President Russell M. Nelson wrapped up his nine-day, seven-nation tour of the Pacific with a warning to Tahitian Latter-day Saints to beware of evil.
“There’s trouble ahead … prepare for attacks from the adversary,” cautioned the 94-year-old leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Please protect yourself from Satan's traps, including harmful drugs and pornography.”
Before speaking to 12,000 people at a Friday devotional in Pater Stadium in Tahiti, Nelson — with his wife, Wendy, along with Elder Gerrit W. Gong (the faith’s first Asian American apostle) and his wife, Susan — met with French Polynesian President Édouard Fritch in the capital of Pape’ete.
“I would like to thank you all for your tremendous contribution to our country,” Fritch said in a church news release. “It’s a pleasure to be side by side with you all."
The visiting entourage also attended a cultural celebration that marked the 175th anniversary of the arrival of the first Latter-day Saint missionaries in French Polynesia.
“Our people should know,” Nelson said, “that the church was established here in French Polynesia before the pioneers ever got to Utah.”
More than 26,000 Latter-day Saints live in Tahiti, the release noted. In May 1843 — 13 years after the church was organized in New York — Mormon founder Joseph Smith sent four men to be missionaries in the Pacific islands. The first proselytizers arrived in spring 1844.
Here is a snapshot of the previous stops in Nelson’s oceanic journey:
• In Hawaii, he huddled with young single adults and community leaders before a devotional.
“What God wants is for you to have immortality and eternal life,” Nelson told the young people. “I don't think it matters to him what your occupation is. What matters to him is what kind of a person you're going to be, not what you’re going to do.”
• In Samoa, the island nation’s head of state welcomed the Latter-day Saint leader, who later warned parents of “difficult days ahead” and urged them to protect their children.
“The main message everywhere we go is to come unto Christ,” Nelson said, “ … because it will make life better for you.”
• In Australia, the Latter-day Saint prophet-president credited the Book of Mormon for tripling the church’s membership in the Land Down Under since his call to the apostleship 35 years ago.
It’s true, he said of the faith’s foundational text. “Without the Book of Mormon, there would be no gathering of Israel.”
• In New Zealand, Nelson met in Wellington with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, a former Latter-day Saint who won world praise for her committed and compassionate response to mass shootings in March at two mosques.
She’s a “real leader,” Nelson said. “It’s an unlikely scenario; a young mother leading a great nation, a peacemaker, a policymaker, consensus giver. We’re very impressed with her. She’ll have a great future.”
He later donated $100,000 to help those religious sites rebuild after the attacks (“We’re brothers,” Nelson told the Muslim leaders) and announced where a new temple would be built in Auckland.
• In Fiji, Nelson spoke to nearly 5,000 members at a precipitation-threatened outdoor devotional in the capital of Suva. “May I thank you for your great faith,” he said. “I wondered if you could do it and you did it. You turned off the rain.”
Nelson also led the children in singing the Latter-day Saint classic “I Am a Child of God.”
“We talk about being a child of God, and we sing about being a child of God,” he said. “What does he want [from us] for himself? Fortunately, he has given us the answer. He said, ‘What I want most of all is for my children to be immortal and to have the gift of eternal life.’”
• In Tonga, where more than 60% of the citizens are Latter-day Saints, Nelson met with the king and queen — His Majesty King Tupou VI and Her Majesty Queen Nanasipau’u — in the Royal Palace in the capital of Nuku'alofa.
Nelson has now trekked to every continent — save for Antarctica — since becoming church president in January 2018.
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