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Introduction

In the spring of 1843, only thirteen years after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, the Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., called four men as missionaries to the islands of the Pacific. Those representatives started what has now extended to 140 years of LDS Church history in the Pacific, primarily in Polynesia. The history of the Latter-day Saints in this vast region is as varied as the islands and the people who live there. Since the 1840s, time has brought great changes in culture, government, technology, religion, education, communications, and transportation. Such changes have affected the history of the Mormons in this area. Missionaries and local members have found it necessary to adjust to the circumstances of the times.

Today the LDS Church in many parts of the Pacific islands is similar in level of activity, physical facilities, and competence of Church leaders to the well-organized stakes in Utah. The current advanced state of the Church in the Pacific is the result of years of cooperative effort on the part of missionaries, local Saints, and general officers of the Church who have supervised the area.

To a considerable degree the history of the Church in the Pacific is missionary and institutional history. Records of the lives and works of local Saints are not readily available to the researcher (although more could be done with local Church history by scholars who live in the various parts of the Pacific).

The Mormon missionary system differs in many ways from the missionary systems of other Christian denominations. LDS missionaries have always been self-supporting or supported by family or friends, unschooled in the ministry as the world knows it, untrained in languages. Mormon missions are short-term experiences, usually lasting two years but seldom more than three or four. Most LDS missionaries in the Pacific have lived with the people, eaten their food, slept on their floors, and bathed in their streams and pools. They have almost always avoided political involvements, except when friction between governments and the Church has drawn the missionaries into relations with political leaders. Except for the actions of Walter Murray Gibson, there have been no instances of usurpation, misuse of ecclesiastical or political power, or land grabbing in the annals of LDS Pacific history.

It is true that white missionaries have dominated the history of the Pacific missions, but thousands of local men and women have also served the Church as missionaries and local leaders. These people have contributed most, and have been the ballast for the Church. These usually unnamed Saints have built the Church, remained in their callings when circumstances became difficult, and made the Church succeed in their societies.