Melanie Riwai-Couch: Push Me Higher

from A Thoughtful Faith for the 21st Century

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Church has not always been easy for me. As a woman, an indigenous person, and an academic, my mind and my church experience sometimes clash. I worry that things are moving too slowly or in directions that are different than I think they need to move. But I have been buoyed by undeniable experiences of priesthood power, the atonement, the temple and kindness that solidify my testimony.

My great grandparents were Rina Puhipuhi Meihana, daughter of Meihana the paramount chief of Ngāti Kuia, and George Te Oti MacDonald, a descendent of Rangitane ki Wairau.

One of Rina Puhipuhi Meihana and George Te Oti MacDonald’s eleven children was my grandfather George MacDonald, who married Kate Mahinaarangi Dawson. Together they had 16 children. My father Dennis was the youngest and his parents died when he was very young.

My parents married in 1962, and had four daughters; we lived in Blenheim. I am the youngest in my family. My married name is Riwai-Couch, but my maiden name was MacDonald.

When I was four years old my parents separated, and then my sisters left for Church College of New Zealand, attending a Church boarding school in Hamilton. I was left at home to be raised by my dad.

When I was young the missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would call over to our house and my dad would mostly turn them away. On a good day, they might get fed lunch, but dad would not go out of his way to make them feel welcome.

We could not afford to buy new things, but my father was very clever and figured out ways of fixing old stuff, and through his bartering or inventing we had what we needed to get by. Between poverty, negative stereotyping of Māori people and struggling to get by, there were many challenges, including some abuse by an acquaintance. The Church became a safe place for me.

What I didn’t know at the time was that my great grandfather George Te Oti MacDonald had been baptized a member of the LDS Church in 1894 when he was 41. His conversion trickled down through the generations and some of our family lines stayed close to the Church, but most of our family left.

When my dad was a boy, the missionaries used to come to our marae (tribal meeting house) at Wairau Pā and baptize the eight-year-olds in the Wairau River. In 1947 when my dad turned eight years of age, he hid up in a tree when the missionaries came—and he didn’t join the Church until much later when he was an adult. What prompted him at the time was that my mother had left him and he thought maybe being baptized might win her back. My mother had already joined the Church several years earlier after having been taught by the missionaries.

My dad was an exceptionally good man—after all he raised four daughters alone, but at times it felt a little like we were left to fend for ourselves. He would never come into church for Sunday meetings—I would be dropped off in the car park and if I couldn’t find a ride home I would either walk or phone dad to pick me up. I wasn’t baptized until I was 10, simply because no one knew that I hadn’t been baptized already and I had no family with me. I never had family home evenings, scripture reading or seminary. My church experience consisted only of what I chose to do that I could get to unassisted.

At church I attended the children’s primary classes and later youth classes. There I was taught that I was “a daughter of God.” As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe in eternal families. We believe that before birth we lived with a loving Father in Heaven and that we chose to come to earth to gain a body and live our mortal lives. We choose to be baptized and to receive the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. We have the opportunity to be obedient to the commandments of God. We can be kept together in eternal family units by making sacred covenants in Holy Temples. This means that marriage and families do not end at death, families are forever.

This doctrine, as true as it is, felt as far away from my reality as it could be. Despite this, I knew that when I was at Church I felt whole. Deep inside I started to understand that God wanted me to be okay, even though my situation then was not good.

The scriptures say that with God nothing is impossible, and as a teenager I decided that if anyone needed a miracle it was me.