Our Burning Desire

One of the most incredible stories in the history of the Church is the preparation and conversion of the Saints in West Africa.  I was moved by this podcast in which Scot and Maurine Proctor in which they described the incredible faith and missionary labors of Billy Johnson in Ghana.  He found the Book of Mormon in 1964 and gained a witness of its truthfulness, but the Church was not present in his country.  He recorded, “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, 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.” 

And that he did, enduring relentless opposition and challenges as he waited for fourteen years of the Church to officially be established in Ghana.  He organized hundreds of followers and persisted in building up the kingdom even though the Church could not be officially established.  Like Paul, no matter what persecution came, he stayed true to his witness from the Lord and fearlessly preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Surely he could say as did Paul, “But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which trieth our hearts…. Being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us” (1 Thessalonians 2:4, 8).

               I was particularly moved with the letter that Brother Johnson wrote to President Kimball at the time when the revelation on priesthood was given and the doors were beginning to open.  He wrote as a representative for the Saints in Ghana, “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.”  What incredible faith and love of the Lord!  He had received a revelation and he was determined to live by it and see the establishment of God’s Church among his people.  His witness begs the question for the rest of us—what is our burning desire?  Is it to live by our faith and to go forward following the guidance and direction of the prophet of God?  The Sister Proctor also recorded how they had been present at the dedication of the Accra Ghana Temple in 2004 with Brother Johnson, “He said he had spent the entire night before prostrate upon the floor in fervent prayers of thanksgiving to the Lord for giving his people this temple.”  She continued, “I talked to him again when we came out of the Temple—and he told me that during the Hosanna shout and the singing of The Spirit of God he had seen an open vision of the hosts of the Ghanaian dead who were all in their tribal garb and awaiting their work to be done.”  His devotion to revelation and the work of the Lord is an inspiration to all of us to seek more earnestly the kingdom of God, to likewise strive to “seek to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion” wherever we are (Doctrine and Covenants 6:6).