In 1916, the man charged with building the first Latter-day Saint temple outside Utah was despondent. It was the middle of World War I and there was no lumber in Laie, Hawaii.
Ralph Woolley carried the weight of every church member in the Pacific Rim to the belfry of the nearby chapel and asked God for help. When he returned to the temple site, his men told him a ship full of lumber had run aground in Laie Bay.
The shipping company said the temple could have the lumber, if it could get it. So missionaries and fathers and sons from Laie went out in canoes and swimsuits, tied the lumber together in rafts, rolled them overboard, jumped in and pushed them toward shore with the help of ocean waves.
“I want to urge all of us to keep faith with this legacy and build upon it,” Elder D. Todd Christofferson said Tuesday in Laie at a BYU-Hawaii campus devotional at the Cannon Center.
The chairman of the executive committee of the university’s board of trustees and a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he shared other stories of church and Laie pioneers.
“Let us thank God for them and humbly add our part to what they accomplished. Let’s work as hard as they did to build Zion,” Elder Christofferson said. He added, “Upon the collective sacrifice of those who have gone before us in this place, let us humbly place an offering of our own consecrated lives.”
Two other members of the board’s executive committee shared advice with BYU-H students, Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and President Camille N. Johnson, general president of the church’s Relief Society.
They told students to give the Lord equal time and to remove from their lives the things that could tear them away from their attachment to Jesus Christ.
The devotional was part of other meetings for the executive committee and leaders of the Church Education System. Also in attendance were the CES commissioner, Elder Clark G. Gilbert, BYU-Hawaii President John Kauwe, BYU-Idaho President Alvin Meredith, BYU-Pathway Worldwide President Brian Ashton and Ensign College President Bruce Kusch.
Elder D. Todd Christofferson: Resolve to serve God
Elder Christofferson, who celebrated his 80th birthday on Jan. 24, said all Latter-day Saints should remember they owe a debt of gratitude to those who came before.
“We build our lives and successes on the foundation and sacrifices of our predecessors,” he said, adding that such devotion doesn’t require perfection.
“Those who went before and built up the church and the kingdom of God in these islands were not perfect. Not all their decisions were the right ones or bore the fruit that was expected. What is most significant, however, is that so many of them persevered. They rose each day and went to work. They prayed and worked some more, and when they needed to, they repented and began again,” said Elder Christofferson, who has served as an apostle since 2008.
He reminded the students that they will be the forebearers of future generations and told them they are precious to God.
“May we be resolved to measure up to our duties and our opportunities in our time and season as those who have gone before measured up to theirs,” he said. “Let’s take inspiration from them and their legacy and join their spiritual aristocracy, not by any right of inheritance, but by serving the Lord as they did, and by being true to all that is entrusted to us by God as they were true.”
Elder Rasband: Give the Lord equal time
Elder Rasband said that he and his wife spoke at a BYU-Hawaii devotional last year. He said two of their granddaughters recently attended the school.
“We’ve had a lot of conversation about BYU-Hawaii. There’s a great deal of love for the institution, the quality of your professors, your teachers and the friendships that have bonded them with some of you,” he said.
He reiterated advice he gave to all of the church’s college students in a recent Instagram post: Give the Lord equal time. He acknowledged it can be difficult to balance school and jobs and spirituality and more, but he made a sacred promise to the students.
“In the office of the holy apostleship, I promise you this, as you give the Lord equal time in the pursuit of your higher education, the spirit will enhance your academic pursuits. You will find you have extra time and capacity for your courses, and doors will be opened for you that might have otherwise been closed,” said Elder Rasband, who joined the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 2015.
He also noted that the church, which sponsors BYU-Hawaii and subsidizes each student’s tuition, invests heavily in each of them.
The church is putting so much investment not just into bricks and mortar but into every one of their lives, he said.
President Johnson: Moor yourself to the Lord
President Johnson introduced the concept of windage, the items on a boat that wind can catch, like sails and dinghies, and rip them from their mooring and anchorage at dock during heavy storms. She encouraged students to batten down their hatches in preparation for life storms.
“Friends, students, faculty, do you have windage you need to remove? Do you need to reduce resistance so that you may weather the storms that are inevitably coming or bearing down on you now? Removing your personal windage will help you stay safe,” said President Johnson, a former lawyer who has led the Relief Society since 2022.
Metaphorical windage can be things like:
- “Failing to employ the timeless gift of repentance.”
- Procrastinating joy, gratitude and the beauty of today.
- Seeking validation and affirmation from unreliable sources.
- The choices a person makes with their time.
“I have faith and testify that the Savior is the refuge from the storm,” President Johnson said. “He is the anchor of our souls. Are there things on your metaphorical boat, creating windage, creating resistance to your attachment to him? What if anything is keeping you from being bound securely to the Savior?”
She said that if a student’s mooring lines get tangled or windage on their ship allows it to break loose in a storm, hope remains.
“I testify that our Savior, Jesus Christ, stands as the lighthouse leading us back to safety,” she said, “if we will just follow his light.”