Tonga Photo Courtesy of South Pacific Division Heritage Centre

Royal Palace Nuku’alofa, Tonga Photo courtesy of South Pacific Division Heritage Centre. Tonga MILTON HOOK Milton Hook, Ed.D. (Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, the United States). Hook retired in 1997 as a minister in the Greater Sydney Conference, Australia. An Australian by birth Hook has served the Church as a teacher at the elementary, academy and college levels, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, and as a local church pastor. In retirement he is a conjoint senior lecturer at Avondale College of Higher Education. He has authoredFlames Over Battle Creek, Avondale: Experiment on the Dora, Desmond Ford: Reformist Theologian, Gospel Revivalist, the Seventh-day Adventist Heritage Series, and many magazine articles. He is married to Noeleen and has two sons and three grandchildren. Tonga is a Polynesian kingdom of approximately 170 islands divided into three main groups—Tongatapu in the south, the Ha’apai group in the center, and the Vava’u group in the north. Seventh-day Adventists have been resident in the islands since 1895. Introduction The Kingdom of Tonga, otherwise known as the Friendly Islands or Friendly Isles, is a member of the British Commonwealth with a hereditary constitutional monarchy. It gained its full independence in 1970. The capital and royal palace is at Nuku’alofa on the island of Tongatapu. On the western edge lie a number of volcanic islands such as Fonuafo’ou, Tofua, and Kao. The inhabitants are Polynesian who speak their own tongue with English as their second language. The Free Church of Tonga, the Methodists, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and Seventh-day Adventists are the larger religious denominations on the islands.1 Arrival of Seventh-day Adventists and the Early Growth of the Church The first voyage of the missionary ship, the Pitcairn, brought Seventh-day Adventists to the Friendly Isles on June 11, 1891. They first visited Neiafu, Vava’u, and then sailed south to Lifuka, Ha’apai, and Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu. At each of the three stopovers they were warmly received and sold Ladies Guide, Home Handbook, and Man the Masterpiece to Europeans living in the principal centers of population. With each sale they gave away tracts and periodicals.2 Edward and Ida Hilliard were the first resident Adventists, arriving at Nuku’alofa on August 30, 1895, during the fourth voyage of the “Pitcairn.”3 They were joined by Edwin and Florence Butz in addition to Sarah and Maria Young from Pitcairn Island in August 1896 when the Pitcairn called during its fifth voyage.4 The first Seventh-day Adventist missionaries endeavored to be self-supporting. Initially the Hilliards moved into temporary quarters while Edward built a four-room cottage. Alongside his home he constructed a room in which his wife conducted an elementary English school beginning in November 1895 for as many as 28 pupils. Fees were set at 30 shillings per quarter. Edward Hilliard accepted carpentry jobs to supplement their income. In September 1897, Dr Merritt Kellogg and his wife, Eleanor, arrived to assist Edwin and Florence Butz with medical work. Some of their treatments were given without charge, but other services netted sufficient income to support both families and the nurses Sarah and Maria Young.5 By 1901 the Hilliards, Kelloggs, and Sarah Young had transferred out of the Friendly Islands, leaving Butz as superintendent of the mission. On December 10, 1899, Butz baptized Charles “Ned” Edwards, a European who married Maria Young. In 1900 he baptized William and Alice Palmer and five others, one of them being a Mrs. Stevens, the first Tongan to be welcomed into the Nuku’alofa Church that had been organized on September 16, 1899.6 A decade after entering the Friendly Islands, Edward Gates, in his 1901 report of South Pacific Island mission work, spoke of tracts that were translated into the Tongan language and a church that had been erected in Nuku’alofa. “The work in these islands,” he stated, “is indeed in a prosperous condition.”7 It was not to last. Four more Europeans were baptized in the next four years, but of the 13 admitted to the church up to 1905 only four remained loyal members. More stable results came from the baptisms of Tongans. These included Timoti Mafi (1904), Joni Latu (1910), Epeti Musie (1912), and Finau and Bofaioa Vaimolo (1914).8 Latu married Myrtle Edwards, daughter of Charles and Maria Edwards, and served as a mission teacher for some years.9 Sabbath observance was not a distinctive that Adventist missionaries could press because vexing dateline issues meant that Adventists chose to worship on the same day of the week as other Christians in the islands.10 In Tonga there were no restrictions imposed on mission schools until standards were raised in the 1920s. Adventist