THE HAPAIRAI MORMON LEGACY

Each Protestant family saved all year for “Tithing Day” which lasted all day and through the night while each family on the island took their turn presenting their contributions, marching up to the deacon with as much pomp as one could muster. The festivities interspersed with the tithing parade went deep into the night, with lively Tarava Chanting lulling the little ones to sleep on mats near their swaying parents.
Each tarava verse in the making as the procession went on.
“I loved listening to aunt____________, she was the island tarava specialist. She would compose each verse on the spot as things would develop during the night and the spirit moved her. Her words were enchanting and sweet to the mouth, very catchy and easy to memorize. It went on all night long, and we sang answering her lead until we lost our voices. I never could be as great as she was” my mother reminisced with me on my pre mission trip in January 2002. This magazine cover illustrates this setting, a swaying sea of cross-legged, white clad singers, responding with delight to the lead call of the standing himene tarava leader, on and on they would repeat a few stanza, then the chorus. And just when everyone got the song, she would surprise the gleeful singers with a new verse on the spot, and they would follow the same pattern but with different words with added serendipities.

At one of those Tithing Festival, when it was time for the Teriipaia family to join the procession with their gift token, a piece of land on the steep hill, the deacon spurned their gift before the people. My grandfather as the local deacon tried to persuade him to apologize but he refused.
To make things worse, when T\the Hapairais and the Teriipaias entered the church the next Sunday with white shirts and ties as was the custom in Tahaa, the Deacon marched them out of the church for not being appropriately clothed with a suit coat exactly like the Zoramites they would read later in the Book of Mormon.

“ They want to treat us this way, we will have our own church. I’m going to Raiatea to invite the Mormon missionaries they hate so much to come and preach to us, maybe their Gospel is more charitable.!” My uncle Teriipaia said.

The first night Elder Childers and his companion arrived they preached to mostly family members filling the dance/movie/ meeting paepae or bowry made of vertical posts with a roof of plaited coconut leaves, Yom Kippur booth style. That’s what they truly were, temporary stalls,huts, or tabernacles during festivals and celebrations. By the second night, the group swelled beyond the reach of the bowry’s single Coleman lantern light, and settled around a fire, where the bewildered missionaries continued teaching.

The Teriipaias were the first to be baptized and the Hapairais last, but once my grandfather was baptized , his whole family except for his two already married daughters who lived in Tahiti took the plunge also.

His baptism day arrived with a fierce rain which turned the usually lazy river near the back of their home into a swollen flood impregnated with red mud, broken limbs and trees, floating coconuts and creatures, all racing each other toward the sea.
The nice pool which was prepared the evening before for the baptism was the first thing that washed away. Everything seems to connive together to stop this saving ordinance from going forward to the very last second.
After my grandfather was buried under the water, he came out of the water another man. The elders put their hands on his head to confer upon him the Gift of the Holy Ghost. As the missionary spoke with his eyes closed and his voice lifted heavenward, the small group around him, eyes wide open, watched with horror as a centipede, almost twelve inches long, crawl across my grandfather’s bare feet only to disappear up into his pant leg.
Grand father knew at once what just crawled onto his feet, even with his closed eyes. He tried to concentrate on the words of the Elder. He knew that the centipede must not sense any fear from him, or any danger, or he will sting. He could not drop his pants quickly enough without frightening it, besides what would all these people think.
He sensed the creature desperately trying to find his way out against the cinch of his belt . He sucked in his stomach to give it room to pass through and continue onto his chest. The spectators followed its wiggling shape through the thin fabric of his white shirt, My grandfather felt his entanneas near his jugular vein, he held his breath until he felt it move upward onto his neck, which he stretched enough to give it room to pass through the tie cinch. He finally breathed again when the centipede crawled out of his shirt collar onto his shoulder where he swatted it with a swift swipe of his hand, just as the Elder said his Amen. His children knew how significant that sign was to their legacy, as if all hell broke loose to prevent their enlightenment and progression, but in the end, the centipede, the evil one, the serpent, the scorpion of old, could not prevail against the power of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter and Protector.
But the principle of duality is in all things, Scorpio represents both the serpent's head being crushed by Eve's descendant, and a wise serpent(Joseph Smith admonished his followers to be as harmless as doves but as wise as serpents) as in the brazen Serpent or the Feathered Serpent of the Mayas representing Christ. So it must be with the Centipede we would learn by and by.
Since that time it seemed that the centipede had truly become our family animal totem, being present at each Hapairai funeral.
Big fat ones slithered around the flower bouquets left on my mothers tomb in Hitiaa when my brother Karl went back to say goodbye to her by himself later that evening.
I was stung three times by centipedes, on my hip twice, then the back of my neck in less than 24 hours in the Marquesas as our family attended the Art and Dance Festival there in 2004, their presence, a constant reminder to watch our steps in this world.

The curious thing about it is that we don’t at all regard this sign as malevolent, but more like a reminder of something important, a warning, a confirmation. Heaven knows we did not choose the centipede as our animal totem, it chose us. The American indians say that we must learn the attributes of our totem animal and emulate them.

We are a water people, and where water is, centipedes abound; they are most active during and after a rain.

Did Nephi of the Book of Mormon have problems with centipedes too? His Egyptian name root Naph- water, as in "water is good", seems to have been understood by his South American brothers;the stone temple monuments speak of him and his feat , the Cloud Brother, their leader and prophet.