Pete Itibita can tell you the exact time the first module for the Tarawa Kiribati Temple for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came to rest on its foundation. “Midnight, January 15, and the last one at 1:36 p.m. on February 5.”
| Temple Square is always beautiful in the springtime. Gardeners work to prepare the ground for General Conference. © 2012 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. | 1 / 2 |
The Church is building this temple and several others using modular construction – one of several temple construction methods. Each module is approximately 70% complete – walls, floors and other components – before it’s shipped to the construction site and lowered into place by crane. This method can bring temples to the people faster.
As the site project manager, Pete is all about timing. When that timing concerns the movement and placement of each of the twenty-five modules, he has more on his mind than the building. He’s also thinking of how the temple will bless Church members in Kiribati.
“I was sealed to my wife and children in 2010 in the Suva Fiji Temple. I got another chance to attend the temple seven years later, and the third time two years after that.”
With that temple being just over 1,900 kilometres to the southwest of Tarawa, Pete knows temple attendance is an expensive challenge for Church members in Kiribati.
“It’s difficult to go. Having a temple here is a big deal. When the Church announced this one in 2020, there were two stakes in Kiribati. Now there’s four.” A stake is a group of congregations in a geographical area.
In temples around the world, Church members make sacred promises to God to love and care for their neighbours. Those promises are based on the commission Jesus gave in the New Testament, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39).
One of the ways the Church of Jesus Christ and its members are demonstrating that love in Kiribati takes the form of transforming sea water into fresh water using something there’s an abundance of in the South Pacific: Sunshine.
On the small atoll of Abatiku, part of the larger Abemama atoll, seawater contaminates their freshwater wells. For Tokabeti, a primary school teacher of 7 and 8-year-old children on Abatiku, that contamination was a big problem.
“The children were always sick from drinking salty water. Their tummies hurt and they would miss school. They would get diarrhoea and didn’t have any energy.”
Last year, that dramatically changed. In collaboration with the government of Kiribati, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a solar-powered desalination plant on Abatiku and four more on other Kiribati atolls. Five more are coming in the next phase.
For Tokabeti the transformation has been miraculous.
“Now it’s so much better. The children play and drink and drink and drink the fresh water all the time. They just turn it on and it’s there. It’s such a big blessing.”
| Temple Square is always beautiful in the springtime. Gardeners work to prepare the ground for General Conference. © 2012 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved. | 1 / 2 |
Arati, another schoolteacher on the Abatiku said she is grateful for the desalination plant that’s been in operation for the past year.
“Here on the island the well water is salty and I’m very happy we have this machine for us to use. The water is delicious – it’s like the water we had to buy in the store for our little ones. If we gave them the well water, they would get sick. But now this fresh water is free.”
Before the desalination plant began operating, their only other option was rainwater collected in large tanks – tanks that often were empty. Standing beside the spigot that dispenses cool, fresh water from the desalination plant Arati says, “We say ko rabwa (thank you) with a big heart.”
Avia, the official caretaker of the Abatiku desalination plant, volunteers his time to make sure the water keeps flowing.
“I do this because I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is what we do to care for our neighbours.”
Whether it’s the eternal blessings of the temple or fresh water from a desalination plant, the people of Kiribati know something about the living water Jesus spoke of when He said, “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).
When the Tarawa Kiribati Temple is completed, a public open house will welcome everyone to visit and walk through the building. Visitors will be able to feel for themselves the peace and tranquillity of the house of the Lord—a reminder that God loves all His children and that Jesus Christ invites all to follow Him.
For members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, worship in the temple strengthens faith in Heavenly Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ, and unites families eternally. That strengthened faith inspires individuals to look outward and serve their communities, including by supporting humanitarian efforts such as water desalination projects across Kiribati.