A Temple in Samoa

In 1897 missionaries brought a “magic lantern” machine to Samoa, allowing members to see projected images of the distant Salt Lake Temple for the first time. Two decades later, the first temple in the Pacific was dedicated in Hawai‘i. Some Samoan Saints made the 4,000-kilometer journey to receive ordinances there, and a few even moved to Hawai‘i to be closer to the temple. Temple trips became easier after 1955, when a temple was dedicated in New Zealand, but the cost was still substantial.

“Sometimes large families can only afford to take some of the children,” Elder John H. Groberg observed in 1977. “Choosing the ones to go is a heartbreaking decision.” That year, plans for a temple in Pago Pago, American Samoa, were announced. Members in the Samoan Islands, Tahiti, Tonga, and Fiji worked to raise funds and pledged labor for the construction. In 1980, however, Church leaders replaced that plan with plans for smaller temples in Apia, Samoa; Tahiti; and Tonga.

Many Samoan Saints assisted with construction even though the plans had changed. Leatulagi Neemia was at the temple site on the Church College of Western Samoa campus when Marvin Bennett, the construction supervisor, arrived. Neemia was hired the next morning and worked on the temple as a welder, machinist, and carpenter until construction was complete. Fa‘alelei Nonu, who had built chapels throughout the islands, served as foreman on the project. Leolu Lavea used his connections to provide the coral fill needed to stabilize the temple site. Sosaia Vaiaoga, the village chief who approved the temple’s building permit, volunteered labor so often that Bennett eventually insisted on paying him.

In the temple’s dedicatory prayer on August 5, 1983, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles referred to the generations of Samoan Saints who had faithfully built meetinghouses and schools and spread the gospel in their homeland. “And now,” he said, “crowning all of this, we have built this, Thy sacred house.”

The Saints loved the temple. From 1983 until 2003, when it was closed for renovations, the temple was almost always filled. Youth groups kept the baptistry in constant use. Members from American Samoa and Savai‘i often made temple trips and would attend multiple sessions each day.

On the evening of July 9, 2003, while crews worked on renovations and repairs, a fire broke out inside the temple. Edward Pauga, the temple recorder, arrived shortly after the fire was discovered. “I could see the flames right below Moroni,” he recalled. Although stunned by the sight, Pauga evacuated the missionaries from patron housing and helped guide firefighters to the site.

The next morning, as crews extinguished the flames, the statue of the angel Moroni still stood atop the ruins, buoying members who looked on with heavy hearts from outside the fence. Over the next two years, local leaders encouraged members to remember not what they had lost but what they still had: the gospel of Jesus Christ. Many Samoan Saints sacrificed to travel to other temples. On September 4, 2005, Church President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated a new Apia Samoa Temple, complete with the original angel Moroni, and rejoiced with members over a “new and beautiful structure … raised on this sacred ground.”

The renovated Apia Samoa Temple, 2005.