The Miracle of Ghana
Acts 10 has a seminary
video clip that goes along with it, which discusses Joseph
Johnson in Ghana, his faith, and the priesthood going to all
worthy men in 1978. It is a remarkable and touching story.
The video only touches on the surface of the great and
marvelous faith of these people who waited patiently for
years for the gospel to come to them. I first heard this
story about 12 years ago, firsthand, from someone who had
been there. Truly amazing.
Meridian Magazine has a
special report (with lots of on-site photos) on the
dedication of the Ghana temple as well as excerpts from a
book by Glen L. Pace called Safe Journey. These would
enhance a presentation of this truly miraculous missionary
saga in our day. You can find the links here:
Deseret News photos from
the temple dedication, which took place Jan. 11, 2004.
The dedicatory prayer is
here
Some excerpts from Elder
Pace's book:
In 1965,
LaMar Williams, who had been secretary to the Church
Missionary Committee and had been called to Nigeria on a
fact-finding mission, gave the committee the names of 15,000
people who requested baptism. When the first missionaries
arrived in 1978, they baptized 149 converts in a 24-hour
period. Not since Heber C. Kimball’s and Wilford Woodruff’s
days in England had the Church seen such a deluge.
The
LDS Church News (Feb. 21, 1998) reported, “For Joseph
W.B. Johnson, news of the temple is something he has waited
15 years for. He is one of the Church’s pioneers in West
Africa, having in 1964 started a congregation patterned
after the Church after he read LDS literature and the Book
of Mormon. He and others in his unofficial congregation were
baptized after the missionaries arrived in Ghana in 1978.
Brother Johnson said that he had a dream several years after
he was baptized that the spirits of people who had died
asked him what he was doing for them. ‘What could I do?’ he
pondered, not having access to the temple. ‘Now we can start
doing the temple work for those of our ancestors,’ he said
after President Hinckley announced the temple.”
“Sometime
after the Savior’s plan was accepted and he was foreordained
to become the Savior of the world, you stood before the Lord
to get your assignment. In my mind I can hear him say, ‘We
need someone to go to the earth and live in Ghana, Africa,
and join the Church prior to 1978. They will be subjected to
persecution for belonging to the Church. They won’t even be
able to hold the priesthood at first. They will need to be
true to the teachings, even though the Church won’t be
organized in Ghana when they join.’