Baptism in the River Beneath the Waterfall: A Great Spirit Rests on a Mountain Trail Baptismal Service (1982)

By January 1982 the young Church on Pohnpei had no baptismal font in its outlying areas, so the missionaries arranged a special baptismal service that, as the island's Church history records, “required hiking, patience and devotion.” Elders Stuart G. Strauss, John S. DeLeon, Johnson, and Durham, together with the Grovers, hiked up a mountain trail to hold the services. In a thatched-roof shack the group gathered, and the baptismal candidates were baptized in the river while a beautiful little waterfall cascaded in the background.

The record of the Pohnpei Church History Project preserves what those present felt: “In this beautiful setting those in attendance experienced a great spirit of the Lord as it rested upon each of them.” The scene echoed the earliest baptisms on the island — the first baptismal service in Micronesia was held by Ohren Ohry in Mand on March 5, 1977, months before any chapel or font existed — and testified how the restored gospel reached Pohnpei's remote villages in its first years.