 studios in Tink-Tek Hawaii in downtown Honolulu and from my home office in Makiki. I met a man who is passionate about God, his lovely wife of about 40 plus years, and the Ohana around him. Let's discover this man who is living life to the fullest. His name is Gary Coterie. Welcome, Gary. Aloha, Wendy. Thank you so much. What a blessing. Thank you. Aloha. I've met you a couple years ago, and every time I listen to you, I'm very intrigued with what comes out of your mouth and the sheer determination of making your home Hawaii great again. And so I've always wanted to have you just to come and discuss what's going on and what is the health of Hawaii's housing and politics here in Hawaii. So I'm glad that you're here with us. So let's get started, Gary. And let's just tell me about your Ohana. Well, thank you, Wendy. You know, it's so exciting to be on the program. I just love, I love your joy. I love who you are, and I love all that you're involved in. And so it's just really great and a blessing to be here. You know, my Ohana, you mentioned in your introduction that I've been married for 41 years to really the woman of my youth. I got married when I was 21, and she was 17. And people were like, really? But it's been wonderful. You know, it was a lot of years of learning to get to know each other and learning to say how, how to say I'm sorry and will you please forgive me, but through it all through reconciliation and grace and, and life and, you know, having kids and raising them and now grandkids, it's been more than I could imagine. It was just so I'm so blessed, so thankful. You know, like I mentioned, Kim and I were married in 1980. We moved to Hawaii in 1981. Her folks lived here in Waikiki. So we came here on extended vacation at the time I was in construction way back even then back in the night in the late 70s. I was in construction and but I traveled and my travels really didn't lend themselves to a good marriage scenario. You know, it was difficult. I would be come home only on the weekends and it was hard to get to know each other. But after a year, providentially, we came to Hawaii, we stayed, we met great friends and Kulio and joined in family and learned all Hanna and learned what Aloha meant and we were just embraced and loved and it was so fabulous. We had such good friendships immediately. It wasn't like we had to build them over years. We found them natural and it was just amazing the grace that was extended to us and and then ultimately obviously in the 86 in 1986, our first daughter was born Rachel and then following a year and 17 months later, Erica was born and it was a big change. We had lived in Waikiki at the time like most young people who come to Hawaii. We had lived in Waikiki and so we had this, you know, 400 square foot place in Ola Kele, you know, in Moeile, lived in there and and we had started the business at that time doing work at Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base and had the kids and then realized, wow, we need to make some changes and so ultimately we moved to the windward side in Kailua. We came through the poly and you drop out of the poly, you just see the windward side and it was just like a beautiful colors of blue, beautiful. It was so fantastic and we were fortunate enough, we were able to get an FHA mortgage and and buy a home in Kala Hill Hillside and so we lived there for 20 years. Our kids were raised there and and you know we developed more and more relationships in the windward side and youth groups and soccer and all the things beach days and just fabulous years. The kids grew and they went to school at Trinity and then St. Mark's and ultimately Kala Hill and Hawaii Baptist and then they went off to college, you know, off to Oregon after high school and but Kim and I through it all we've met so many amazing and wonderful people, people who were generous in their love, you know, honest in their conversations. People would have heartfelt conversations that would actually touch you when you could actually have somebody say something that wasn't that easy to hear and know that it was for your well-being and to have friends like that or a treasure. Friends are a treasure and so I have many, I don't have many like hundreds but I have a handful of friends who have who have impacted my life with their authentic love and and obviously my wife is my greatest and closest friend so it's been fantastic. Wow that's a healthy marriage if I ever heard of one and you know both you and Kim, I mean you were kids, you were 21 years old, you know and that that's a young man, that's a very young man and you know to to find love at that young age and to just know that she's the one so I know you have a healthy marriage and I know communication and love and faith is all mixed into it. What advice would you give to a young couple these days? I mean with all the different challenges I know you had some challenges as well but these days it's quite tough so is there any advice that you would give to have a healthy relationship into a healthy marriage down the line? What can you say to these young people? Well that's a great question yeah and you know I think the most important part with regard to a relationship whether it's marriage or outside the marriage is that you can talk honestly that you can share what's really there that there's a form of you know we say into me see but I say it's into me you see. I love it man better write that down. You'll