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Updated: June 16, 2025
"A printing press was during this year of 1831 introduced into the island, and the first native Raratongan teacher went forth to carry the glad tidings of salvation to the people of the Samoan group, then lying in darkness. `Teava' was one of the first converts made by Papehia, and a devoted imitator of the noble example he set.
Sadly disconcerted, they returned next morning on board, and the enterprise was about to be abandoned, when the devoted Papehia stepped forward and volunteered to return on shore. "Whether the natives spare me or kill me, I will land among them," he exclaimed. "Jehovah is my Shepherd I am in His hand."
Not fifteen months after Papehia landed, they erected a chapel three hundred feet long, with a pulpit at either end, from which each teacher addressed nearly fifteen hundred wild, naked savages at once, without inconvenience.
"Another native teacher afterwards joined Papehia; and in two years and a half, under the superintendence of these two native teachers, themselves born heathens, and brought up in the darkness of idolatry, till called into the marvellous light of the gospel, the whole of the population of that large island became professedly Christian.
After paying a second visit to Aitutaki, Mr Williams sailed in search of Raratonga, of the position of which even he was uncertain. He was accompanied by Papehia, and by some natives of Raratonga, who had been carried away by a trading vessel from their own island, and cruelly deserted on Aitutaki.
Papehia began his ministrations by telling the people about the power and purity of God, and His love to mankind, and contrasting His attributes with those of their idols. By teaching both old and young portions of Scripture, and the latter to read, they began to perceive the follies of heathenism. "Thus the old religion was undermined, and a way prepared for the introduction of the new faith.
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