Pacific Island church leaders in Auckland have received the Covid-19 vaccine today in a bid to be the “role models in getting this programme going”.
Reverend Dr Featunai Liuaana, the minister at the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa in Sandringham, admitted there was some anxiety about getting the jab so some humour was needed.
“I’m here with nine other churches who have decided to come together to lead, be the role models in getting this program going,” he said.
“We are here with those 11 churches, the ministers and their wives, and also 74 members from one of the churches and eight from our church so we’re just over a 100 in numbers today.”
The reverend admitted it was challenging to get members of his congregation to come and receive the jab, with the amount of time that has passed allowing for misinformation and fear to spread.
“You get the other information about other vaccinations causing blood clots and deaths, that really didn’t help. It’s hard to get through to them, it’s part of the reason why we’ve decided as a group of churches to lead this,” he said.
To say to our church people, ‘look it’s easy, we’ve done it, we’re pretty sure you can all do it.’”
Liuaana said the vaccination “went great”.
“For a while there we were talking about whether we were doing the right thing, bit of anxiety, bit of fear was coming through,” he said.
“It was nothing, I couldn’t even feel it really.”
SHARE ME