Ini Kopuria by Charles E. Fox (1946)

This is not the place to write of the Brotherhood, of Ini’s founding of the order of Companions of the Brothers, and of his other ideas, the children of an impulsive but very original mind. He worked first in his own island of Guadalcanal, then in Santa Cruz, then in Sikaiana, which owes him its Christianity, then in Mala, and then for some time in SagSag at the western end of New Britain, opposite New Guinea, where he prepared a number of people for Baptism. One of my memories is of that baptism, when Ini and I stood waist deep in the very cold water of that mountain river for several hours, while streams of people came…to us from the heathen side, were baptised by us and passed over to the Christian side, where the Bishop sat in his chair on a high grassy bank with the few already Christians round him. There the newly baptised dressed in white loincloths, and finally a great procession, led by the Cross, set off for the church, a procession so long that they were singing different hymns in different parts without releasing it, or caring either, so joyful did they feel. That is just one of the many memories of Ini. What great days those were!

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