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By
Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photography
by Scot Facer Proctor
Meridian Magazine’s on-the- scene coverage of the Church
in Ghana continues today and into next week. To read the articles
already published click here.
A World We Don’t Know
Driving
down the road from Accra to Cape Coast, we are able to have our
first glimpse of the village life most people in Ghana know. Markets
are crowded with people and goats, squat houses are a monochromatic
brown, and signs on the businesses are surprising. They say “God
Works Miracles Beauty Salon,” “Jesus Loves Me Jewelry,” even “God
is Love Meat Market.”
Christianity
here is overt. Everyone who has been to school knows the Bible.
Abigail, a vendor in the craft market where we buy a nativity set,
can discuss with some sophistication theories on when the wise men
came. Kofi Opare, a former bishop, who has volunteered to drive
us tells us that life is so hard here, people need God. They take
their troubles to him.
A
friend observes that he finds it ironic that materially Europe has
everything, but has abandoned God, while the Ghanaians have nothing,
yet their faith is vibrant.
So
in some ways it might be easy to dismiss the Church’s phenomenal
beginnings here as just one more expression of a desperate people’s
longing for God. That would be the sociologist’s explanation.
Our
experience here defies that theory. You can’t meet the Latter-day
Saints in Ghana and not be forever transformed with their spiritual
power and understanding; feeling that somehow you have been transported
to a new world where the veil is thinner, the air clearer, the Spirit
a constant stream of light.
The
beginnings of that tie to Joseph William Billy Johnson.
A Man Called by God
Without
priesthood power and direction, without the authorization of the
Church, with no hope of receiving the priesthood himself, with no
hope for temple blessings, he still felt compelled—even fired from
his bone marrow-- to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. Persecutions
didn’t stop him. Disdain only sent him to his knees. The slow
grinding of the years when he had ten congregations each bearing
the handwritten signs “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints” didn’t wear him down. Official letters from Church headquarters
telling him that it wasn’t yet time to send missionaries didn’t
daunt him. He knew from personal revelation that his “brothers from
the West” would come for him, and though he sometimes cried and
often prayed all night for courage, when they did come, he had 1,000
people who were ready for baptism.
How
is it that some people overcome the drags of mortality and burst
with such light upon the world? And how was it that a legend, the
pioneer of a whole nation could still be living to see the fruits
of his labors at a temple dedication?
In
the early 60’s, the Lord’s Spirit certainly began brooding on Africa.
Not only did Brother Johnson form his congregations in Ghana, but
also in Nigeria unauthorized congregations of Latter-day Saints
began sprouting. Here it was that somebody saw an advertisement
in The Reader’s Digest, there a friend from Europe sent a
tract. Somebody else received a copy of the Book of Mormon. Seemingly
unrelated events were coming together to bring a groundswell of
interest in what must have seemed like a distant Church. What wasn’t
distant was the Spirit which moved upon many people almost simultaneously
with a divine orchestration that would someday bring a temple.
On
that drive to Cape Coast, when we came upon Brother Johnson’s neighborhood,
nothing seemed remarkable. His home was in a typical African village,
but that is where “typical” ended. He was as astounding as you’d
expect the founder of a movement against great odds would be, and
we felt the impress of his grand spirit as we interviewed him.
Had we met someone like this before—ever before? Could Parley P.
Pratt been more on fire than this African patriarch who had begged
for the Church? We were not surprised when we learned that some
of the early missionaries called him the “St. Paul of Ghana.”
His
face was boyish, his tears barely restrained as he told us his story.
Brother Johnson is a visionary man, a man with significant dreams.
God speaks to most of us in quieter tones, yet perhaps on the frontier
of the Church, Joseph Johnson needed dreams to sustain and teach
him.
Early History of Joseph William Billy Williams
Brother
Johnson was first introduced to the Church in 1964 by Dr. A.F. Mensah,
who had received books and tracts from a non-member friend in Ireland
and was trying to establish the Church in Ghana without much success.
He wanted help from Brother Johnson who came away from their meeting
with copies of the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the
Doctrine and Covenants, the Articles of Faith, and some pamphlets.
He
started his studies by reading a tract on Joseph Smith and the first
vision, and said he, “I was convinced. I believed. I felt the
spirit when I read the story of Joseph Smith, especially how the
father and the son revealed themselves to him. That moved me a
great deal.”
