Laie has been a special place for a very long time. With the world-famous Polynesian Cultural Center, Brigham Young University Hawaii as an international focal point of education and the LDS Hawaii Temple as a spiritual apex, our community encompasses a unique confluence of Latter-day Saint heritage and potential. Whether here for an afternoon, a few years, or a lifetime, modern Latter-day Saint prophets, leaders of nations, thousands of students and millions of visitors have recognized that a special spirit permeates this small community and radiates far beyond our wave-swept beaches.
For example, a former BYU-Hawaii student from the U.S. mainland, who worked at the PCC, wrote of her experience here:
Some of the best years of my life were spent at BYU-Hawaii. While the education I received was incredible, the spiritual education that accompanied it was priceless. The diversity, the generosity, and aloha spirit I experienced have gone unmatched anywhere else I've lived. I still tell people that Laie is the hometown of my heart.
Similar reactions are common. Indeed, Laie has a history of affecting people in special ways extending back a thousand years, when ancient Hawaiians fled to this designated place of refuge for sanctuary. The Hawaiians called such places pu'uhonua, where they could find protection from warring factions or absolution for breaking kapu or taboos. Although the best-known pu'uhonua today is the so-called City of Refuge in Napo'opo'o near Kailua-Kona, they existed in other places throughout the islands, including Laie.
From its beginnings in 1830 until today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been missionary oriented. Church founder Joseph Smith Jr. first asked a party of men living in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1843 to serve as missionaries in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii). It took them nine months to make their way from the banks of the Mississippi River to Boston and then around Cape Horn by ship before finally reaching Tahiti, where they decided to stay. As they do to this day, the LDS missionaries lived among the people and learned their language and customs.
Other LDS missionaries finally arrived in Honolulu on December 12, 1850, and soon found success among the Hawaiians. One of those early LDS missionaries was Joseph F. Smith, the 15-year-old orphaned nephew of the first Latter-day Saint prophet, who came back to Hawaii on several other occasions.
By 1865 the LDS Church purchased an approximately 6,000-acre plantation in Laie and began building a community and a plantation. Within 10 years, Laie became a favorite visiting place for King Kalakaua and Queen Kapiolani, who were especially delighted in the number of Hawaiian children thriving in the community. It was said that more than anywhere else in the kingdom, the Hawaiian Latter-day Saints had overcome the traumas of western contact. King Kalakaua even contributed to building the community chapel, named I Hemolele, and participated in laying the corner stones and in its dedication ceremonies.
