'The building boys'
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HAMILTON, NEW ZEALAND — The boys — and many were just boys in their late teens away from home for the first time, learning to face the world without parents, always hungry, a little lonesome at first — were the core of the labor missionary program in New Zealand that built the Church College, the Hamilton New Zealand Temple, and the community of Temple View.
Phenomenal results have come from that decade of long days of hard work in the 1950s. From among the young men — and young women who later joined the project — have emerged strong local leaders and faithful parents. From the school they built have come leaders whose service has rippled outward into the South Pacific and beyond.
Their epic story and the bonds of friendship they forged in a gospel setting has been captured through another project of hard work as a local historian, Rangi Parker of Temple View, New Zealand, interviewed hundreds of former students, teachers, missionaries, leaders and others and placed the information on a set of four discs that can be played on a newer computer's DVD player. Her remarkable effort will also be the first of a six-part television documentary on the history of the Church in New Zealand.
The story of Church education in New Zealand really began with the first missionaries. An eagerness among New Zealand's indigenous Maori people to learn led these missionaries to establish a Church school system in the early 1880s. This system culminated with the Church College and temple that labor missionaries built in the 1950s, explained Ian Ardern, former country director of seminary and institute for New Zealand. "The Maoris were very anxious to have their children learn as much as they could."
So missionaries started one-room schools. Maori students from native homes with little but slates learned to read and write and "showed considerable success," he said. Soon schools opened in Nuhaka, Waiapu and the Waikato and Hauraki. But by 1920, the Church's primary schools phased out as public education took their place.
So the Church shifted its efforts to secondary education. A Herculean effort brought about the Maori Agricultural College that opened April 7, 1913, educating Maori and Pacific island young men until it was destroyed by the Napier earthquake in 1931. In the early 1950s, President David O. McKay approved construction of the Church College and by 1952 the project was well under way. Funds were appropriated to pay for raw building materials, but not to pay for skilled labor. So a call for labor missionaries was extended, and Church members from up and down New Zealand responded.
The young missionaries first built themselves barracks, long buildings with no windows, only openings with shutters to keep the fog out. Still, it was very common for them to wake up in the morning and not be able to see their roommate, said one student.
"Even though we lived in those little shacks, we thought it was wonderful," said Suvinea Fruen, who had just come from Samoa with her brothers.
They labored in farm crews, a concrete block factory, an electrician's shop, a joinery, a carpenter's shop, as cooks and in other areas, learning trades as they worked.
"I wanted to leave home; I wanted to spread my wings and my mother would never let me go," said Tau Kaka, a young man who was not then a member of the Church. When a man came to his home recruiting young men for a crew, Tau eagerly responded.
"I came down with my meager possessions: a change of clothes, one pair of boots and one blanket. That was my lot."
The crews worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Still they found time to be involved in sports, and Sundays were days of rest.
Bronc Tangaroa remembers receiving his allowance and right away buying an ice cream cone. "I always knew this is where I wanted to be," he said. "The companionship of the young men and young women was an awesome feeling."
Sometimes romances developed between the young men and young women labor missionaries. The first couple to be married were Bertie and Harriet Purcell. They expected a simple ceremony, but the others had bigger ideas. They decorated the joinery so the couple could be "joined in the joinery," and provided a hotel room for their honeymoon. Best man at the wedding was Jerold D. Ottley, who later became director of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. His father, Sidney Ottley, was mission president.
Other couples followed and when the temple was finished, the faithful couples were invariably married there. "It is hard to remember without feeling a great, willing spirit that rises in the heart — fills the heart and mind — of the young men and young women that came into your life as you helped to build the Church in New Zealand," said Emron Elkington, a bricklayer.
Capturing this spirit was a labor of devotion for Rangi Parker. "Much of the work to compile this series was during the early hours of the morning, when there was peace and quiet, with less distraction, such as phone calls or the noise of vehicles up and down the street," she said.
She was assisted by Steve Kenyon from Temple View, an information technologist at the Church College of New Zealand for the past 24 years. The production was sponsored by her husband, Vic Parker, and the Kia Ngawari Trust, a group named after the slogan emphasized by the late Elder Matthew Cowley of the Quorum of the Twelve who served many years in New Zealand. The slogan translates to being humble and teachable. Many others have supported the project, she said. Members of the trust include Tony McKenna, William Gibbs, Vic Parker, Gordon Matenga, William Gudgeon, Akapikirangi Arthur and Mihi Strother.
"Elders Glen Rudd, Rulon Craven and Douglas Martin, formerly of the Seventy, and Paul Mendenhall have been a great support to me over the years," she said.
"In doing this work, I have had experiences where I have felt the spirit of our ancestors," she said.
She can be contacted at: rparker@clear.net.nz or 10 Goodwin Tce., Temple View, Hamilton, New Zealand.