He
took his studies of the Book of Mormon with equal conviction, poring
over the pages. Then, he said, “One early morning of March 1964
while I was about to get up to prepare for my daily chores, the
Spirit of the Lord fell upon me. I heard a voice from heaven speaking
to me saying, ‘Johnson, if you will take up my word as I will command
you to your people, I will bless you and bless your land.’ Trembling
in fear, I replied in tears, saying ‘Lord by thy own help, I will
do whatsoever thou would command me.’
“From
that day on,” said Brother Johnson, “the Spirit of the Lord constrained
me to propagate the restored gospel to my people. I started door
to door and performed open missionary work preaching the new message
we read from the Book of Mormon.”
Unending Challenges and Trials
As
soon as he started to do this work, persecution was heaped upon
him. From a distance, we might have assumed that the Church flourished
as it did because the Africans were easy and receptive, able quickly
to cling on to the good news of the gospel.
That
wasn’t so. It was the same story that had been replayed in England
and Denmark more than 100 years before. The gospel is introduced
and all hell breaks loose.
“We
were ridiculed and heckled by mobs who did not believe the Book
of Mormon and the testimonies of Joseph Smith. They believed only
the Bible and they would not accept any other book of scripture
as the word of God. A lot of Churches took notice of us and started
calling us names. They branded our group as an anti-Christ organization.”
Remember,
at this point in 1964, Brother Johnson has not been called on a
mission by the Church. No mortal has asked him to preach the gospel.
He is devoting full time to a calling that he feels only within
himself. He has a message that includes exclusion of the priesthood,
limitation to blessings, and no church to attend. This can’t be
readily appealing. What keeps him going? He is harangued by day,
but taught by night. With enormous spiritual hunger, he calls upon
the Lord who continually answers through his Spirit, “Here am I.”
He
preached the Book of Mormon and people answered that they had read
the Bible. They told him that it is the only book. He explained
that the 66 books of the Bible were not all written at the same
time. He reminded them that Christ had said he had other sheep.
And he kept plodding along, crying to the Lord for more.
One
time after he had been fasting for three days, he dreamed of walking
on a plain and he looked ahead and saw two enormously heavy books.
He was told, “Johnson, go carry them. Go carry them. Go carry
them.” It seemed impossible to him, but he followed the instruction,
picked them both up and found the books were light. “They were
light,” he said, “because they supported each other. Once I saw
it in a vision, I didn’t doubt any more.”
Brother
Johnson said, “Persecution became bitter, so much that we nearly
gave up from the very onset, but through much prayer and fasting,
we waxed strong in faith and continued to preach the gospel without
flinching.”
One
day at Accra Post Office Square, a religious group suddenly broke
up the meeting by distributing anti-Mormon pamphlets. “They thought
they could discourage us, but we were undaunted. We persisted and
won the hearts of 40 people that day.”
Pleading for Direction from the Church
Won
them for what? Mere scraps of information, but nothing they could
model. Brother Johnson or a member of his group wrote letters to
the Church, and they received kind letters of encouragement, magazines,
a hymnbook and instructions about how to run a meeting. First,
have an opening song. Next an opening prayer. The correspondence
was continuous through the years. The plea was “Come for us.”
The response, “We want to. The time is not yet.”
Brother
Johnson persisted. Their church group met in a school owned by
the Anglican Church who finally decided that the rate of growth
of Johnson’s group was a threat to their own. The LDS group was
asked to leave.
They
moved their meetings to a storeroom in Brother Johnson’s house.
The group outgrew it. They registered with the government. They
started a primary school called the Brigham Young Educational Institute.
Brother Johnson named his son Brigham. He was not a bishop so they
called him the Reverend Minister Johnson. They hung on, sometimes
with tears, but they hung on.
In
1969, Brother Johnson moved to Cape Coast where he established what
became 10 separate congregations in the little villages that dotted
the area. Their meeting houses with the odd little signs that announced
themselves as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were
a motley group. The Cape Coast group met in a converted old cement
warehouse. The front wall had a large painting of Christ and at
the back of the podium a finely grafted and polished statue of the
Angel Moroni. The tin roof leaked when it rained and Brother Johnson
spent much time trying to get a government permit to fix it. Attached
to the pulpit was a picture of the Bible and the Book of Mormon
and the room was decorated with the pictures of Joseph Smith, the
Tabernacle Choir, and other LDS scenes. The Assin Fosu Branch met
in a room of the village school building. Sekindi-Takoradi Branch
met in the restaurant of the ‘branch president.’
