Opapo Fonoimoana Commands the Wind and Saves the Sauniatu Chapel (1904)

In 1904, Opapo Fonoimoana and a handful of other Latter-day Saints founded Sauniatu ("Preparing to Go Forward"), a mountain sanctuary for the Saints on the island of Upolu, Samoa. Shortly after the settlement's first chapel was built, the small cooking house behind it caught fire. Despite the people's desperate efforts to carry water from the river, the fire spread rapidly and endangered the chapel itself. Then the people noticed that Opapo had climbed atop the chapel and sat astride its roof beam. Raising his right arm toward heaven, he said: "Father, we can spare the small house, but we cannot spare the big one. In the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the holy priesthood, I command the wind to change." The wind changed, the small house collapsed, and the chapel was saved. The Saints of Sauniatu saw their faith strengthened at one of the most difficult times in the settlement's history. The account comes to us through Carl Fonoimoana, Opapo's grandson, who drew on the oral-history recollections of Opapo's children, friends, and fellow Saints of Samoa — Opapo himself, like most Polynesians of his era, kept no journal. An edited version of the account was published in the Ensign magazine in July 1981.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in Carl Fonoimoana, "Opapo -- Man of Miracles," Mormon Pacific Historical Society, Vol. 1 (1980), Article 10.):

One day a fire started in a small cook house behind the chapel. The people tried to put it out by carrying water from the river, but the fire spread rapidly and soon threatened the chapel itself. The people were frantic. They knew that if the chapel burned, they would have no place to worship. Opapo, seeing the danger, climbed onto the roof of the chapel and sat astride the ridgepole. He raised his right arm toward heaven and said, 'Father, we can spare the small house, but we cannot spare the big one. In the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of the holy priesthood, I command the wind to change.' The wind changed, the small house collapsed, and the chapel was saved.