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A story of sacrifice and the establishment of the Church in Guam and Micronesia

BYUH faculty who contribute to the book gathered together to share their experience

Photo by Enkhtuvshin Chimee

The book launch for “Battlefields To Temple Grounds: Latter-Day Saints in Guam and Micronesia” was hosted by BYU–Hawaii’s Micronesian Club on March 2, in the Aloha Center. Two co-editors, two main contributors and the co-author of a chapter in the book sat down together for the first time to answer questions and share their insights and journey of working on the book. After this question and answer session, a book signing took place.

Rose Ram, the associate academic vice president for Curriculum and Assessment and a professor in the Faculty of Culture, Language & Performing Arts, said her interest in the history of Micronesia started when she was a brand new cataloger who visited the Micronesia Area Research Center. Ram is a Chamorro woman from Guam who, after a mission in Los Angeles, served a district mission in Guam for 14 months. She then returned to BYUH, where she was able to learn more about the church’s history in Guam and Micronesia. She said these experiences led her to become a co-editor of “Battlefields to Temple Grounds.”

R. Devan Jensen, an executive editor at the BYU Religious Studies Center in Provo and co-editor of the book, served in Guam and Pohnpei in the Micronesia Guam Mission. After serving his mission there, Jensen said he wanted to write a book on Micronesia but knew he couldn’t do it by himself. He referred to the team assembled for this project as “the avengers” and said, “I needed to reach out to Dr. McArthur, Ram and others. Casey Griffiths was very helpful in the section on Kiribati. Felipe Cho was very helpful in the [section about the] Yigo Guam temple.”

Photo by Enkhtuvshin Chimee

Casey Griffiths, an associate teaching professor in Religious Education at BYU in Provo and co-author of the book’s chapter on Kiribati, said he has researched and wrote about the history of seminaries and institutes, which include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ schools. He said somebody told him, “You just have to go and see each one of the schools for yourself because they're all so different.” He decided to go to see the Church’s school in Kiribati, where he fell in love with the people and was given bundles of history by Iotua Tune, the main author of the chapter on Kiribati, and helped by a young man named Eric Tonini, one of the contributors to the book, he said.

Po Nien (Felipe) Chou, a professor in the Faculty of Religious Education at BYUH, said he has served in a variety of teaching and administrative assignments for the Church Educational System in the United States, Asia and the Pacific. As a contributor to the book’s chapter on Yigo Guam Temple, Chou said he was surprised but also happy because “the Church does not put a temple where we have one state or a few districts and distant states, like in Pohnpei or elsewhere. So this is such a historic temple. “ He described the Yigo Guam Temple as “unique and the first of many remote temples.”

Phillip McArthur, a professor in the Faculty of Culture, Language & Performing Arts, said he served his mission in the Marshall Islands and spent two years of doctoral research there. He said he learned a lot of Micronesian history from various resources while on his mission and doing research, but his main objective was to talk about the Marshallese history of the church, “I didn’t want to write a story from the glorious campaign of the white missionaries who fulfill the white man's burden to the Marshall Islands and rescue them all. I wanted to hear the Marshallese speaking back to this whole process for the emergence of the Church.”