Local Pages
God Is at the Helm
So far, the life of Fetauai Unasa Tautiaga Tuifalefa Tiatia has been a model of accomplishment.
He began his teaching career over 27 years ago, after gaining a diploma from Samoa Teachers Training College, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in education. In the early 2000s, Fetauai received postgraduate degrees from the renown Malua Theological College, where he also qualified as an ordained minister in one of Samoa’s most prominent Christian denominations.
Along the way, he met and married the beautiful Lili Laufiso, and they had children—three girls and a boy. When it was time to choose a high school for them, given Fetauai’s own background in education, the couple considered their options carefully.
“We chose to take our girls to Vaiola College,” Fetauai says, referring to a high school in Savaii, Samoa, that is run and owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was an interesting decision for a practicing minister of a different faith, but he was impressed by Vaiola’s high moral standards and church-based values.
Little did Fetauai know at the time, this decision would spark a fire that would change his life.
His daughters soon began investigating their high school’s church. They took seminary classes, and in their family’s evening devotionals, they would share what they learned about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.
Fetauai and his wife grew fond of the missionaries who would visit their girls at home. Sisters Niutua and Laulu taught them Heavenly Father’s plan of salvation, and in April 2010, Fetauai’s daughters were baptised. Fetauai recalls that in their tear-filled farewell prayers, these sweet sister missionaries voiced their deepest desires that the rest of his family would also join the Church.
He also remembers an interesting family home evening lesson with a missionary couple from Utah. Elder and Sister Krogh brought over a tin of homemade cookies, which was wrapped up in a long piece of metal wiring. After the lesson, each person took a turn unwinding the metal wire off the tin until, finally, they were able to open it and enjoy the cookies inside. Elder Krogh then testified: it is only when we open (unwind) our hearts to the gospel that we can enjoy the sweetness of its blessings.
Little by little, these faith-building experiences worked a mighty miracle in Fetauai’s own heart, and soon, he could no longer withstand his yearning to join the Church. “[It was] like the feeling you have while in a long journey without water and . . . food in a desert,” he says.
Fetauai immediately called the local bishop to organise his own baptism, and less than a week later, this well-known educator and minister was now a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The news was shocking, especially for parishioners in the church he left behind. “People talked about our conversion . . . with disbelief. [It was] the main topic in the street, the market and on public transport in those times!” Fetauai laughs. But the backlash was also fierce. “We had friends who turned into foes . . . in the village, [and] in our families.”
It was a difficult transition, but Fetauai now refers to those painful memories as the “forgotten experiences” because, he says, “after the raging storms against us calmly faded away, we finally saw the light of Christ, brighter than any other light shining into our lives.”
Fetauai was baptised in 2013, then sealed to his family for time and all eternity the year after. By 2016, he was a bishop, and in 2017 he was called to serve as president for the Savaii Samoa Pu’apu’a Stake.
On reflection, President Tiatia has one explanation for his eventful pathway to the true gospel of Christ. “Through all the challenges we faced and the decisions we made, we . . . review the beginning and finally say: ‘God is always at the helm of every soul.’”