Sailosisavu “Losi” Koloto, the new pastor at Patagonia Community United Methodist Church, was born in Stanford, California and raised in nearby East Palo Alto during the days when it was known as the murder capital of America. “People were proud of it—they made t-shirts!” he laughed.
By the time he graduated from high school, Pastor Losi had been sent by his parents to live with family members around the globe, spending a year or two each in New Zealand, England, and their homeland of Tonga, an island country in the South Pacific.
How does someone with that upbringing end up as a first-time pastor in a village in the Arizona desert?
Pastor Losi brings with him a unique background. As a child, he heard gunshots every night, was robbed five times, and had a driver taking him to school in west Palo Alto. His father was “fortunate,” Pastor Losi said, owning a national roofing company and three houses, but chose to live in East Palo Alto “because it was so diverse, with big Mexican and Tongan communities.”
One day when Pastor Losi was going to school abroad in Tonga, he went to Western Union to collect his weekly allowance check. He was told no check was there. “I called my dad, crying, where’s my money?” Pastor Losi said. “Father said he changed course; he was going into the ministry and had sold everything. This [became] a big teaching for me.”
Pastor Losi returned to the Bay Area and took on the role of the pastor’s son, though like many a teenager, “I liked drinking and partying,” he winked.
At age 22, Pastor Losi married Velonika (“Nikki”), whom he’d met when she had arrived in California on a work visa. But he continued to feel “lost” about his vocation.
“Then in 2011 we were visiting Australia, where my wife’s parents were serving the ministry,” he said. “We were at a church service. I had never really listened to sermons before. That was my time when I would go to Togo’s to grab a sandwich. I was in the [church] brass band, and would time it 27 minutes to get back right before taking my place at the trumpet.
“There is a Bible passage about ‘having ears to hear.’ I thought to myself, why don’t I just listen? That was my life—ever since growing up, I hadn’t actually been listening. After listening a few minutes I felt heard, I felt warmth in my heart. Everything made sense to me; I could finally discern what to do. I felt realization, relief. A teacher from the Methodist Seminary in Tonga was recruiting. I filled out the application, and, when I was about to turn 30, I entered theological school. In Tonga.”
Tonga is primarily Methodist. Missionaries came in the late 1790s. “Our Wesleyan Methodist congregations go to church every day and still use the original hymnal the missionaries brought—663 hymns, never changed, added to, or taken away,” Pastor Losi explained.
Here in Patagonia, of course, hymns span the centuries up to contemporary days. “But,” Pastor Losi smiled, “I’m not used to hearing everyone sing along to the same music, in unison. In Tongan congregations, even the big church ones in California, almost everyone forms the choir and they sing a multitude of harmonies, all a cappella.” In fact, Tongan choirs have lately become sought-after performers for UMC events throughout Arizona.
Pastor Losi had assumed he’d be preaching to a Tongan congregation, yet here he is in a rural border community. His position is half-time, due to the local church’s financial constraints. He never stops though. He drives almost every week to meet and socialize with Tongan communities in places like Phoenix or Las Vegas, and to do church business. He is also now a full-time graduate student working on his Masters of Divinity degree from Claremont University in California.
Pastor Losi crafts his sermons with enthusiasm. He likes to relate Biblical lessons to everyday life, such as what do you do when your gesture of love is rebuffed. He has used music or Super Bowl images or poetic lines like, “Some truths return like waves again and again until they carve a place in your heart.”
One time he ended his sermon with a hymn sung in his rich baritone voice, with his wife singing from the back of the pews singing harmony with him.
His wife, Nikki, commutes here from her caregiving job in California. They have three daughters, with their middle one, Marion, a freshman and enthusiastic sports team member at Patagonia High. Their youngest lives with family in Tonga and the oldest is a teacher in New Zealand.
How’s life been in Patagonia? “I like the small town charm, the artistic feeling, being remote and quiet,” Pastor Losi said. “It’s diverse here, that’s good. Different people, different characters, everyone works together. It has made me grow more, more willing to be open to others; take lessons and learn from them. [I am] more willing to walk hand in hand with different people—different starting points but all aiming for the same place.”
One thing he’s aiming for right now is perfecting his quiche for the men’s group he started. His last quiche featured chorizo.
Open to the community, the men’s group take turns cooking breakfast for each other before diving into spirited conversation. An opportunity for the easy-going, quick-to-laugh Pastor Losi’s favorite theme of “Just listen.”