When Elsie Gaunavinaka, watched the Friend to Friend: Sharing Jesus’s Love Through Service broadcast from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she knew there was service to be done, and just who would do it: Primary children.
Primary is an organisation within the Church that offers religious teaching and activity for children ages 18 months to 11 years old. Elsie is the leader of the Primary for 13 congregations (wards) known collectively as a stake. In the Lautoka Stake there are nearly 300 children.
“This is something that keeps me going – it is not something, it is the thing that keeps me going. It is my calling. I love this gospel so much.”
To get service going, Elsie used social media messaging to reach other leaders on the island.
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Elsie Gaunavinaka with her children Tomi and Sulueti. May 2025.© 2025 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.“Our stake covers almost half the island of Viti Levu. So, I created a social media page and included all the Primary leaders from each ward and asked them to make it a part of their Sunday lesson.”
“It was the ideas that came from all these leaders that made it happen.”
What were their ideas? The children know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want them to care for the widows, so 20 children went to a widow’s home in Nawaka and picked up rubbish. In Vuda, the children provided breakfast for the widows in their ward.
“The widowed ladies know they’re not forgotten. Someone is thinking of them, and they know they’re not alone—and it comes from these little ones,” said Elsie.
In Sigatoka, those little ones cleaned the Church meetinghouse.
Speaking of the Primary children caring for the church building, Elsie said, “We give them the job, and they do it. It teaches them reverence. It teaches them the importance of keeping the meetinghouse nice and clean”.
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Visiting some of those children on Sundays isn’t simple. It can require early morning departures, navigating rough roads, and in one case, boarding a small boat to get to the island of Malake.
Elsie said, “Whatever distance that I must go –up the hill, down the stream, around and around, and then a gravel road – when I come home and have that kind of [special] experience … this is the thing that keeps me going.”