† Temeeti Teiaa

I learned this morning, sadly, that my guardian in the mission, Temeeti (the son of) Teiaa died. He is pictured here on the right, in front of our home on Tarawa, which is now the headquarters of the Kiribati Uniting Church. I am the boy in the centre. A European family in those remote islands could not survive without help such as that which Temeeti gave. My father, too, was itinerant (a travelling missionary), so that I (and we) depended much on Temeeti. OBSERVATION: He was like a father to me. Without Teemeti, I have said that I would always have been the English boy. Although nobody saw it, he lay behind the cultural transformation of my urban ministry, and he lay behind my marriage into another culture. He lay behind my writing, too, as the one who showed me the treasures of other ways of doing and thinking. As young as I was then.