Honouring Netani Bolatolu and Merewalesi Qurai

Netani Bolatolu was born in Matuku, Fiji in 1973. Netani’s parents, Netani Bolatolu (Snr) and Temalesi Rarawa Bolatolu left their village in Dravuwalu Totoya in May of 1966 with their eight children. They served as Methodist Missionaries to the Methodist circuit of Daku looking after 4 villages on the island of Matuku where his dad served as a church catechist. Netani and one of his older sisters were born there. After several years the family returned to Totoya.

Merewalesi Qurai was born in Lautoka, Fiji Islands in 1971. As Merewalesi grew up, two values were important to her: church and family. Everything she did centered around these two things.

At around 12 years old she was invited to a small combined Methodist school gathering where she gave her life to Jesus. In her search for more of God in her life, she would read the Bible often but nothing would make sense except a few verses that would stick out from Sunday school or from her school’s religious studies. She would walk into the Centenary Methodist Church in the city of Suva often, taking a few moments to pray before walking up the hill up to school.  

Merewalesi’s cousin, Joele Baleiwai introduced her to missions. She had never understood that a Pacific Islander like her could be a missionary because she was so used to reading about and seeing the ‘palagi’ (caucasian) missionaries coming to her school or to church and sharing their adventures in missions. However, she often wondered if Pacific Islanders could also do something like that. 

So when the opportunity came, she jumped at it. Merewalsesi attended a Discipleship Training School (DTS)  at the Youth With A Mission base in Maui, Hawaii, in 1992 and has been involved in missions ever since. 

She has visited and served in many nations: West New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, USA, Sweden and Germany.  

Woven throughout these journeys, Merewalesi attended further training after her first DTS, including the Leadership Training School and the School of Intercession Worship and Spiritual Warfare (SOIWSW).  She then led the SOIWSW school in Tonga and New Zealand.

Merewalesi met her husband to be Netani Bolatolu in 1996 and they married in 2003. Netani grew up in a Christian family. He gave his life to the Lord as a 13 year old boy at his island home in Totoya while listening to radio preaching on a Sunday evening. Later in college he again recommitted his life to God during a Christian Fellowship meeting at the Fiji Institute of Technology (now Fiji National University) while studying for a Diploma in Architecture.

Netani did various jobs, such as teaching high school and working as a draftsman for the government architect department in Fiji. He spent time as a Prison Chaplain for the Corrections Service in Fiji, a student worker for Pacific Students For Christ, and a Youth Pastor at Unity Baptist Church in Fiji.

He went on to attend a DTS with YWAM’s Marine Reach in Fiji in 2004. After graduation, Netani and Merewalesi served in their home church. After serving as Youth Pastors for some years, they joined Island Breeze ministry in Brisbane Australia in 2011. Since then, they have moved around, serving with YWAM Ships in Townsville, YWAM Island Breeze, Sydney and now in Hervey Bay.  

Both Netani and Merewalesi have been training young people mostly in Discipleship Training School (DTS) and the Schools of Intercession, Worship and Spiritual Warfare (SOIWSW) in the YWAM locations where they have served. They are both passionate about Intercession and worship and each of them has taught on these topics. Netani is an accomplished worship leader, not only in schools, but on the bases where they have worked and in special conferences, church services and youth camps.  

Once when asking the Lord where they should serve, Netani prayed, “Lord send us to the nation where you know we will be most effective.” 

They both came to understand that Australia was to be that land, with a special call to serve the First Nations People of the Land: aborigines and also the Fijian youth who live in Australia. 

Currently Netani is studying for his Bachelor Degree in Theology. 

Netani and Merewalesi have four children. Jonathan, Leilani, Leanna and Susana all play an important role in their journey as a family, helping them make decisions together.  As parents, they have continued to encourage their children to express who they are individually, and how to hear from God for themselves, for them as a family, and for others.