They
had high hopes to be baptized members of the Church, but the years
were long. Elder Emmanuel Kissi wrote in an unpublished manuscript.
“In connivance with State Security snares were set to entrap Johnson.
In 1977 he was approached by no less than four denominations who
tried to influence Johnson’s Church ‘with large sums of money to
cause a change of our name to theirs’...In each case they knew that
Mr. Johnson’s church could not have been recognized by the Church
in Salt Lake because of the Church’s position in regard to the priesthood
and the Negro. In each case Mr. Johnson was approached by these
churches telling him that the Church in Salt Lake would never recognize
his congregation and that he might just as well give up hope and
come and join their ranks. [One group] offered Mr. Johnson a scholarship
in theology and a full time salaried position as a minister in their
church. They also offered to contribute $10,000 towards the purchase
of some improved facilities and equipment.
“The
contingent which included a bishop, stayed in Mr. Johnson’s home
for about one week. Towards the end of the week Johnson ‘decided
to pray and ask the Lord to confirm that this is what he should
do.’ During his supplication he heard a voice tell him, ‘Do not
confuse my people,’…He immediately got up from his knees and went
into his living room where at the same time the bishop of the aforementioned
church also came into the living room and before Johnson could say
anything himself, the bishop said that the Lord had just revealed
to him that he should not persuade Mr. Johnson and his congregation
to depart from their own church.”
Despite
prayers answered and heavenly manifestations, sometimes Brother
Johnson was discouraged. Elder Kissi wrote, “Whilst in anxious
prayer one of those days, Johnson heard an unidentifiable voice…saying
to him, “I will come and help you. Do not be discouraged. Be patient.
The Church in America will help you.”
The Revelation Finally Came
Then
on June 9th, 1978, Brother Johnson had difficulty sleeping,
so he listened to the radio, a radio that had not been working very
well of late. During the midnight broadcast of the BBC, he heard
the news that the Church was going to extend the priesthood to all
worthy males. The floodgates were opened. The blessings that Brother
Johnson had sought for so long would now be available. He “sat
there and cried.”
At
a Regional Representatives seminar that year, President Spencer
W. Kimball, who had prayed so long for this revelation on the priesthood
said, “We have an obligation, a duty, a divine commission to preach
the gospel to every nation and every creature…We feel that the Spirit
of the Lord is brooding over the nations to prepare the way for
the preaching of the gospel. Certain political events have a bearing
upon the spreading of the truth, and it seems as thought the Lord
is moving upon the affairs of men and nations to hasten their day
of readiness when leaders will permit the elect among them to receive
the gospel of Jesus Christ…And what about Africa? They have waited
so long already…Are they not included in the Lord’s invitation to
‘teach all nations?’ Are they not included in the utmost part of
the earth?’”
At
that same meeting President Kimball read a letter from Brother Johnson,
“We therefore solemnly declare in the name of Jesus Christ that
God has prepared the groups in Ghana for you, and we have no where
else to go but forward, looking for your missionaries to help us
understand the Church better. It is our burning desire to live
by that faith and attain its standards.”
On
the day of the Ghana temple dedication, Brother Johnson said, “We
will always remember what the missionaries have done for us. My
heart is burning with love and appreciation. When I started preaching
with the Book of Mormon, everyone said, they won’t come. Leave
the Church. I said, ‘I know they will come because the Lord has
told me.’”
The First Missionaries Arrive in Ghana
When
the first two couples Rendell and Rachel Mabey and Ted and Janath
Cannon came to Ghana, the land was in a drought, conveniences were
hard to come by and food was difficult to obtain. Brother Johnson
said, “I remember Elder Cannon had a characteristic movement. He
was always pulling up his pants because he had lost so much weight.”
It
was a rainy day in Cape Coast when the missionaries came. Since
the roof was so full of holes “we could look through the ceiling
and see the birds,” the rain poured through and everyone was wet.
