“God really knows how to make molehills out of mountains.”
This is a statement 24-year-old Brandi Hosman can say with conviction. Each day Hosman, a spunky, redhead from Idaho, puts on her blue flowered muumuu, the standard uniform for volunteers at the Polynesian Cultural Center, and spends her days touching the lives of guests through her story. (Pictured at top Miriama Toia, Brandi Hosman, and Merie Passil)
Brandi Hosman was a typical 16 year old, in the words of her mother she was “a star basketball player, a beautiful dancer, very smart, and a leader among her peers.” All that changed in an instant when a truck crashed into a vehicle that was transporting Brandi and her teammates to a game in a nearby city. Brandi spent two months in a coma, and, after miraculously regaining consciousness, spent two years re-learning basic tasks like talking, eating and walking. Her short-term memory loss was severe at the time and is a challenge she still faces daily. Brandi likes to jokingly explain, “I have short-term memory loss, and know what? I have short-term memory loss.”
But the challenges didn’t end there. Four years following the accident, Brandi found herself in another near-fatal car crash. Her leg was broken in several places, her right shoulder was crushed, and one side of her face was entirely mangled. Farah said at one point during emergency surgery, the doctors determined that her daughter was as good as dead.
“As they began to put away their tools, the anesthesiologist suddenly said, ‘Wait, her vitals are coming up.’ No one could figure out how that could be happening. But they decided to keep working on her, and another four hours later Brandi was mostly put back together,” she said. “I felt like we had experienced another miracle and that God still wanted Brandi on this earth.”
Now Brandi, from her wheelchair, assures everyone she meets there is a reason for everything. “I’m grateful that I’m handicapped,” she said. “I was a smart girl before. I was a good girl before. But I didn’t have any ‘wow’ moment. Now I have a huge ‘wow’ moment that I want to share with all.”
Brandi’s desire to share her story has found her at firesides in many locations on the mainland, where she and her mother use her experience to testify of the reality of God‘s plan. Among the many lives she has touched at these firesides, one was a young man who, before hearing Brandi speak, had been contemplating suicide. “After he heard the story he rethought and said, ‘How can I even think about that?’ Things like that make all the pain I felt so worth it,” she said.
Now, in answer to another prayer, and with the help of a dear friend, Emily Toone, Brandi gets to share her story daily with people from all over the world. “It’s crazy how things have worked out; who knew who, and how we’ve gotten here,” said Toone, speaking of the series of miracles that allowed her to join Brandi here as PCC volunteers.
“I feel that I am needed here. I feel at home here. The whole spirit of Hawaii screams my personality,” Brandi said. “I want to tell my whole story to one group of people and have it carried to the whole world. I’ve met so many people from so many different cultures and places… I don’t know what impact [my story] has but it always has a good impact.”
Just a few weeks ago one woman even returned to PCC a second time to hear the rest of Brandi’s story after beginning a conversation with her the day before.
More than anything, Brandi attributes her relationship with God to overcoming her challenges. “Our relationship now has become so much greater and I don‘t know what it would be if I didn‘t have this accident,” she said. “He is my best friend, and what a great best friend to have.”
Brandi’s greatest hope is to be able to help others discover that same relationship. “I just hope that I can talk to all the people I am supposed to talk to and stress the importance of following the gospel of Jesus Christ… There is no cutting corners in the process of making us like our Heavenly Father. If we all grasped that, the world would be such a better place,” she said.
Photo Courtesy of Farah Hosman