Mission to Tonga Groberg served as an LDS Church missionary in Tonga. He experienced much difficulty in getting to Tonga: he was prevented from arriving by strikes, visa problems, and transport issues. Groberg served briefly in
Los Angeles,
Samoa, and
Fiji while waiting for his transport to be finalized. When he finally arrived in Tonga, his first assignment was on the remote island of
Niuatoputapu, which had had only limited contact with the outside world in the form of an occasional telegraph and a visiting boat. During the year he spent on the island, Groberg suffered from mosquitoes, a
typhoon, and starvation. His missionary companion on Niuatoputapu was Feki Po'uha, who would later serve as
district president in
Niue, while Groberg was president of the church's Tongan
Mission (which at that point included Niue). After a year on Niuatoputapu, Groberg was assigned to more developed islands and served as a
district president supervising smaller
branches of the church. Groberg later reported that the branches he dealt with lacked unity and morality. He had little contact with his mission president and nearly drowned when pushed out of a boat during a major storm; he also suffered frequently from exhaustion. Groberg was denied an extension to his mission that would have allowed him to accompany a group of church converts to the
New Zealand Temple. Groberg wrote a book about his mission from his memoirs called
In the Eye of the Storm, which was adapted into the 2001 Disney film
The Other Side of Heaven.
The New York Times explains of Groberg's character, "The narrator and hero of
The Other Side of Heaven, is a Mormon missionary dispatched to the Tongan islands in the Pacific Ocean immediately after his high school graduation in the 1950s." A sequel to the film,
The Other Side of Heaven 2: Fire of Faith, was made in 2018 with the same actor, Christopher Gorham, in the role of Groberg.
Later church service Groberg later served in the LDS Church as a
bishop in Idaho Falls from 1960 to 1965. He returned to Tonga as president of the Tonga-Fiji mission, which included Niue, serving from 1965 to 1968. In 1970, Groberg became a
regional representative with the assignment to oversee church's operations in Tonga. In April 1976, Groberg became an LDS Church general authority. In the mid-1990s, he was president of the church's Asia
Area, where he was closely connected with the initial sending of church missionaries into
Cambodia. He later served as president of the church's Utah South Area, where he was responsible for initiating programs for missionary work among the Latino population there, and attempts to ensure that English-speaking
wards home taught the Latino members within their boundaries, even if they attended separate Spanish-speaking congregations. Groberg also served as president of the North America West Area from 1990 to 1994. In May 1992, Groberg presided over the organization of the San Francisco California East
Stake, the church's first Tongan-speaking stake in the United States. In 2000, Groberg was called into the
Sunday School general presidency. In 2005, Groberg was designated as an
emeritus general authority. From 2005 to 2008, he was
president of the church's
Idaho Falls Idaho Temple. Groberg's parents also served as president and matron of the temple from 1975 to 1980. ==Personal life==