actually allow to people see the in here the stuff that you don't want people to see. There's things that I'm not proud of and the many things that I don't want people to see but to those who've I've actually exposed and let them see into me they're never shocked. It's such an honor to be involved in another person's heart and for a young couple honest conversations not having things in the closet getting them out before and I've had an honest conversation and realizing that we're all fallen none of us are perfect that our value doesn't come from my job or my paycheck my value comes from the one who made me and that means it I can extend that grace and love to any human being it doesn't have to be they don't have to perform one get to do a single thing to know that who made them gives them more value than I could ever assign a human being and so and I would say with regard to the young marriage thing be honest and account for your mistakes just just say hey you know what I did this and when you say you don't say I'm sorry it's will you please forgive me it's a question and you actually empower the other person say yes I forgive you and something supernatural about the grace of God he just washes it away when there's actually a cleansing and a repentance and then there's a reconciliation that happens I can remember with Kim and I we would fight till the middle of the night we were just you know I got to be right here really you would break down of the sheer exhaustion and say oh god got me right and so I if I had two nuggets uh be honest and account wow everyone you better be writing that down to do his parents write it down because that's the words of wisdom you need to pass through the next generation so you know what intrigued me a lot when I heard you speak and I hear your story all the time when I met you I asked you about your grandchildren and I know you have a bunch of them you have two daughters and you have a few grandchildren and where are they you know I asked you where are they and then you kind of stopped and looked at me and it looked like you wanted to cry this man of joy wanted to cry and then when I asked you about your grandchildren and where are they residing please share with us where did they go and why yeah you know it is a it is a point of you know there's a lot of stuff that comes up because I don't get to be with my grandkids you know three and a half years ago my one daughter Erica has four boys and Rachel our older daughter has two boys and a girl so she's now the princess obviously out of the seven we got one granddaughter so she's she's the queen of the roost but three and a half years ago you know they were living paycheck to paycheck they were you know one one misstep and they they didn't have the money to pay their bills and they wanted to have their kids in private school they didn't they didn't feel comfortable about the the process the education the curriculum here in hawaii so they had their kids at a christian school but they were still expensive and one kid was you know whatever whatever it was let's say it was 500 I know it was more than that what was 500 and then two was a thousand and then they began to see the right and I have four and how's this going to work and they began to think and talk with each other and they and realized that what they really wanted for their family is they really wanted a legacy of freedom they wanted the liberty for their kids they wanted their kids to grow up in a community like they grew up in and so ultimately they decided we had a family meeting and and they they kind of just had to tell Kim and I we wept for a year for real and even in the moment it's like I miss my grandkids there's a part of this there's a part of ohana and life that's there's a legacy piece that happens between parents and kids grandparents kids and grandkids and great grandparents grandparents kids and grand great grandkids that piece is missing for us right now our kids are are 11 to 4 and I I have great concerns about not participating in their lives right now I it really it really turns on my insides so well and that's a big chunk I mean you know your children your daughters are grown but it's the grandkids now that was going to feel that that why we are retired and or retiring so we have all this time to play and hug them and just mentor them and love them as we should so I can feel your pain and I felt it that time so I knew I wanted to just share with that because I know many families here in Hawaii are experiencing the same you know conflict that you have and that the turmoil and that loneliness in your heart so it is a problem here and we want to fix it we want to make it better but before we go on Gary I know that you were also a very successful businessman you ran a construction company here in Hawaii and I was also very intrigued when I heard how did you sustain your business throughout the last two years doing this COVID incidents you have great questions you know I've been you know the only jobs I've ever had where I actually worked for somebody was a worked it as a dishwasher my first job at a steakhouse at my second job actually three jobs second job was at a gas station and then a car lot and car dealer and then my friend said hey you want to try construction and I said well yeah okay and it was a huge race and when I came to Hawaii I just said well why wouldn't I try this and so we start I just lodged the business simply because I knew