Another Kiribati Church Pioneer

1 November 2011

We had another Oral History presentation from a Kiribati LDS Church Pioneer: Sister Marinoa TIARIE, who is also the librarian at Moroni High.  She was with the very first group of 12 students from the AKAS school who attended Liahona High School.   This is her story in her own words from the written account of her oral presentation to the EDU 212 class:

Tiarie, Marinoa - Early Pioneer

Because I did not get a chance to secondary school in the government, I was searching another school to continue my education.  As I was searching I heard about the newly school established in Eita.  This was Auriaria Kokoi Ataria School (AKAS) and it was owned by the man nmed Waitea Ataria.  I went visit him with a group of friends and  asked if we could be admitted to his school.  I was lucky that I was admitted to his school with some of my friends.

1970-1971: I was 13 years old at that time when I began my school at AKAS.  I was a day student for one term then the second term I moved in to stay in the dorm.  Some of my classmates were either older than me or younger; age was not a matter in those days.  I could remember that there were about 5 classrooms built by local materials as well as the boys and girls dormitories.  The headmaster’s house was on campus and it was also built locally.  His parent’s house was built behind where he lives.

Teachers:  We had about 5 local teachers who were teaching at AKAS at that time.  They were, Mwakoro Hicking - teaching Book Keeping, Ubanaba and Toaea - taught Mathematics.  Meretia Kakiaman, Baitika Tehumu were also teachers also the Headmaster Waitea was also a teacher who was teaching English

Eating Time:  When time to eat I remembered that we have to come with our own plate, spoon and cup.  We have to stand around the lady by the name, Nei Tene the headmasters’s mother who was doing the cooking and serving the students at the same time.  Nei Tene was doing her cooking on an open fire in big pots.  Most of the time she served the students with the Tubu n Taman or Tin Fish Soup, and Rice or Katiti, flour mixed with grate coconut.  Sometimes students did not have enough to eat or not gotten their served as because the food ran out or not enough.  When this happened the students went out looking for food or get coconut to satisfy their hunger.  We did not have any cafeteria ut we used to sit around under coconut trees or any shade we could find on campus to eat our meals.

One assembly the headmaster told us that we had visitors coming from Tonga.  His name was Bro. Puckett and he was accompanying by President Palmer from Fiji.  They came to visit the school by the invitation of our Principal Waitea.  Waitea wrote to Liahona High School asking if they could admit students from AKAS to continue their education in this Church High School, as High Schools in Kiribati were limited at that time.  (Bro. Puckett was a superintendent of Liahona High school at that time, he was from the States)  

After the visit of Bro. Puckett and President Palmer to AKAS and Kiribati, the letter of acceptance of students from AKAS to attend Liahona High School was allowed.  Therefore, from that time on the door opened for Kiribati students to attend Liahona High School in the year 1972.  I was lucky to be among the first group to attend Liahona High School.  In fact, there were only 12 students accepted.  There were 6 boys, named, Bename, Teema, Barate, Tebong, Rauneti, he was ther half of the year then he came back to Kiribati, he was replaced by Itaea Riteri, the Akau my husband.  There were only 3 girls, it was me - Marinoa, Karaititi and Teutu.  

While we were in Liahona High School, we were taking religion classes.  The Church was new to us at that time.  But my religion teacher was Bro. Richadson who was converted us by the way he teaches.  In fact, he was one of my favorite teachers who spent most of his time teaching us the gospel.  I would like to say that he conveyed the turuth message and we were converted.  Therefore, we were all baptized on April 6, 1972. 

 In the year 1975 there were 6 boys who were called to go on a mission to Kiribati.  From that time the Church was first established in the Kiribati Islands.  After graduated from Liahona High School, I came back and work in on of the government’s office.  Then later I gave up my work in the government office and willing to serve in Moroni Community school when the Church was taking over from Waitea, the owner of AKAS, it was no longer AKAS. 

