Twice Found

From his Bible study, Mosese Natuilagilagi determined that Christ’s true Church had not been established in Ono-i-Lau, the small group of islands in southeastern Fiji where he lived. Rather than attend church services, Mosese gathered his family daily and taught them from the Bible. “Thus we remained in darkness,” his son Joeli Kalougata related, until a visiting cousin refused tea, explaining that he had been “baptized into the Mormon Church.” The cousin told Mosese to look up Mormon in the dictionary. When Mosese read “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he knew that this was the church he had been searching for.

At his cousin’s suggestion, Mosese contacted the mission president, who sent a copy of the Book of Mormon and other literature. There being no one on their island who could baptize the family, they prepared for two years to travel to Suva to obtain that ordinance. On December 10, 1973, Mosese; his wife, Alisi Galuvakadua; and three of their children, Joeli, Panipasa Lomani, and Alisi Baleibau, set sail on the Uluilakeba.

Four hours later, a cyclone capsized the ship. Plunged into the ocean, Joeli was mercifully given a bag of coconuts by another passenger. Joeli’s mother found him and told him to hang on to the bag, as it would save his life. After kissing his cheek, she swam off to look for his siblings. He never saw her again. For long hours he fought the waves. Night fell and still he clung to the bag. Two more days and a night passed before he was rescued, one of only 35 survivors out of 120 on board. Joeli was taken to the hospital in Suva, where he learned his family members had perished.

Joeli went to stay in his older sister’s home on Viti Levu. Her family was not interested in the Church. Joeli recalled, “I struggled with the loss of my family and wondered why I had been left alone. But I carried in my heart the truths my parents had taught me.” He added, “I always remembered my father’s testimony concerning Jesus Christ and His true Church.”

For two years after the accident, the mission president searched for Joeli, but he and his successor were unable to find him. In 1985, Joeli was married and living on Vanua Levu when a senior missionary couple asked if he knew Joeli Kalougata. “Finally they had found me!” Joeli remembered. “It was a glorious moment.”

He and his wife, Elenoa, received six missionary lessons in two days, were baptized, and became the nucleus of a small branch in Nabua. In 1998, they were sealed in the Nuku’alofa Tonga Temple and performed the temple ordinances for the family he had lost in the sea. After the Suva Fiji Temple was built, Joeli and Elenoa were sealed to their children. Joeli says, “I look at my family now—my eternal family—and thank the Lord for remembering me and bringing the gospel back into my life.”

The Kalougata family with missionaries, circa 2010.