that’s why you’re up in the 3rd Floor of the
A.J. Hernandez: Exactly. It gives me a little workout every morning and recess and stuff. So, yeah, endurance is still coming back, but I feel better than before I left. I didn’t expect that. I expected to feel the same. I feel a lot better.
It’s awesome, actually.
Gary Walton: Your heart’s working right.
A.J. Hernandez: Yeah, it’s working right now. No heart issues anymore.
Gary Walton: That’s fantastic. And the, you know, there’s not a I’m sure there’s a check up that goes on, but there’s a belief that this is just going to keep ticking away, right?
A.J. Hernandez: Dr. said I should be good. They gave me the choice between a tissue valve and a mechanical valve, so I did the mechanical one, so I don’t have to go back into surgery ever, just on some blood thinners. So yeah, I’m chilling now.
Gary Walton: That’s awesome. So you’re back in the classroom doing something that you love. When you look at your students and you think about the life God’s given you, has this experience changed the kind of teacher and the kind of man that you want to be?
A.J. Hernandez: Yes. I feel very much that God gave me almost like a second chance in a way, because I wasn’t going to get that appointment in December had my parents not pushed. And there is a very real possibility I wouldn’t have even made it to this semester. So, like, have God’s blessed me with another chance to serve these kids and to to serve just him in general. So it’s definitely been, like, a really good motivator to just, hey, I wanna give it everything I got this semester because, one, I’m not promised even next year.
But, like, he gave me a second chance. I didn’t do anything to earn that. So he’s given me another chance to pour into these kids’ lives. This is a different different group of kids now, but I still get this opportunity to pour in these kids’ lives and just point them to Christ even with my heart surgery, which is cool. We’ve talked about the characteristics of God this week.
And I’ve been able to point back to we talked about God’s goodness, and I was like, Hey, I had heart surgery, and guess who was good? God. And they’re all like, what? You had heart surgery?
Gary Walton: Yeah. They have no idea. Right?
A.J. Hernandez: They had no idea. So just getting to point back and be like, yeah, like, I’m a real life example of how God has like like, you can see the the actual scars, how God has been good now or good to me. So, yeah, it’s been really cool. It’s kinda changed. I’m really trying to point the kids just more to God’s goodness and God has used my life to to show it.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Amen. Was there a time, particular moment in this whole experience where you just felt like God became especially real to you?
A.J. Hernandez: In the hospital, there was one night specifically, I don’t remember what had happened, but I was hurting really bad. The painkillers they had given me, I don’t know if it was just badly timed painkiller doses, or I can’t remember what it was exactly, but I remember hurting a lot. And I had written before surgery, I had taken a notebook, and there were some scriptures I was trying to memorize. So I wrote those all down in a notebook. And so I just had my mom just read those scriptures to me and it really kind of just helped calm the pain, helped me fall asleep, and just, man, God was real.
He moved. I mean, getting to be a light to some of the nurses. Actually, one of my nurses’ names, I cannot remember his name, but his name meant The Blood of Jesus Saves. So just kind of like a little, because I told him I worked at a church in Guam, he’s like, Oh, dude, guess what my name means?
Gary Walton: I was
A.J. Hernandez: like, Oh, that’s super cool. So there’s all these little nudges like, Hey, I’m right here. Even in recovery home, there was a song that I don’t remember what the song was, it was at church service, and, like it just felt like God’s like, Hey, you need this song right now and, I’m right here watching you and I know you need this right now. I broke down in tears in the middle of service, but, just like all these little nudges that God gives throughout those trials, like he is watching. Yeah.
Gary Walton: Well, I mean, we’re so glad that God brought you here, Originally, that God brought you to the point your parents reminded you, they helped set that up, because I agree. I mean, when we started talking about this a couple months later, was like, man, it was very, very fortunate. God’s grace that allowed your parents to really push on that. And then surgery was successful and you’re back and feels like 100%. And thankful for the testimony that you’ve been with students and really the whole church and our whole community.
So thank you for sharing all that. We’re gonna pray that this is just the beginning of God’s blessing on your life. And look forward to how God’s gonna keep growing you and using you here in Guam. Thank you so much.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, at this point in the program, we always wanna personally invite you again to services at Harvest Baptist Church. We meet at 08:45AM and 10:45AM on Sunday. We have Japanese and Korean translation that it’s available during the 10:45AM service, and that’s also the service we bring you live here on 88.1 FM and khmg.org. We hope to see you this Sunday.
Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.