Temple moments: 'What love!'
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
On the island of Makemo in the Tuamotu archipelago of French Polynesia lives Taumatagi Taamino, 85, a thin elderly woman waiting out her remaining days on the island where she was born.
In the late 1970s, before the announcement of the Tahiti Papeete Temple, Sister Taamino worked as a custodian of the Tipaerui meetinghouse in Tahiti. She earned the equivalent of $150 per month. One day, she was eating lunch after an arduous morning of cleaning. Pres. Victor Cave of the Papeete Tahiti Stake stopped by to see if she needed any more cleaning supplies."As I shook hands with her, I noticed that all she had to eat were three small sardines out of a tin, a small piece of bread, and water," said Pres. Cave, now president of the Tahiti Papeete Mission.
"I asked her, `Is this all you are having for lunch, Sister Taamino?' "
"Yes, that is all," she replied.
"But you work hard cleaning this meetinghouse," he told her. "You should be eating more than that."
"It is enough for me," she said. "This year, once more, I am traveling to New Zealand to go to the temple. I need to save my earnings for this trip."
The trip would cost the equivalent of about $650. Sister Taamino had made two previous trips. She was sealed to her husband, Tapuragi, on June 8, 1968, and eventually to their eight children. Now as a widow, she hungered for the sweetness of the temple experience more than for food.
"What love. What sacrifice," said Pres. Cave. "I could see in her eyes the great love she had already received through faithful attendance to the work in the House of the Lord."
Sister Taamino made that trip to the New Zealand Temple, and with continuing faith and sacrifice, completed two additional trips as the temple in Tahiti was being completed.
When the Tahiti Temple was dedicated in 1983, Taumatagi Taamino, then 74, began faithful service at the new sacred edifice.
She came to the temple every day, and stayed all day long for nine years, said Pres. Cave. When her health failed, she returned to her island in the Tuamotus, grateful for her blessings.
