The Ward That Fasted Twice: Sione Siaki Healed of a Month-Long Illness (Tongatapu, Tonga)

Sione Siaki of Tongatapu was forty-four years old when he fell ill with fever and pain so severe that most were fearful he would die. The hospital in Tonga was full; a nurse brought medication to his home, but day after day he suffered for more than a month. "I was just lying there waiting to die," he later recalled. Then the Relief Society president suggested a ward fast. She talked with the bishop, and twice the entire ward of some three hundred members fasted for him. Before the fasts he could not move at all; two weeks after the second fast, he sat up and gradually got better. He later became a temple worker, and testified in the Church's Ensign magazine: "When I am in the temple, it comes straight into my mind that maybe this is why I was saved." His healing became one of the celebrated testimonies of the power of the priesthood and united faith among the believing people of Tonga, where more than forty percent of the population belongs to the Church. The exact year of the illness is not stated in the published account, which appeared in 2001.