how to actually perform the task and then I just worked my way through the learning process of what it meant to estimate and understand rules and regulations and insurance and estimating and project management and those just happened over the years it was just trial and error talk to people get wisdom look at people who are doing things and are successful look for people who have integrity and do what's right and follow them like life is a life is a life is a process of gaining wisdom and wisdoms are all around us if we would just have a heart we would just say yes I'll just ask and you know we have not because we ask not and so I asked and I just asked people and worked and then I just worked hard and ultimately Kingdom Builders was birthed in 1995 and it's actually a DBA but it was birthed in 1995 and we did all types of projects you know federal work homes a lot of we built a lot of churches a lot of schools we still do making it through the last uh last couple of years through COVID it actually is not an accident I mean people think well how can this be you know and this will be hard maybe hard people understand but the Lord told me about six years ago that he was going to change things and I don't know for your own personal experience but it's hard to change it's really hard to say I'm going to stop doing what I've done for 40 years and do something different and it took a great deal of courage for me to actually do that so actually two years ago the the financial faucet just basically turned off it was incredible we had contracts fall out that we had in place pre-COVID a couple of large contracts and that just stopped and in construction there's a there's a rhythm you know you you you're you're estimating all the time you're working on uh getting the contracts in place and then you start work with that that duration and sometimes months that process and so those jobs fell out and and uh by the grace of God we just hung on we just I saw it honestly we hung on we saw we saw what was whatever reserves we had disappear and but I knew I knew in that process that God was doing something and it had nothing to do with his provision we never I have never gone without nor have my kids ever gone without and that's his promises that we would not go without and it hasn't been the same but nobody traveled so I don't know what difference that makes but you know it was really rough and so things are better now they know we're working the guy we're quote we remember we were quote essential which never made any sense to me at all I don't get the idea of deciding who's essential and non-essential I say everybody's essential and nobody's non-essential these are these terms are are uh I don't know I I don't know where people came up with that but nevertheless we survived uh God has been faithful this is a season of change for Kim and I and uh we look forward to what's next and I know there's a lot in front of us and so we're exceedingly excited full of faith and uh you know yeah yeah I know that you had um an opportunity to meet with a lot of different clients and potential customers that were seeking maybe home improvement because I know a lot of home improvements went on during the last couple years because they were stuck at home so I know that you were meeting a lot of customers what were some of the concerns that they had about investing into their homes or investing back into Hawaii? Well initially in the first I would say the first six or eight months people most people that I met were really unsure how to even make decisions about the next 30 days let alone invest in a big project you know the same dynamics that that larger projects schools or churches had families were going through should we should we remodel should we do this now should we build a new home now because they were uncertain because of all things COVID right there was so much fear being released in our communities they were unsure and then the process of actually getting those people to act from a place of we really want to do this to understanding what was required and how much it was going to cost and then they would go through the entire budget process so I would say the process was really about spending time illuminating and creating options most construction projects have this piece called value engineering where people have you've heard the term they have a wine taste but a beer budget right everybody wants and I always tell people listen you should just go for whatever you want and if you don't have enough resources we'll prioritize and we'll back down the project until you can afford it and that's not normal most contractors don't do that but I'll just sit with people for months and working through their hopes and dreams and visions and exploring opportunities in different ways that they might initiate a project and bring it into completion so that's that's kind of what I do I love people I love listening to their dreams and so you just listen and offer solutions right that's kind of what I do so yeah well I might say that you were blessed in the last two years because you were hearing about the health and well-being of so many others and the issues the problems of them just trying to survive and trying to hear the truth of the day but unlike most citizens Gary I know you didn't sit back I know you didn't sit back and just always me or oh my gosh what are we going to do or I know that you took action and instead of instead you