I was serving at Moroni then change to Moroni High School for 2 years.  Bro. Howlett was a principal of the school at that time.  In 1982, I went to BYUH, came back and still serving at the school.  For your information, I have seen all what happened from humble beginning of this campus until now.  The only thing I am proud of is the establishing of Zion in Kiribati.  I would like to say that I am proud to be one of those early Pioneers who have seen a lot of changes in this campus, especially in the growth of the Church

Thank you very much.

Tiarie, Marinoa 

Elder Watson Visit

October 15, 2011

Elder F. Michael Watson of the Seventy is here for stake conference in the Tarawa North Stake.  He is staying in housing on the Moroni High Campus.  Elder Watson grew up in Spring City, Utah and was secretary to the First Presidency under 6 Prophets.  His father Frank and step mother Valene were in our ward when I served as Bishop in the Mt. Pleasant 3rd Ward.  He spoke Wednesday to the study body of Moroni High along with Sister Watson.  They have 12 children and met at Snow College after he returned from his mission in England.  Elder Watson and I were both at Snow College during our Freshman year in 1961.  Saturday we drove to the other stake center and attended Stake Priesthood Meeting while the sisters attended Relief Society and heard Sister Watson speak.  We returned and attended a baptism for two young ladies, one is a student dent at Moroni.  It was a very enjoyable and uplifting day.

Today is Sunday and I am teaching the Gospel Doctrine class and then the senior couples will be meeting with Elder and Sister Watson this afternoon.  The meeting was very enjoyable as Elder Watson quizzed us about the work and any problems or concern we were having.  The Ogborn's had run into some issues working on water projects and other projects with a limited budget and getting approval.  Elder Watson works with welfare in the Pacific and he knows how to shake a few trees to get things accomplished.  It was a very worth while and productive meeting.  We attended a single adult and high school age fireside this evening.  Three returned missionaries spoke in Kiribati and then Sister Watson followed by Elder Watson. Elder Watson started his talk showing a cell phone and a Book of Mormon.  Then asked what if the Book of Mormon was as important to us as our cell phone.  Would we carry it in our purse.  Then he had fun asking what if we could call heaven with it for blessings.  It was a fun analogy but really had the young adults paying attention.  He finished his talk using part of Hugh B. Brown's talk on "A Profile of a Prophet".   It was a very spiritual evening and Sabbath day.

Elder and Sister Erekson are working in Public Relations and are traveling with Elder Watson, they are taking pictures and gathering stories for the Liahona and other media. They were telling us about their visit to a Catholic Church and meeting the head Nun.  She showed them the actual document of the surrender of Tarawa to the Japanese in 1941.  As battleships in the harbor had guns pointed toward the community.  As the nuns were evacuated one of them rolled the treaty up and hid it and thus it was preserved.  The Smithsonian and the Japanese have both tried to purchase it, but they were told no, it belongs in Tarawa.

A few weeks ago we picked some coconuts from the tree in our front yard.  The picture shows the size of the outer part of the coconut and after using a butcher knife and a couple of screw drivers to part the out shell.  The cocoa nut we buy in the store finally emerged but much smaller that the ones you buy at home.  Many of native islanders pick them green and cut the end off with a u for the juice.  We enjoy eating the cocoa nut inside

  

Musical Chairs with the older sisters - started out fairly calm

The cocoanut that grows on the tree yields the smaller one you see  in stores back home

But the ones we grow are much smaller

Sun set view from the front of our house

Another day another sunset

But, then it go very competitive with chairs and bodies flying everywhere

The kids love to climb trees

Yesterday (Saturday was a missionary day celebration for our stake. It was to raise funds to help support local missionaries from the stake currently serving and those who will serve in the future. Each family was asked to donate $50.00 to the missionary fund. Many families came and played games on the Moroni soccer field, they sang, danced, ran relays and many other activities. The funnest event was watching the older sisters play musical chairs. As each chair was removed things got very competitive. Chairs were pulled away as people tried to sit. They were sitting on each other and playing tug-a-war with chairs. Every one was laughing so hard it was hard to breath. Young and old love to sing and have fun.Their smiles are contagious. Every meeting the speaker starts out "Good morning dear Brothers and Sisters and the audience replies 'Good Morning'. Even at Sacrament meeting. Every class at school including the University t start with a devotional (a song, prayer and spiritual thought

