At the memorial service for tsunami victims held yesterday at Ekalesia Agelekana in Mangere, in South Auckland, they sang the familiar refrain of the final hymn with gusto – tinged with the mourning you’d feel at a funeral:

Surely goodness and mercy
Shall follow us
All the day of our lives

Samoa and Tonga would rise again, the singers seemed to be affirming; and God’s goodness and mercy could still be trusted.

And coming from a congregation where almost every man, woman and child had lost someone, whether family, friends or acquaintances – and some had lost many – the poignancy of that rendition of those famous words was inescapable.

Glory to God the hymn is called; it was written in 1990 by Paulo Ieriko, who was inspired to compose it after his country had been battered that year by two deadly hurricanes.

The Rev Vaotogo Frank Smith, who leads the ekalesia, reflected on the themes of desolation and hope in his sermon. His sister had lost her home when the tsunami struck, and much of their village has been levelled.

He screened an image of a young Samoan man surrounded by wreckage, yelling at the Heavens. As though he were bawling out: Where is God in this? How does God show himself through such a disaster?

And Rev Smith suggested at least some answers. He appears through the help of others, he said – and he spoke of the hundreds of Samoans from the northern side of Upolu who, having been spared the tsunami, didn’t wait for their government or much less the international community to act in the wake of the tragedy.

They piled into buses laden with food and clothing to search out their southern neighbours, and they opened their homes, en masse, to the homeless.

And he reminded his listeners how Jesus had faced the calamity of his crucifixion by holding to his conviction – notwithstanding the facts before him – of the triumph of God’s goodness and mercy.

It was standing room only for the memorial service. The intercessions were led by five folk who represented the Maori, Fijian; Samoan; Tongan or Indo-Fijian strands of the South Pacific, and of the Diocese of Polynesia in particular; and Archdeacon Tai Tuatagaloa-Leota (whose village was decimated, and whose son was critically injured by the tsunami) celebrated the Eucharist.

Bishop Winston Halapua (whose ancestral island of Niua Toputapu in Tonga was also struck by the tsunami) led some further prayers; while Archbishop Jabez Bryce, Bishop of the Diocese of Polynesia, gave his own message of encouragement, gently pointing out that clergy had not been spared, and reminding everyone to uphold the congregations in Pago Pago in American Samoa in their prayers.

It’s known that the electric generating plant in Pago Pago has been destroyed, and phones are still out of action – but five days after the tsunami, no-one has heard from them.