organized a group and I hear it's called the AFC or the Aloha Freedom Coalition so please tell us a little bit about this and what how was this over yeah you know AFC or the Aloha Freedom Coalition was really birthed out of a group of people who knew something was wrong in our community it didn't take long even myself when the when the first COVID things came out and these conversations like essentially non-essential I first paused and I thought to myself wow this could be really serious and I didn't just jump the gun and say oh this is nothing but ultimately after you know after the first route 60 days was over and I began to see things that were incongruent people started to say this is not right and so we formed this group called Aloha Freedom Coalition and which its principles are Aloha that we would exercise everything in love and reach in love that we would illuminate the truth we would actually we began to see throughout all mass media through you know we began to see the coercion of government we began to see the censoring of people experts doctors these kinds of people who had important things to say and it went against my grain of gaining wisdom it didn't make sense to me and more and more these non non-sensical decisions were coming out of our government they were being issued from the cbc or fda and so we formed a Aloha Freedom Coalition as an as an organization to to stand for liberty for the individual we began to see individual rights being being suppressed and constrained and so we just said we're forming this coalition so that people have the right to exercise their civil civil rights understand their bill of rights and then in that they can exercise their self-government and understand how to how to be free so that organization started with in my living room you know i put up i put up five five easel four easels and i said one of the most important elements of our society and they were the church they were media they were business and um i can't even the fourth one but i put these easels up and i just asked the people in attendance which one matters to you they stand by this evil and organize yourself and so they elect the leader and then we began to formulate an idea and alha freedom coalition uh exists today as a information centers for the globe if you need help medical wellness if you need help with uh uh business with political things with preparedness there's these information centers where they can go to the website access information and we've over this time over this last two years we've built this vast summary and information for people you know to get help and so it's really an organization designed to help the people it sounds like to me like it's a resource organization so and that's what people need especially people like me we're not computer savvy and i don't know where to go for information so sounds to me like it would be a one-stop shop that i can go with my silly questions and and not get laughed at and i would get some direction and so i think it's very valuable at this especially during those critical times that we just went through i have a question from the audience and it's is afc a faith-based organization well technically it's not a faith-based we didn't accept it as a faith-based it's non-partisan non-religious uh but it's interesting that a lot of a lot of people who are really willing to stand and serve and other people are faith-based people that doesn't mean that there is the entire spectrum of people in afc and afc was a is a liberty-based organization so there's not a there's there is there is a there is a way to be a member to help support afc to function but it's not a membership like where we come like-minded like-minded peace is liberty and so uh we're we're a new more number of the original leaders and those who had a vision for for freedom where they faith-based of course they were i am and uh but does that mean that there weren't were there there were others that were not yeah there was plenty of people that were not you know right you know gary i know um by hearing you i know that you're a man of god and that god has a big part of your life's journey so just please share with us when did you accept the lord into your life that was a great question now i i actually accepted the lord when i was 19 i i actually asked kim on a date i was involved in auto racing as a young man and i met her at some auto races and i i tell you i i was uh i was wicked in every way you know i was all about the wrong things and i asked her on a date and she said how about church i said what my favorite church may maybe on and i had no idea what it meant to be a christian to know what it meant to be embrace the son of god and i am she i went to church and i noticed something i noticed that people actually loved each other i hadn't experienced that before uh and the next day uh i i asked the lord into my life i said and i didn't really know what i'm doing kim actually saw what was going on she said oh you left your bible in my truck by accident i saw her the next day and uh so she talked to me about what it was to be born again and it was an immediate 180 degree turn i had a feeling that was like the worst it was it was just gone it wasn't like i decided to stop smoking it was literally just gone wow my truck and i'm throwing out all this drug pale it was all gone wow sounds like to me um at at 19 you received the lord you found the love of your life so spiritual