Another beautiful sun setThe sunsets continue to be spectacular most evenings. The pink against the clouds with coconut trees and other trees along the horizon make for an absolutely beautiful view. This evening after we returned from a single adult fireside in the Tarawa North Stake, it was a clear night so the stars and the milky-way were very bright and clear. So I got my IPad with the application Star Walk and the other two missionary couples scanned the horizon while the IPad identified the constellations and the planets. It was the first time I had used that app. and it was truly amazing to see the stars and planets and have it identify exactly what we were looking at. 

25 September, 2011 TARAWA

Today was Ward Conference, the talks at Sacrament meeting were very good.  The Bishop spoke as well as the Ward Relief Society President, Elder John Tune - who just returned from a mission in Sacramental, California bore his testimony.  The final speaker was Pres. Tune, the stake president.  All the talks were excellent.  Saturday evening we attended a baptism for a young man and young lady.  The baptism was very spiritual once it finally started (it was an hour late, because the missionaries had problems getting there.  The young man was in his early twenties and as part of the service he and his sister sang a song.  They had very good voices, he also bore his testimony as did the sister who was being baptized.  The services were in Kirbati, so we only understood some of it, but the Spirit was present.  There was a good turnout of family and young adults to support them.  I think they might both be from part member families.

Yesterday we went with the youth on a service project to clean up the road side on the causeway just before you get to Betro (the site of the Battle of Tarawa).  The youth left about 5:30 am in 4 flat bed pickups.  There were over 50 students in the second pickup (including those sitting on the cab of the roof.  They drove about 10 miles to the area where they were to clean up.  There were no trash bags, so the trash was stacked up about every 100 feet into large piles for over a mile.  They ended up in a park that borders the ocean on both sides where they had breakfast and lunch.

They arrived at the park about 8 am expecting breakfast, which finally arrived at 10 am.

We tried to entertaining them for a while singing old camp and scout songs but eventually ran our of ideas, so they all did their own things.  Right after breakfast three students began cooking chicken over an open fire with a large grill.  The fuel used was copra which is compressed coconuts until it becomes like ground up charcoal, only it comes in a sack and looks like gooey mud.  But it burns very well.  The cooked a very large container of chicken legs.  It took them about 4 hours to cook it all, but they stayed with it and it tasted very good. 

While we were waiting for breakfast to arrive, one of the adult supervisors borrowed our van to go back to Moroni High to see why the food hadn’t arrived.  As soon as he got in the van, students started jumping in the van, in the back and every where.  The van which had 3 bench seats ended up with 27 students in the van as it drove away.

There were activities every night leading up the Ward Conference.  On Monday we had 8 students at our house for family home evening.  They will be our family home evening student group with whom we will meet at least once a month.  Tuesday was mutual night and Elder and Sister Ogborn kept them busy with some outdoor games.  On Wednesday evening was movie night, which we were in charge of because we have a projection unit.  We started to show Secretariat, but there was too much dialog and the students were restless, so we changed it to a Disney movie “Bolt” which was really lame but the kids enjoyed the action mixed with some humor.  On Thursday they held a scripture chase, and on Friday it was game night.  The Bishop was in charge and each family home evening group formed the teams for competition.  He did ladders on the basketball court, it is a conditioner basketball coaches use.  From the end line they run to the free throw line and back, then to mid court and back, then to the other free throw line and back and then the full length of the court and back.  Small orange cones were placed at each line and they had to pick them up and return them to place in a stack where they started.  Most of the young men and women running were bare footed, they are good athletes and ran very fast.  Of the six teams our FHE group took second place.

Sister Thorne taught her institute classes.  She meets with the same group of students on Thursdays for two hours, during that time she teaches two different lessons.  Then repeats the same lessons on Thursdays with a different group of students. She also taught the Gospel Doctrine class.

