Sauniatu

On September 27, 1904, Elisala Fanene trudged through rain and thick vegetation, accompanying mission leaders on an expedition inland on Upolu. There they hoped to finally find a site where Samoan Saints could gather and make a community together, like early Saints in places like Kirtland, Nauvoo, and Utah or Hawaiian Saints in Lanai and Laie. Elisala was a natural choice for the expedition: a faithful missionary since 1897, he was respected by local Saints and had often crossed over the mountains between Siumu, where he presided over a branch, and mission headquarters in Pesega.

When the group came to a river, Elisala carried the other men across the water on his back. There they found the land they’d been looking for: a rainy inclined plane surrounded by an ancient volcanic rim. In October, Elisala and his family became three of the original eight settlers.

On the day they first cleared land for a village, Elisala recalled that it was too wet to kindle a cooking fire, so they worked through the day without eating. More Saints soon joined them. Opapo, another experienced missionary, came with his wife, To’ai, and their three children. In January, when the land was dedicated to “become a choice land and a fit place for the saints to gather and become a choice people of the Lord,” both Opapo and Elisala were among the speakers, encouraging the congregation of about 30 to “stand as saints and not be weak in the work of God.” The Saints then voted on a name for the village, selecting “Sauniatu” as a reminder to prepare for God’s work.

As they worked to establish a new community without the benefit of traditional village leaders or ancestral ties to the land, the Saints lived by faith. Shortly after they finished the settlement’s first chapel, it was threatened by a fire in a neighboring building. While others carried water from the river, Opapo, sensing the urgency of the situation, climbed to the chapel’s roof, raised his right arm, and prayed, “Father, we can spare the small house, but we cannot spare the big one.” He then invoked the priesthood to command the wind to change. The chapel was spared.

They also exercised faith in the face of disease. One night, a messenger appeared to Elisala in a dream with specific instructions about how to care for his sick son, Ailama. As instructed, Elisala went to a wili-wili tree about a mile away, removed some bark, and pounded out the juice. Ailama, who remembered seeing angels that night near his house, drank the juice and soon recovered.

Like other communities in the Pacific, Sauniatu was hit hard by the global influenza epidemic of 1918. Almost everyone in the community grew sick. Elisala’s twelve-year-old son, Tom, one of few well enough to get around, did everything he could to care for the community. “Every morning I went from house to house to feed and clean the people and to find out who had died,” Tom recalled. He saved many and helped bury over 20 others, including his father, before the epidemic subsided.

By the 1930s Sauniatu had become less important as a gathering site but remained significant as a place for temporal and spiritual education. It served as a monument to the faith of early Samoan Saints.