New Zealand saints steadfast in faith
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AUCKLAND, New Zealand — This nation is, first of all, a profusion of plant life, an all-green rainbow in its grass, its moss on numberless tree trunks, its forests carpeted in ferns and impassable thickets.
It is, second, European-type cities that appear here and there, orderly and tidy, as new colors in the all-green landscape.
Of course, this nation is also endless ocean beaches and coves, brimming rivers and near vertical mountains.
But holding them together like a net and packaging them as one is New Zealand's Maori soul. The Maoris, indigenous Polynesians, were the ones who named the places, the plants, the birds, the sky, the rains and the streams near where they lived as tribes in villages connected by trails, not roads.
More than a century ago, when missionaries failed to win converts among the Europeans, they were instructed to walk those Maori trails. The tribes' wise men and spiritual leaders accepted the teachings of the missionaries. Great numbers of Maori were baptized and many became lifelong, steadfast members whose faith never wavered. Today, their descendants carry the faith forward.
After the end of World War II, new European converts and other Polynesians formed for the first time tiny branches in large cities. These new members have continued steadfast to build upon the foundation of what used to be seen as only a Maori Church, but now is largely perceived as a family-centered Church that maintains traditional Christian values.
The Church is the sixth largest in New Zealand. In fact, one in 41 of the nation's 3.8 million "Kiwis," as they call themselves, is a Latter-day Saint. About 92,000 members reside in 25 stakes and two missions.
In the last decade, "The Church has made leaps and bounds in coming out of obscurity," said Elder Lindsay T. Dil, Area Authority Seventy and counselor in the New Zealand/Australia Area presidency. Evidence of this is having the prime minister switch on the Christmas lights at the Hamilton New Zealand Temple the year before last. And public affairs directors Sydney and Judith Shepherd have developed a close relationship with the Auckland Chamber of Commerce. Prominent Latter-day Saints have addressed its members recently. The Shepherds, with their associate Warwick Lyes, say the Church is now widely accepted for its high standards.
One result of mainstream acceptance of the Church is that "priesthood leaders have more confidence," said Elder Dil, himself a son of stalwart European converts of the post-World War II era. Other areas that add to leaders' confidence are larger stakes that have more depth, and bigger wards. Leaders are able to focus on members receiving their ordinances.
He said that now every major island group in the Pacific has its own temple — and members in those island groups no longer come to New Zealand to the temple. Still, "there is more temple work done in Hamilton than ever before."
Missionary work is strong and many new converts are young, single adult Asians who are in New Zealand — and in Australia — for education and to learn English. Although they do not build the Church locally, many return to their homelands as Latter-day Saints.
The distances that once isolated this part of the world is less of a barrier. For example, said Elder Dil, through the Internet, he and the area presidency communicate regularly jetstreaming via the Internet, with both video and audio. "I live in Auckland, and they live in Sydney, Australia, and we are as together as if we were in the same office."
Despite the fact that New Zealand in general struggles with morality in ways similar to many European countries, said Elder Dil, the "rising generation" is strong in keeping covenants and maintaining Church activity. "We recently had a four-stake youth fireside and there were 1,200 youth there," he said.
Representative of the rising generation is Trina Ball Milner, a fifth-generation descendant of early convert Wekekia Ruruku of the Waikato region. A graduate of the Church College of New Zealand, Sister Milner is an elementary school teacher.
"The youth are trying to do what they know is right," she said. "It can be really tough. Once they make a decision that takes them away from the Church, it can be hard to come back. The youth need to be strong and have integrity. Friends make such a huge difference."
In the 1880s, it was to such as her ancestor that missionaries went by horseback, learning to speak their language, living in their homes and always, always preaching the gospel. During this period, missionaries in the Northland taught the grandparents of Atereiti, or Adelaide Blair as she is now called. At 79, Sister Blair is tangible evidence of progress. She is a student at the University of Auckland and hopes to graduate. A widowed grandmother, she completes her homework, keeps a close eye on her grandchildren's time on the family computer and fills a ward calling.