I held my first college class on Wednesday, over all it went OK, but the projector and my computer were having issues with each other as I tried to show a powerpoint lesson.  The class was able to see most of the slides, but it was a good example of how not to use technology.  Hope we can work out the bugs before the class on Wednesday.

I also found out the class by Brother Yerman that was to be delivered electronically had several technology and scheduling issues, so they asked if the ITEP couples would teach it.  The class also lasts for two hours and will be on Thursdays, so I will teach twice a week now.  Brother Yerman will meet with us each Friday to discuss what need to be taught the following week.  He has provided a syllabus and some video clips for the class.

The Michigan Test, which is used to test students knowledge of English will be the third week in November.  We are responsible to administer the test to approximately 100 students.  Sign up for the test will start this week and we will provide some study sessions where students can take practice tests.

It was like Christmas this week, five flat mail packages arrived.  Three of which we sent and two which Carrie sent which included some letters, some dried cranberries, jerkey and almonds.  It was a nice surprise.  We were told to bring a lot of mosquito repellant, sunburn lotion and other things.  So far we haven’t seen only a few mosquitos and we work indoors most of the time so we have only used the sunburn lotion once.  We will probably give it to the Elders working in the outer islands.

October 1st Moroni High School

       Today is General Conference, I got up at 4:00 am to watch the morning session on the computer and the Saturday session started at 6:00 am. It is Sunday here and we had fast and testimony meeting, things started slow but toward the end of the meeting, students were lined up to bare their testimonies. I love it when they say the ‘Church is very, very True’ or the ‘Church is ‘So True’ in their broken English. I also began watching conference at 4 am on Monday (Sundays sessions). We are 18 hours ahead of the Mountain West time zone. So when it is 6 pm on Saturday in Utah it is 12:00 noon on Sunday in Kiribati.
       It has been an interesting and rewarding week, Sister Thorne taught her two institute classes and I taught two College Classes. As part of the Fundamentals of Education class we are having teachers learn how to conduct oral history interviews. Their assignment is to invite Pioneers of the Church in Kiribati to talk about the early days of the Church here. 

MORONI HIGH SCHOOL A HUMBLE BEGINNING

In October the Stake is celebrating the 36th anniversary of the first missionaries coming to Kiribati. Our first speaker was Stake President Tune (pronounced ToonA). We video taped his 90 minute presentation and class members will prepare a written history. Several DVD's will be made for the school, Mission, Pacific Area Office, BYU Hawaii, and the Church Historical Department
     Other pioneer Church members will speak during the next six classes. In addition the stake is having a pioneer fireside later this month which we hope to video tape for future generations. It probably will be in the Kiribati language, so hopefully we can have an interpreter help understand what is being said.

Pres. Tune a Kiribati LDS Church Pioneer

         Pres. Tune told the story of the beginnings of Moroni High School which started July 21 1969 when Mr. Waitea Ataria, a former government teacher, started a school called AKAS to provide education opportunities for the 95% of young people who would not have been able to attend school beyond the primary grades. Under British rule the number of students allowed to attend secondary schools was based on the number of available jobs on the island.
      AKAS is the abbreviation for (Auriaria Kokoi Ataria School). The name that Waitea chose for the school had sacred significance. The land on which the school was located and which Moroni High is presently situated was part ( a section known as Tabuarorae (the sacred place). Tabuarorae is considered sacred; visitors to Tarawa atoll were brought here to drink of the well before they did anything else.