health is a key spiritual health is a key to your success i can see it is it that simple right is it that simple gary well actually you know it's it's free god give it to us free all you do is say yes it's that simple it's not complex it's my own it's my own i i i need to do this and i need to do that it gets in the way i i have to choose it's not that it's he's he's given his gift and for me it was like and they know what he said to me he honestly to me when i was weeping after i met her that night i didn't i was and i'm 19 years old i'm on my way home i'm weeping in my car and i'm asking myself what is going on this went on for 20 minutes it's not in my driveway and i said what is going on and he said gently he said you've never known what love is beautiful gary so beautiful yeah that's the real yeah you know i was trying to google you to find out some information on you and i i found out that you were an active member or a board member of the white kiki beach chaplaincy what was your role there well when we first moved here kim's mom and dad i mentioned that they had they had lived here they were actually missionaries with the white kiki beach chaplaincy oh when we arrived we immediately started going down and serving at the beach and white kiki behind behind the hilton with pastor and uh megangus well not not now so now one love is actually overseeing it uh pastor megangus passed away right right so anyway but back in those days and back in you know 1979 or 1981 we served at the beach for you know until the kids were born until 86 you know and then we did all kinds of street ministry and wow we had a bookstore we had our bible studies and all these things going on it was something nearly every night of the week and then uh we moved to kailua the kids were raised uh and then i went back to the chaplaincy and served as a board member and still i'm a board member there wow and i still speak at the beach i used to speak there quarterly but things are changing yeah great joy it's a great joy to to share the love of god in an open air setting like the beach service so i love it i love it i also volunteered as a speaker uh back at their church yeah uh is it a hello or in in under at their facility and we had coffee and donuts um like on in the mornings and snow birds from all over would come and listen to the speaker of the day and it was a great time i went for the donuts of course but no it was a great time it was great times but now let's move on i recently heard on the news i saw it on the news i thought oh my gosh you gotta get you on that you are so passionate about the the health of our state that you are considering or actually running for governor for hawaii how did you come to this decision gary wow you know that's it it was an amazing experience actually i started hearing about a year ago people started saying things to me you should consider running for office and i i just like i that's just i said that's fantasy i don't know you know and then somebody else would say something and then somebody called and and said from the mainland you should the lord said you should run for governor i still blew it off and then another closer friend said to me asked the same question she said i the lord told me that you're to be governor of hawaii but when she said it i knew her and i knew i knew that she heard the lord's voice and i thought oh that kind of resonated a little bit different i still dismissed it outright there wasn't no choice you know i just like oh whatever and maybe about uh two months ago i started having these experiences with god they were uh even though i've been a christian for all these years and born again in the spirit and his presence became so overwhelming at these these times right it would end up on the ground and just weeping and just you know can imagine the whole snotty nose the whole deal and i'm and i'm going what is going on it was like when i got saved it was like uncontrollable it happened once it happened twice it happened a third and then the fun i told my wife kim i said honey i don't know what's going on god's doing something in me i don't have a know what it is i don't know what it is but at the same time people started keeps more more people kept saying this and uh then i brought it up to our prayer group and i said dude would you pray with me about this would you just consider it and uh ultimately uh i was outside and early i get up early in the morning that's my time when it's dark 4 35 something like that in the morning and i'm outside praying and i said okay lord if if this is you uh okay i'll i obey i will obey and immediately there was learning everything went wow okay so we're running really quickly short on time but i just gotta ask what did your wife kim say about all this in a couple of words when i walked in i told her what i i told her what i thought lord's saying she said yes yes no resistance in her and i said are you even to lose everything for this and she said yes yes that's all we needed the yes from the wife wow so okay here we run out of time for today i know we could go on and on and we just got started but i'd like to say mahalo to you gary cornery for the man who believes that the greatest gift of all is ohana my lord my wife and ohana around us so blessings to you as you embark on your campaign i'm wendy lowe we'll be back in two weeks we'll see you then hello everyone thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com mahalo