At the same time, she insists on feeding Church visitors, preparing the Maori staple of porkbones and puha — greens similar to spinach — and fry bread for Church visitors as her grandparents once did for missionaries, and tells of her early life in the Church when she was Atereiti.
"I was raised in a Nikau house with braided palm leaves for the roof. It had no windows, only a door and an open fire," she said. The second generation of members, children wore clothing made from flour sacks. They ate from their gardens peaches, apples, pears and kumara root, and from the ocean and streams pipi shellfish, oysters and freshwater eels. "When the rooster crowed from the highest tree, it was time to get up and milk the cow," she said.
On a certain day each week, her mother, Whakarongohau, gathered the nearby children to sit on the woven mats of her home, and taught them Primary songs.
"We loved to sing," she remembered. "She had a tuning fork that she used wherever she went." When she was 8, an uncle baptized her in nearby Waitau Creek. Later, a road was cleared to the village bringing progress and replacing Nikau house walls with concrete and Nikau roofs of palm for tile. Atereiti became Adelaide.
She remembers her aged father's instruction to her as she faced a new world he knew little of: "Save your money," he said with true Maori gravity. "The place for you to go is to the temple."
During this era, World War II was fought and ended and missionaries returned in greater force. They began to start Sunday School groups in the larger cities. Oscar Peter Broederlow, 90, a Samoan with German ancestry who was a deep sea diver during the war, remembers being the only member in his area of northern Auckland. He and his wife helped the missionaries rent a hall for the first Church meetings in the area. When the first meeting was held, a missionary asked the tiny congregation if anyone played the piano. Brother Broederlow's 10-year-old daughter, Walnetta, appeared to be interested. She raised her little finger. It was the only movement in the room, so the missionary inquired further to learn she was taking piano lessons. So little Walnetta practiced all week and on Sunday was accompanist. Fifty years later, Walnetta Broederlow McCall is a ward music director.
"The stench [of tobacco] in the hall was powerful," she remembered, but the Spirit was stronger.
Others joined that group in the early 1950s. One, Tony Marquis, called out to the missionaries as they walked by. Then in his 60s, he had been inactive since he was 17. He was reactivated and later became a bishop. The William Roberts and Geoff Garlick families were baptized and became a pillars of strength. Early European converts in the 1950s became stalwarts. Among them are Hugh A. and June Daysh, who were baptized in 1951, parents of five children with 15 grandchildren.
"It is a blessing to still be alive," said Sister Daysh. Her first exposure to the Church was to rumors of Mormons that went wild in her thoughts, but when she met them — mostly Polynesians — she pondered, "These are a lot of happy people. I'd like to be happy the way they are."
One of the turning points came in the 1950s with mission President Gordon C. Young, who brought in a missionary basketball team that introduced basketball to New Zealand. New Zealanders of European ancestry began to notice the Church. An extensive building program also attracted attention, the capstone of which was the temple in Hamilton, they said.
Sister Daysh remembers her new husband serving in leadership positions. In the meantime, she pushed a pram miles and miles to the distant meetinghouse on Auckland's Queen Street. "Then, there were three [separate] meetings a day," she remembered.
In missionary reminisces of Elder Harold Lloyd of that time is an account of the conversion of the late Wilfred Dil. "We had wonderful meetings with the Dils but about lost them to the branch of Karangahape Road in the Druids Hall, as it was so irreverent," wrote Elder Lloyd. "There was only one branch in Auckland then. . . . all the kids on wood chairs on a hard, noisy wood floor, and the night before the building was used for something other than church meetings. But they hung in there and were finally baptized."
Once baptized, the Dil family, too, was stalwart. It was from this family that Elder Lindsay T. Dil came, providing leadership to a new generation built on a foundation of faith.
E-mail: jhart@desnews.com