         The AKAS classroom was a simple hut with a thatched roof and 4 large coconut logs to hold the roof in place. Inside that humble hut, which served as the only classroom for the school, there were no desks or chairs. Students sat on mats woven from coconut leaves and their desks was a log with the top planed to a somewhat flat surface on which the students wrote. There were no textbooks or school materials. President Tune was one of the first students at the school, but spent the next two years in a hospital. After his lengthy recovery he again enrolled at AKAS.
         With the creation of AKAS in 1969, the precious gift of education became available to a few more I-Kiribati children. During the early years enrollment at the school was between 49 to 70 students. In order for his students to have an opportunity to attend secondary education Head Master Waitea began writing letters to secondary school through out the Pacific and all over the world. Some of his students were able to attend high schools in many other countries. One of his letters was sent to a Church School in Samoa, but because it had no dormitories it was forwarded to Liahona High School in Tonga. Eventually CES Church representatives visited AKAS school in 1972 and reported back to Neil L. Maxwell who was serving over Church Education.     (Alton Wade has given talks at BYU and BYUH on this early visit, it can be found with a google search)
         The major concern of the Brethren was that their were no members of record in Tarawa and if some of the students joined the Church at Liahona High, what would become of them when they returned to their homes with no Church organization there. Finally 12 students were approved to attend Liahona High School in 1973. All 12 joined the Church as did the 12 who attended the following year. Pres. Tune was with a group of 7 students selected to attend the school in Tonga following year. He was the first of the seven to join the Church.
      Of the first 12 students selected to attend Liahona High, upon graduation 6 were called to serve missions in the Tonga Mission. After 6 months they were transferred to the Fiji Mission and sent to Tarawa as the first missionaries in what was then the Gilbert Islands. Approval was given for the Church begin in Tarawa, but on the condition that only Gilbertese citizens could preach. They thought this would be impossible for the Church to begin because there were no Gilbertese members. The Lord was several years ahead of local government officials who didn't know about students at Liahona. Upon the arrival of the missionaries, Mission President Eb. Davis dedicated the land to the preaching of the Gospel at a site where the Battle of Tarawa was fought.

          President Tune served his mission in Tarawa from 1969-1971. When he completed his mission there were only 500 members. One of the first converts was the AKAS Principal Waitea who became the first branch president. When other churches on the island found this out, the ministers pressured parents to withdraw their students from the school. Enrollment dropped to only a few students and it appeared the school would have to close.
          An appeal was made to the LDS Church to provide some financial assistance to the school. A teacher from Liahona High, Grant Howlett and his large family were sent to teach at AKAS. The Church purchased the school at Mr. Waitea’s request and in 1976 it was renamed Moroni Community School. Under Brother Howletts leadership the school grew to 85 students and began to prosper; eventually it became Moroni High School. There is an Ensign article Dec. 1990 entitled "Seabirds over Kiribati, much of the article is about Pres. Tune - a true Church pioneer in Kiribati.

Basketball Court w/ School in background

There are 8 apartments for
School employees and Missionaries

Girl Dormitory - There is a cafeteria
 between girls and the boys dorm

One of three wings of classrooms

Maneaba at Moroni High School

The traditional maneaba is the centre of the village and next to the war canoe, it is the masterpiece of Kiribati (Gilbertese) culture. Like the houses, it is built in a rectangular shape and the architect is normally a village elder who has learnt his trade through experience and from tradition in his family. The construction of the maneaba is undertaken in strict accordance with rites and rules which are always carefully applied.

The maneaba is well adapted to the island climate and to its function. Its roof is supported on shoulder-high stone pillars and all who enter have to stoop. The Gilbertese are very comfortable in the maneaba. It is wide, cool and airy and in it the people feast, dance and sleep - sometimes all at the one time. There are no constraints in the maneaba. Here, you might even see a Gilbertese bringing in his grandfather's mummified body to honour the dancing and the skulls of defeated warriors were traditionally lined up.

       
Villages and districts both have their maneabas. They are divided into two groups with different names for those in the south and the north. Some names, such as Maungatabu - sacred mountain - clearly indicate a Samoan origin. Each maneaba has a name, traditions and a personality. All the way around, the maneaba is divided into places and each family has a set position in official gatherings. A stranger who is guest in another maneaba enters it under the same beam as he would in his home maneaba. Anyone, who belongs to several families, chooses the least cluttered place to sit. As far as official feasts are concerned, there is a strict code of etiquette to observe. One clan supplies heralds who announce what the shares of food will be; another family is responsible for distributing the food. The portion of honour belongs to such and such a family and in sharing out the food a fixed order of precedence is strictly followed. The least mistake for the slightest forgetfulness is taken as an insult.   

**Information from: www.janeresture.com/ki33/culture.htp