missionaries, therefore, seized the opportunity to establish schools wherever they worked. Butz built a little school room alongside his home in Nuku’alofa and Ella Sisley Boyd opened classes there on November 28, 1904. She started with 12 pupils. Each student paid two shillings per week. Her choice of reader, The House We Live In, had a hygiene and health theme that was appropriate for a society that was notoriously unhealthy.11 Boyd spent three terms of service in Tonga, interchanging with Nellie Sisley12 and others until 1911. In 1908 Boyd pioneered a school in the Ha’apai group at Faleloa village on Foa Island.13 Similarly, when Ethelbert and Lily Thorpe pioneered the northerly Vava’u group in 1912,14 they established a mission base near Neiafu that they called Mizpah and eventually opened a school on the property. Thorpe constructed a simple building to serve as both church and school. It was officially opened at a public ceremony on March 28, 1917.15 Thorpe’s niece, Deva Thorpe, taught 51 students in its first year.16 In the 1920s efforts were made to establish a co-educational senior central school with the express purpose of training mission workers. A property was secured near Houma on the south coast of Tongatapu in 1922.17 It was named the Alimoni (hidden) School because of the surrounding bushland. Once again, the Thorpe’s featured in its pioneering stage18 but it proved to be a poor choice of location. It only took one wet season that marooned the site in deep mud to force alternate plans. A self-supporting missionary, Edmund Mitchell, offered his property at its original purchase price.19 It was situated near Vaini on Tongatapu, isolated from the capital and therefore removed from unwelcome influences. Classes in the new premises opened in January 1926 with Bessie Smith in charge and Joni Latu assisting.20 It became known as the Beulah School. After five years of entering successful candidates for public examinations, and official recognition by the government Education Department, the institution was renamed Beulah College in late 1937.21 In its first year, 1938, 100 students attended, 22 of them young women.22 Early in their mission experience the Thorpes recognized the natural affinity that the Tongan people had to enjoy music. They conducted singing classes to break through prejudices.23 Music was featured in the school work. For example, at the Faleloa school students practiced and performed cantatas such as “Under the Palms” and “Daniel.”24 Later, at the Houma school an orchestra was formed of violins, banjos, ukuleles, and guitars.25 The printing of literature in the Tongan language was never neglected. One early convert, William Palmer, translated Bible Readings for the Home Circle26 and was nominated as the editor of a regular periodical titled Talafekau Mo’oni (Faithful Messenger), first published in 1909.27 An initial collection of 50 hymns translated into the Tongan language was published in 1926 and at the same time Elva Thorpe, young daughter of Ethelbert and Lily, translated Steps to Christ.28 Tragedy struck the Tonga Mission with the death of Pearl Tolhurst in 1919. Hubert and Pearl had arrived in 1915 at the Faleloa mission outpost to continue the school work. Their health deteriorated to such an extent that Australian headquarters began the process of finding replacements for them. In hindsight, it would have been prudent to fast track the exercise. In November 1918 Hubert Tolhurst rode his horse into the port of Pangai for supplies, crossing the channel at low tide between Poa and Lifuka Islands. On his return, both he and Pearl soon showed symptoms of the influenza epidemic sweeping the world. No fellow missionaries were in Tonga at the time and their extreme isolation made them vulnerable. They had no boat and no private trading vessel arrived to rescue them. Hubert recovered enough to nurse Pearl, but she grew weaker and passed away on March 14, 1919. Her grave remains by the beach at Faleloa.29 Hubert remarried and returned to Tonga some years later, but he never fully recovered from his grief.30 Tolhurst’s replacement at Faleloa, Bernard Hadfield, moved quickly to purchase a mission cutter for easier access to medical help during sickness. He named it Talafekau (Messenger).31 A survey of results by 1935 reveals that the Tonga Mission had four active churches with a total membership of 62.32 The churches were located at Nuku’alofa, Faleloa, Neiafu, and another on the campus of the Beulah School. Tolhurst observed, “A large proportion of our membership consists of ex-students of our schools.”33 One young baptized woman had attended from Niuatoputapa Island in the far north.34 From 1933 through 1937 the best students at Beulah School were successful in the public examinations, so an application was lodged to upgrade the status of the institution.

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