Latter-day Saints in Pago Pago Focus on Family History

The recent groundbreaking for a new temple in American Samoa has generated a new level of excitement about family history.

In particular, the Pago Pago West Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has put this front and centre with their theme of "All Roads Lead to the Temple."

Stake President Adney Reid knew that he needed to find just the right person to lead this effort. One name kept coming to him over and over again, and that was To’oa Anandan.

When President Reid asked her to serve, To’oa was concerned because she didn’t know anything about family history and couldn’t imagine why he would ask her. So she said she would have to think about it.

“As I was sitting in my weekly church meeting, I had the distinct feeling that my dear departed husband was sitting next to me and I suddenly knew this is what Heavenly Father wanted me to do.”

To’oa set to work with great enthusiasm and with the help of the stake presidency soon family history work started to take off.

“The biggest barrier in our stake is limited access to computers and the internet and people having the computer skills needed to do the work,” she said. “For this reason, many of our buildings are equipped with computer rooms so that our consultants can do hands-on training for our members and they get great results.”

The Mesepa International Ward (MIW) has jumped in with great enthusiasm. David Tuinei is their leader and he explained that their congregation set goals for the number of people that would receive training and the number of names that would be added to the family history system called FamilySearch. They were clearly thinking about the construction of their temple just a few miles away from their chapel.

“Each goal coincided with the actual building phase of our temple that is currently under construction. In this way, we are building a spiritual temple as the physical temple is being erected nearby.”

Beginning in early February, they put their plan into action and it involved every member of the ward from children and young adults to the elderly.

Some of the kids helped adults get comfortable with computers and with the software. Over the next two weeks, over 100 people took part and their results were impressive:

• 36 young people “indexed” more than 2,600 names
• 35 new FamilySearch accounts were created
• Nearly 3,800 names were researched and prepared to take to the temple

So many people turned out that there wasn’t enough room in the centre. They were able to borrow some commercial offices with computers that were ideal and helped complete the project.

One of their goals was to reach out to families that had not been much involved in church activities for a while. Six responded by taking part in the project and by coming back to church meetings.

President Reid concluded, “We are grateful to be blessed with wonderful leaders both on the stake and ward levels who feel the Spirit of Elijah and continue to help many in our community catch the vision of this part of our Saviour’s work.”