When Komisi Finai moved here 12 years ago, he was suddenly thousands of miles from his homeland and culture.
And even farther from his spiritual roots.Finai, one of an estimated 10,000 Samoans now living in Utah, was reared in the Congregational Christian Church, which is predominant in American Samoa. But churchgoing Samoans in the Salt Lake Valley, he found, are primarily members of either The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or the Catholic Church.
Come Sunday, Finai felt left out.
"I'm a Christian, and when I got here there was no church," said Finai, 40. "There were other Samoan people here and we'd come together a lot, but I just stayed home on Sunday.
"I watched a lot of football. Or I'd play golf."
Finai was finally able to give up the screen and the greens for good last year when the Samoan United Congregational Christian Church opened its doors in a former LDS chapel at 8630 W. 2700 South. Finai, who serves as church secretary, is now part of a fast-growing congregation with a building that also serves as a cultural gathering place for many of Utah's Samoan people.
"We started from four families and right now we have eight extended families - 143 people," the Rev. Saitumua Tafaoialii said of his young church.
"Some of them joined the UCC Church, but they really need to worship in their own language and culture."
That's what Tafaoialii kept hearing when he visited Salt Lake City in the fall of 1993.
He was serving in Europe as a missionary for the Congregational Church when he came here with his wife, Rosa, to visit members of her family. He had planned to return to Europe but could not ignore pleas from Finai, Gagae Galuvao - now the church's treasurer - and other Samoan Congregationalists living in the valley.
"For me, from the time I was in the seminary, the only thing I was working for is to work as a servant to God. Wherever God calls me to go, I go," said Tafaoialii, a 34-year-old father of two boys. "I never intended to come here and stay.
"But when I came here and people were asking me (to stay), there were things coming up in my heart. Maybe God called me to come here and start a church in Salt Lake City, because the people are really hungry here."
On Jan. 30, 1994, the fledgling congregation held its first service at Trinity United Methodist Church in Kearns. In August, it purchased its own building with the help of a $40,000 local donation and is now remodeling the 100-year-old structure.
Tafaoialii is Utah's first ordained Samoan minister, and the church is the state's first to be owned by members of the Samoan community, he said.
"It's not only the church, but the way of life. We're carrying on our culture," said Galuvao, a 32-year-old father of four.
The church, a full member of both the Congregational Christian Church of American Samoa and the Utah Association of the United Church of Christ, has seen an outpouring of help from all directions. Local congregations have offered their assistance, including UCC churches in Ogden, Bountiful, Holladay and Provo, the Trinity United Methodist Church, the Japanese Church of Christ and the Tongan United Methodist Church. Several out-of-state churches have also donated funds and offered support, Tafaoialii said.
Rev. S. Kent Ikeda, pastor of the Japanese Church of Christ, said his members felt compelled to help out - not just to be good neighbors, but because they recognized that what the Samoans were going through must be similar to what their ancestors went through when they came to the valley more than 75 years ago.
"We're very different in race and culture, but the process of getting started is the same, so this is one reason why we have helped," Ikeda said. "And because we are minorities, especially being in Utah, they have some of the same kinds of feelings we have.
They are also willing to share their culture. The church has put on performances of traditional dance and music for other congregations and has reached out to become a full participant in the valley's religious community.
Church leaders are now concentrating on their building, which also serves as the senior center for the Magna area. Much remodeling is planned, especially for the chapel itself, which is to be decorated with Samoan pictorials. Windows will be added, too, Tafaoialii said.
The church plans a special event for this June, known as the Faaulufalega - a Samoan celebration in which the church is officially dedicated and offered in service to God. Representatives of the Congregational Church from Samoa, the UCC in America and all of the individual churches that have helped the Samoan church get started have been invited to attend. Many will bring cash contributions to help the church pay for the remaining debt on the building, Tafaoialii said.
Soon, he hopes, the church will own the facility, have even more members and be recognized as a gathering place for all of Utah's Samoans.
"This building and our working here," Tafaoialii said, "I call a miracle."