Taniela Kinikini's Dream Locates His Son's Lost Money Under Forty Feet of Water (‘Uiha, Tonga, early 1900s)

Taniela Kinikini, father of the Tongan Latter-day Saint pioneer Tevita Muli Kinikini, was a preacher of the Free Church of Tonga and a man of renowned visionary powers who had dreams and saw visions. A story his son told many times illustrates the family's gift. Taniela had given his oldest son, Pekipaki, the equivalent of eighty dollars in a small leather sack to take by boat to Pangai to buy supplies for the family — flour, soap, kerosene. When the boy arrived at Pangai he discovered the pouch of money had disappeared somewhere along the way. He came back in shame and fled to the bush to hide until his father sent other sons to bring him home. Then the father dreamed a dream: he saw the pouch of money lying at the bottom of forty feet of water, between the reef and a large coral head on the route from ‘Uiha to Pangai. The description was so clear and exact that divers recovered the money instantly. The account comes from Muli Kinikini's dictated personal history, recorded by his biographer Eric B. Shumway; the exact year is not stated, but it occurred in Muli's boyhood on ‘Uiha in the early 1900s.