More than 60 people were baptized in the Adventist Church in Kiribati, an archipelago in the Central Pacific, in July 2021. Among them were students from Kauma Adventist High School, the country's Adventist school. The information was reported by the Adventist Record, a publication of the Adventist Church in the South Pacific region.
According to the outlet, the outcome did not come from a single week of preaching, but from long-term work that combined three fronts: friendship evangelism led by the members themselves, follow-up of Hope Radio listeners, and the resumption of Bible studies with interested people from earlier campaigns. The baptisms were reported as part of the harvest vision of the Trans-Pacific Union Mission.
What happened in the blue lagoon
According to the Adventist Record, more than 60 people went down into the waters of baptism in Kiribati in July 2021. Some of the ceremonies took place in the clear-water lagoons that surround the country's atolls — the image that gives the original report its title, "a sign of eternal life in the blue lagoon".
Among those baptized were students from Kauma Adventist High School, a school run by the Church in the archipelago. The report does not detail how many were students, but it notes that the school was one of the places where the work bore fruit — a detail of close interest to those who follow the Pathfinder Ministry, accustomed to seeing teenagers take their first steps in faith within Adventist institutions.
The number, for the size of the country, is not small. Kiribati has an estimated population of just over 120,000 people spread across dozens of islands, and the Adventist presence there grows at a frontier-mission pace, with few workers for many communities.
The strategy: friendship that opens the door
The core of the work was friendship evangelism — the practice of building relationships of trust before any formal invitation. Instead of starting with a series of conferences, the members invested time in getting to know neighbors, listening to their stories, and following their daily lives, letting interest in the message arise from that companionship.
According to the Adventist Record, the president of the Kiribati Mission, Pastor Taabua Rokeatau, described the approach as the marriage of friendship evangelism with an initiative tied to the communities' agricultural cycle, sustained by the commitment of the church members and by integrated mission programs. The idea is simple and old: constant presence and concrete service open doors that words alone do not open.
For the Pathfinder reader, it is a familiar method. The club works, at bottom, with the same logic: relationship first, message afterward. Friendship, example, and service are the ground in which faith is sown — within the unit, at the Sabbath afternoon meeting, or at camp.
The role of Hope Radio
The second front was Hope Radio Kiribati, an Adventist station that became one of the Church's main channels of contact with the island population. Many of those who reached baptism were listeners of the programming, later followed up, one by one, by members and workers.
The radio is an initiative of the Trans-Pacific Union Mission, headquartered in Suva, in the Fiji Islands, and had been gaining reach in the country. Still in 2021, more than 300 people took part in the celebrations of the station's third anniversary, which was establishing itself as a platform for evangelism as well as informing and entertaining, according to the Adventist News Network.
In a territory of scattered islands, where physical distance is the greatest obstacle to mission, radio does what no isolated worker could: it reaches homes that no one would reach on foot or by boat. Baptism, in this arrangement, is the meeting point between the voice that crosses the sea and the hand of the member who follows up closely.
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The baptisms were not limited to the main island. According to the Adventist Record, ceremonies also took place on outer islands, conducted by two senior pastors — a direct solution to a real problem: the small number of ordained pastors in Kiribati.
One of them, Pastor Taraitoi Uriam, summed up the surprise of finding more work than he expected. "I thought I had only come to conduct the baptism, not knowing that there are people here who also need Bible studies," he said, according to the report.
Pastor Taabua Rokeatau himself stressed that the harvest is far from over. According to the Adventist Record, he pointed out that there are many interested people still needing Bible studies after listening to Hope Radio — a sign that the demand for follow-up is growing faster than the number of available workers.
Where Kiribati is and what the Trans-Pacific is
Kiribati is an island nation in the Central Pacific, made up of 33 atolls and reef islands spread across a vast area of ocean, straddling the Equator. It is one of the most remote and least populated countries in the world, with communities separated by hundreds of kilometers of open sea — which turns every worker's journey into a small expedition.
Within the structure of the Adventist Church, the country is served by the Kiribati Mission, linked to the Trans-Pacific Union Mission, headquartered in Suva, in the Fiji Islands. A "union" is the administrative body that brings together several missions and conferences of a region; the Trans-Pacific covers a set of Pacific island nations and, in turn, answers to the South Pacific Division.
It was within this framework that the baptisms were reported: according to the Adventist Record, they took place in line with the harvest vision of the Trans-Pacific Union Mission, the effort that gathers the union's fields around growth goals. The Kiribati baptisms were presented as part of this larger movement, and not as an isolated episode.
Why this speaks to the Pathfinder
At first glance, a baptism on Pacific islands seems distant from the routine of a club in Brazil or anywhere in the South American Division. But the logic is the same that sustains the Pathfinder Ministry everywhere: reaching people — especially young people — through friendship, example, and constant service.
The presence of students from Kauma Adventist High School among those baptized is a reminder that school and club walk together toward that purpose. And the story of the two pastors who traveled to outer islands echoes something every director knows: there is almost always more field than there are people to work it, and it is the involvement of members — not only of the workers — that makes the difference.
Kiribati shows, on a small scale and in an extreme setting, what the Pathfinder has heard since the first class: mission does not wait for perfect structure. It advances with what is at hand — a radio, a friendship, and the willingness to cross the sea.