Still, nobody moved, so intent were they on hearing the gospel.
“We were sitting in the room wet, and we were listening to the missionaries.
They would explain things to us, and ask if we believed. We nodded,
saying, ‘We believe. We love the Church. We love it. It is close
to our hearts.’”
They
had been taught through the Spirit, and they knew.
Some
things needed to be corrected. They had not ever seen an LDS Church
service so they had incorporated ideas they had seen in other churches.
They had a collection plate, they used drums in their worship, they
had interpreted the Word of Wisdom to mean that they could eat wheat
but not oats. They changed as soon as they understood, including
something that could have been sticky.
Pure Faith
As
in other churches, Brother Johnson had been receiving a modest living
through collections, an idea that certainly must have seemed reasonable
since he poured endless hours into the work each week. Now, as
he came to understand the concept of a lay ministry, he would have
to give up his means of living, yet still put in the same hours
as first a branch president and then later a district president.
Elder Mabey asked him how he would survive if the Lord called him
to this position. To this he replied, “I have been thinking about
that, and I am sure the Lord will not call me without providing
a way.”
He
and his brother had decided to acquire a farm to raise fruits, vegetables
and keep chickens. “We hope,” he said “to develop a model kind
of farming program which others may follow. We intend, in fact,
to give all our surplus to the Church.”
The
Church grew like a brushfire in Ghana with Brother Johnson playing
a key role and guided by inspiration. Elder Reed and Sister Naomi
Clegg wrote about how Brother Johnson found strong, committed leaders
and followers. They said, “He would go into a new village and ferret
out a prospective leader of the Church there. That person might
be the principal of a school…or the postmaster or other village
leader. Johnson would tutor that prospect in gospel principles
and doctrine until he became converted. If the prospect proved
difficult to convince President Johnson would take him into his
abode and spend almost night and day with the novitiate. Then he
would demonstrate Church leadership by going with the convert to
establish branches. President Johnson would then go back to the
new member’s village and help him convert his fellow villagers and
organize a Church group. We witnessed and participated in that
procedure several times.”
The Freeze
In
1989 when a military government in Ghana froze the activities of
the Church in Ghana for 18 months, President Johnson was not dimmed.
“The freeze was a blessing,” he said. “At that time, people were
so curious about the Church they started asking for pamphlets.
Families became strong as they held sacrament meetings in their
own homes. Father was presiding. Mother was the Relief Society
president. Daughters were the counselors.
“Because
we have the truth, the police were even on our side. The police
cars would come and pick me up and I gave a service for them every
Friday morning.” President Johnson was allowed to give services
in prison. Everyone was longing to hear more about the Church.
They told President Johnson, ‘We want to feel that something is
precious.’”
“When
we came back together after the freeze,” he said, “we came back
in strength.
They
thought we would scatter, but we came back in strength. Teach them
correct principles and they will govern themselves.”
President
Johnson said that the Church is highly respected in Ghana. “They
know that Mormons are upright. They like the way we care for our
people. We visit our people. We care for every member. We take
care of the needy. Other churches are trying to practice home teaching
and visiting teaching because they like it.
“One
of our members took a non-member friend to a place where marriage
disputes are settled. They told her, “Go and see your bishop.
They can do it better. He has the key we don’t have it.”
Rejoicing in the Day of Salvation
So
the day of the temple dedication, President Johnson had “shining
tears of joy.”
One
night, before the Church had come, he had been weeping for a different
reason. He was discouraged and pained, wondering, “Will our brothers
from the West ever come for us?” Then in a dream his brother, who
had died four years before President Johnson had found the Church
came to him and said, “Do not weep. I have found your Church in
this place, and I want to be baptized, but I cannot without your
help.” To prove to President Johnson that he spoke the truth he
sang for him “Come, Come Ye Saints.”
President
Johnson , “Temple work is the sweetest part of the Church to which
my heart and soul have always clung. I want to meet my mother and
father in the resurrection prepared to enter the kingdom of God.
“There
is a chorus of God’s love inside every member of the Church today.
We can’t express our gratitude for the blessings we have received.”
As
for the future, he said, “It is time to do more missionary work.
This is not the time to rest on our laurels. It’s the time to work
harder so we can raise up more missionaries to spread the message
of love for the world.
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