Vai Sikahema: Polynesian culture offers barriers, blessings, Part II

Editor's note: This is the second of a two-part series exploring the cultural barriers and blessings in the Polynesian culture. Read Part I of the series here.

The tiny, remote island of Niuatoputapu was made famous in the movie, "Other Side of Heaven." It was where Mormon missionary John Groberg almost died of starvation after surviving a hurricane.

Ten years before Elder Groberg served in Niuatoputapu (Knee-you-ah doh-poo dah-poo), Sione and Salote Wolfgramm were sent there as a young couple missionary by Tonga's mission president Emile Dunn. With limited foreign visas, Tongans were routinely called as couple missionaries to serve among their own — even today. The Wolfgramms were from the island of Vava'u, roughly 180 miles away. That distance was usually covered in a day's travel by sailboat.

On Thursday, June 19, 1947, 29-year-old Sione Wolfgramm, his 25-year-old wife, Salote and their three small children, four-year-old Lupi (Ruby), three-year-old Makaleta (Margaret) and nine-month-old Vili (Willie) sailed with a small group of Saints from Niuatoputapu for Vava'u. In Vava'u, the small traveling party would gather more Saints and make the 150-mile voyage further south to Tongatapu, the main island, for a district conference celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the Saints' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley.

What should have been a day's journey on the first leg of the voyage from Niuatoputapu to Vava'u stretched to three treacherous days at sea because of an unexpected storm, a typical travel hazard in the South Pacific, especially in the winter months of June and July. The Wolfgramms and the handful of Saints from the Niuatoputapu Branch sailing on a 47-foot cutter were tossed mercilessly by 30- to 40-foot waves. Without relief from the elements, Salote Wolfgramm held nine-month-old Vili close, but conditions were wet, cold and unrelenting. After arriving in Vava'u on Sunday evening June 22, the little boy died the following day of pneumonia from exposure.

Tongan custom calls for a 10-day mourning period. But the traveling party still had another leg of their trip to the district conference in Tongatapu and in 1947, there was no way of communicating their circumstances to Church leaders in Tongatapu.

Heartbroken and grieving but determined to fulfill their Church responsibilities, Sione and Salote Wolfgramm buried their nine-month-old son, Vili Manulea, on Tuesday morning, June 24 near their home in Vava'u and boarded a steamer later that same afternoon with their surviving daughters, Lupi and Makaleta, for Tongatapu with the rest of the Saints.