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The
Day of Africa
Text by Maurine Proctor and Sylvia Finlayson
Photography
by Scot Facer Proctor
click
photos to enlarge
PART TWO
It was August
of 1979, that then Elder James E. Faust visited West Africa, where
congregations had grown spontaneously and without supervision, where
missionaries had only been here a few months and said, “When it
will happen, I can’t be certain; it will depend upon the faithfulness
of people like yourselves, and it will require a Church membership
of about 100,000 people. But one day there will be a temple in
Africa.”
Not Withheld
Church membership
in the West Africa region is 100,000, but one senses as you move
among these people that this is a situation much like the brother
of Jared. Their faith and pleading prayers called down the powers
of heaven in their behalf. Despite the emormous obstacles an environment
like West Africa poses, a temple could not be withheld from them.
This is their day. This is the day of Africa—and the stranglehold
that Satan has had upon the land, the ferocious hold with which
he has chained and oppressed the people—is about to be undone.
“Thanks be to
thy name, O Lord God of Israel, who keepest covenant and showest
mercy unto thy servants who walk uprightly before thee, with all
thy hearts…
“For thou knowest
that we have done this work through great tribulation; and out of
our poverty we have given of our substance to build a house to thy
name, that the Son of Man might have a place to manifest himself
to his people” (D&C 109: 1,5).
These words, of
course, are not from the dedicatory prayer that President Hinckley
will offer this day. They are from the dedicatory prayer of the
Kirtland temple, but this is a pioneering day in Africa, and so
they ring surprisingly true.
Patriarch Joseph
W.B.Johnson
Outside, the temple
stands Ghana’s own pioneers. One of them, Joseph William Billy
Johnson, the patriarch of the Cape Coast stake, can’t hold back
the tears. He is the man who had ten congregations in place bearing
the name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for
fourteen years before the missionaries arrived. He withstood disdain
and jeerings and jabs all that time from people who said he was
crazy to hope to belong to a Church who so obviously didn’t want
him. “You would want to belong to a Church who won’t let you hold
the priesthood?” people scoffed. “I cannot deny the Church is true,”
he repeated a thousand times, “for the Lord has told me so.”
“The Lord revealed
to me this day would come,” he says of the temple dedication. He
recounts a dream where he saw two tape recorders—a black one and
a white one, that were then joined together. Accompanying the scene
was a message for him, “The day will come when your brothers from
the West will come and be one with you.” He held tight to this
message. They will come for us. They will come for us.”
“They won’t come,”
his neighbors told him. “Leave the Church.”
His answer, “I
know they will come because the Lord has told me.”
During the long
wait, he and the members of his congregation, felt particularly
close to the Mormon pioneers who played a key role in restoring
and building the gospel in America. Songs with an invitation to
come nearly broke their hearts. They cried when they sang, “Come,
Come Ye Saints.” They wept at “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”
“When will they
come?” he often asked with unquenchable yearning. “When will they
come?”
Brother Johnson
is sensitive to dreams and through them felt the urging of his ancestors
to do their work. A great, great uncle came to him in a dream and
said, “Ever since I took my journey from this world, I have never
found my way home. Please cover me before the Savior comes.”
His aunt had died
giving birth to her 13th child. He saw her in a dream
where she said, “I’m wearing tattered clothes. Come and clothe
me and lead me home.”
His ancestors
told him, “We would have been better people if we had lived to see
your Church.”
In his dream,
Brother Johnson was begged by a large group of Africans who were
asking: “What can you do for us?” He answered with his own question,
“What can I do for you?”
“Our children
and grandchildren will be members of your Church. We are rejoicing
because there is hope for us to be redeemed.”
“This is the time,”
said Brother Johnson, “if only the children will not forget them.”
Brother Johnson
said, “I didn’t sleep last night. I wept all through the night
thanking the Lord for the temple and the work we are going to do
here. We are so grateful to our brothers in the West who have come
for us, and we will always remember the sacrifices of the first
missionaries who came to us and those who built a temple in our
land. We are burning with gratitude.
“I cannot hold
my tears. The members are rejoicing. Those beyond the grave are
rejoicing. The heavens are rejoicing,” he said.
Click
here to go to Part 3 of The Day of Africa
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