Beloved's Masters presentation congratulations...

 Last night, our family went to visit their dad's (my beloved's) presentation on his developing indigenous Samoan model for his Master's in Indigenous knowledge practice that he is studying within his first of a two year study.

It has been really interesting in sharing in discussions and watching him embrace his studies and viewing faaSamoa practices and how they have changed somewhat over time. It's also been really interesting to discuss how many of the principles, values and practices that we had been exposed to i.e. for him in Samoa and me growing up in NZ was so often different in practice but embracing the same principes.

In writing and researching our latest book called 'Nafanua the lady warrior', I'm also more aware of why Samoa needed to embrace Christianity, in 1830, at the time as there were many battles and civil war or unrest within the nation, so much so, that when Rev. John Williams arrived on the shores of Manono Samoa was in the throes of a battle with fires being burnt out in villages and many people burnt in having lived inland due to territorial battles.

Fauea who was a Samoan living in Tonga at the time, had accompanied Rev. John Williams back to Samoa in the same year and he was related to Malietoa and was very aware of the dictatorial role of the Malietoa that he had lived under before returning to Samoa upon the death of that Malietoa.

Rev. John Williams wrote about how he was so happy in having Fauea there to assist him in sharing and bringing peace to the nation i.e. providence from God and that he said (prophecied?) that many people would remember Fauea's for what he had been able to assist in accomplishing. I hope that this book will go towards fulfilling that prophecy in that many people know of Rev. John Williams but few know of the pivotal role that Fauea had in his connections and knowledge of bringing about peace to the nation.

And so we are so proud of my beloved and we celebrated with dinner and a cheese cake (his favourite dessert) to encourage him to continue on his awesome journey which we hope will be of benefit to our communities as we continue our journey of documenting Samoan ancient and historical stories, principles, values, practices and understandings for the next generations...