June 15th, 2025, 2am MDT
Sonasi Po’uha left his hometown of Tonga in the mid-1970s, began a new life and raised a family in the United States.
Poha arrived in Utah in 1976 and although he didn’t speak much English, he loved his family. I had strong faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ and knew how to work.
My husband and father, who worked in strange jobs and regularly served at Salt Lake Temple, was a great example of how to actively “preside, offer, and protect” according to “Family: Declaration to the World.”
“Growing up with my father, I watch him side and offer and protect – three staples of the priesthood owner and the family father – I have seen his unique touch in each of these three categories.
Sione Po’uha paid tribute to her father and shared her memorable experiences and lessons learned in a recent interview with Church News.
Saturday at the temple
When Sione Po’uha turned 12, his father began awakening him at 5:30am on Saturday and baptized him for the dead at Salt Lake Temple.
Initially, the butler was excited. He observed his parents frequently going to the Lord’s house and wanted to know what they did there. But four months later, the Half Awake young man couldn’t help but think about all of his friends who were still sleeping on Saturday morning. But going for an all-you-can-eat breakfast afterwards was always a big bonus.
Sonasi Po’uha stuck, and it became a habit for the two to attend the temple on Saturday mornings. Sione Po’uha can’t remember the Saturday from the ages 12 to 19, when his father did not take him to perform a baptism for the dead.
“I have achieved my personal connections and a relationship with my Heavenly Father,” Poha said. Poha agreed to a 2024 Deseret News article on research correlates Latter-day Saint Youth Temple’s attendance with better mental health and more lasting faith.
Regular attendees with their fathers did not only deepen their relationship. He said he felt that he had added spiritual strength during his challenging teenage years, as the church President Russell M. Nelson had promised about spending time at the temple. Po’uha also found solitude and learned to appreciate the sacred.
“The practice of going to the temple shaped the vision and focus of many of the things I have done in my life,” he said. “There were a lot of Friday nights, and perhaps the next morning I avoided going out with friends because I knew there was a temple.
During that year, fathers and sons were often joined by young men and women from other wards. To this day, young people from Liberty District 3 (Tonga) in Salt Lake Utah (Tonga) stock have said they regularly baptized at the Jordan River Utah Temple early on Saturday morning to distract their achievements for starting the tradition.
“The Lord’s invitation was always to come to his house,” he said. “It was a Tongan dad who was so inspired that he said, “Let’s go to the Lord’s mountain to tell you what this means to me, my young son. Let’s go often and see what the effect is.” ”
Lockers and teams
From 1998 to 2000, Po’uha worked for the Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission.
He returned to play football at the University of Utah and completed his four-year career as an all-mount western defensive lineman for the first team of UTES’ undefeated Fiesta Bowl champion team in 2004.
Po’uha was drafted in the third round of the 2005 NFL Draft by the New York Jets and played in the National Football League for eight years.
After his playing career, Poach coached at the US Naval Academy and Utah before joining BYU before the 2023 season.
For many years, Sonasi Poha was an ordinance worker at Salt Lake Temple. After he died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 76 in July 2009, his son was invited to come to the temple and clean his father’s locker.
When Po’uha sorted items from his father’s simple temple locker, he looked back at his own flashy locker in the highly regarded locker room from the university to the NFL.
In contrast, he felt that his father had a locker with his team (the main team). It was most meaningful from an eternal perspective.
“Of all the lockers, this is the most important thing in a humble little way,” he said. “It continues to affect me.”
Father’s inheritance
Now, as a husband and father along with his own family, Poach wants to continue the legacy of his father’s faith.
One of the most important lessons Po’uha learned from his father was centered on the power of example, reminiscing on the thoughts attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, and what he cited in April 2011 by Dieter F. Uchtdorf, a quorum of the 12 Apostles.
“I think the most important thing is that I didn’t really listen to my dad teaching that much. I felt guided,” Poach said. “There was a lot of guidance. There were a lot of examples. His life, how he went through it, that spoke in itself.
