“Blessed be God, who will save all men, now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.” Peace and joy from the Pacific Ocean islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.
With the help of the good Lord, the magnificent Church of the Holy Trinity, the orphanage of St. Tabitha and the house of unprotected women were built in Fiji.
The inauguration that took place on February 8th was the justification and the fullness of joy of the Orthodox Fijians and Greeks who came from Greece, America, Australia and New Zealand, to share with them, through their prayers and effort, all the blessings of those days. Peace and blessings to the Brotherhood of Foreign Mission and to the blessed Christians of Thessaloniki and all the Greek territory who, through the Brotherhood, helped to purchase the land and complete these works. The flow of divine blessings continues and reaches the second island-state which, together with Fiji and Samoa, belongs to the Holy Metropolis of New Zealand. The Orthodox Church has also been officially recognized here by the Royal Government. A relative of King Tupou VI, Kisione Fakafanua, helped to find and purchase land for the building of a Church in honour of St. George the Trophy Bearer and a house on the same plot for the residence of a priest and the auxiliaries of the mission.
Peace and blessings to the members of the Missionary Association “St. John the Theologian” and the good Christians of Aspropyrgos as well as to the Christian members of the Missionary Brotherhood of Australia “Missionary Fr. Nicholas Marketos”. With their love and their offerings, we dared to make the missionary start on this beautiful island of Tonga with its spirited inhabitants. We would not want the third island-state of Samoa to be neglected. From Tonga we flew to Auckland, New Zealand, where, with God’s help, we served at the Holy Trinity Church there, to the great joy of our Christians and ourselves. Thus, equipped with the rich grace of the Holy Spirit, we arrived in beautiful Samoa with its high mountains, gorges and cold waters and above all with its faithful and pious inhabitants. Our journey was exploratory. To see if the Holy Church of St. John the Evangelist could be built there, according to the wish of a Christian family from Aspropyrgos. Two things strengthened our will to proceed with the building of this Holy Church and the beginning of the mission on this island of two hundred thousand inhabitants. The very first night I saw in my sleep that I was in the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse on Patmos, dealing with the cleaning and the arrangement of this Holy place and then having a discussion with persons of the Holy Monastery of the Theologian about the problems of this universal pilgrimage.
The next morning my companions Fr.Paul and Fr.Meletios went out to the garden of the hotel to pray. The gardener saw them in their robes and asked if they were Muslims, receiving the answer that they were Christian Orthodox. Soon I was there and we gave him a short catechism on the historical background and the essence of Orthodoxy. Mr. Walesi (that is his name) was enthusiastic and so was his colleague in the garden, Mr. Kelly, who asked us to go to his house and bless his sick wife. In the afternoon of the same day we went to the house of Wallace and performed holy water on his wife, who was also ill and suffering from terrible pains all over her body. We spoke to them about the sign of the Holy Cross, what it means and how it should be done, and they did it with deep awareness and faith until the consecration was finished and by the grace of God the pains of the sick woman stopped. Then we met Mr. Pepe, pastor of a small Protestant group who also does not know what their group is and with interest and joy he listened to what we told him about Orthodoxy and agreed to convert and become an Orthodox priest. The evening of the next day we spoke to a small gathering of their relatives about Patmos and the Evangelist John, asking for their support in finding land for the construction of his Church. The people of Samoa have a peculiarity. They are calm, smiling and very religious. I think they too are entitled and deserve to become members of the Holy and true Orthodox Church and not to wait for the spiritual crumbs of the heretical Protestants and especially the extreme Mormons, who do not put the sign of the Holy Cross in their temples. But just as without faith in the Resurrection the preaching of the Gospel loses all meaning, so without faith in the Cross the identity of Christianity disappears and the theology of salvation in Christ through the sacrifice of the God-Man on the Cross loses its meaning. Let us therefore support this new evangelical opening of the Orthodox Church on this island, which will lead our brothers and sisters to salvation.
† New Zealand Amphilochius
