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Dedicating Three Lands in West Africa
Elder Marvin J. Ashton, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and I set off on August 29, 1987, for West Africa. Elder Ashton's assignment from the First Presidency was to dedicate Zaire, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast for the preaching of the gospel. I was privileged to accompany him. It was a great thrill for me, loving Africa as I have for much of my adult life, to see the power of the priesthood mobilized to call blessings down on those countries. On a more personal level, it was a wonderful opportunity to get to know Elder Ashton, who has long been a hero of mine, and from whom I learned a great deal every day of our association.
Our first stop was in Kinshasa, the capital city of Zaire. It sprawls over dusty hills, with untold thousands of flowering bougainvilleas and flamboyants splashing their colors against a squalid background of tin roofs, open sewers, and deeply rutted roads. It was night when we arrived, and as we left the airport my senses were once again assailed by the pulsating melange of sounds, smells, and sights of African cities: roadside vendors huddled under the velvet blanket of darkness around a single, dim streetlight, laughter, music, voices crying in pain or ecstasy, dark figures drifting by like disembodied souls or standing solemnly by the roadside; and hanging over it all the pungent odors of sweat, heat, wood smoke, and dust.
Elder Ashton asked me to conduct the dedication ceremony, held early in the morning of August 30 in the garden of the home of a local member, Michael Bowcutt, president of the Binza Branch and an American employee at the U.S. Embassy. I was thrilled to do so; it was a historic moment of great spiritual significance. At Elder Ashton's request, I gave a few introductory remarks as follows:
This is a sacred and glorious occasion, as we meet under the protecting and sheltering canopy of the trees in this gentle garden, to carry out the Lord's business in this choice land. We meet in near obscurity, in the very infancy of the Church in Zaire, little noticed by the world but perfectly secure in the knowledge of who we are and in whose cause we serve. We are here on the Lord's errand. This action ushers in a new era in the history of the Church in Zaire. It is the dawning of a new day-a day whose beneficent influence will be felt through all generations of time. We who are mortal see countries and borders, tribes and peoples, but He who sees all knows only one people-one flock-all of whom are His children.
My thoughts have turned this morning to the great hymn of the restoration composed by Parley P. Pratt, an early apostle of the Lord who was martyred for his beliefs. Wrote he: "The morning breaks, the shadows flee; lo, Zion's standard is unfurled! The dawning of a brighter day majestic rises on the world."
How fitting those words are for this occasion, as we meet early in the morning of a majestic day. They tell us much about why we are here. They convey a sense of the great and glorious cause in which we all labor. They portray in poetic language the most important truth in the world-that the gospel of Christ has again been restored to the earth in all of its fullness; that it has burst upon the scene like a light of transcendent brightness, dispelling the long night of spiritual darkness which covered the world for so many years; causing the shadows of error to flee and the dawn of a new and glorious day to break resplendent upon all countries and peoples.