Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints go to Baptism Seaside in Cape Coast, Ghana on Monday, April 23, 2018. John Dan Ewudzie, Charlotte Acquah, Robert Myers, Emma Myers and William Fiifi Imbrah had been a part of the primary mass baptism in Ghana in December 1978. Ravell Name, Deseret Information
Charlotte Acquah, who joined the mass baptism on Baptism Seaside in December 1978, reads a narrative along with her husband, William, daughter Wilhelmina E. B. Acquah, granddaughter Justine M. Dzitse and grandson Howard S. Dzitse on the Acquah residence in Cape Coast, Ghana, on Sunday, April 22, 2018. Wilhelmina Acquah the grandchildren’s aunt and introduced them to go to. Ravell Name, Deseret Information
William Fiifi Imbrah stands contained in the Cocoa Home on Monday, April 23, 2018. The meetinghouse was for a big congregation of people that accepted the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Cape Coast, Ghana within the Nineteen Sixties and ‘70s however had no approach to be a part of the church till it despatched missionaries after the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy males. Ravell Name, Deseret Information
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The very last thing I anticipated to see on Baptism Seaside was a brief slaughterhouse working illegally on the shore of the Gulf of Guinea.
I used to be on a reporting journey in Africa and had organized for our photographer to fulfill with 5 of Ghana’s unique members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the identical seaside the place they had been baptized in 1978, 5 months after a revelation made priesthood and temple blessings obtainable to all church members.
The picture shoot was imperfect. The slaughterhouse was within the foreground. Within the background, the rising ocean had reclaimed the sandy seaside. In between the 2 was a rocky ridge.
However it was nonetheless memorable. Ravell Name took terrific photographs. Robert Myers, the primary particular person baptized, and his spouse and three associates walked gingerly throughout the rocks and shared their recollections with me as waves crashed beneath and seagulls referred to as overhead.
These recollections got here again this week when the Church Information printed a narrative about one other reunion of early pioneers of the church in Ghana who gathered to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the dying of Joseph W. “Billy” Johnson, who had waited 14 years for the church to ship missionaries to Africa so he and his congregation might be baptized.
Remarkably, greater than 16,000 individuals throughout Africa had been ready to hitch the church by the mid-Nineteen Sixties.
Please learn my story on the poignant, pent-up need for baptism, Johnson’s management and the mass baptism on Baptism Seaside in December 1978 right here.
My current tales
Historic Brigham Younger Household Cemetery opens after renovation, rededication (Oct. 24)
Concerning the church
President Russell M. Nelson pledged $2 million per yr for 3 years to humanitarian collaborations by the NAACP and the church. The primary challenge kicked off in a San Francisco meals desert. Examine it right here.
Reside audiences might be welcomed to a few performances of the annual Tabernacle Choir Christmas live performance in December. Right here’s how to join tickets — the deadline is Sunday! — and different particulars. And right here’s a complete have a look at the 50-plus earlier visitor artists and narrators on the Christmas concert events.
I used to be stunned how little I knew in regards to the man who arrested and delivered to trial a number of the males he believed killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Luckily, Trent Toone was on the Church Historical past Museum’s Evenings on the Museum sequence not too long ago and wrote about Minor Deming right here.
Learn the dedicatory prayer provided by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on the rededication of the Hamilton New Zealand Temple on Oct. 16 right here.
The Belém Brazil Temple is open to the general public by means of Nov. 5 earlier than its dedication. Listed below are pictures of what the temple seems to be like inside.
A Connecticut newspaper reviews that a few weeks in the past, 450 church members planted over 250 bushes in 30 areas round Fairfield County close to the New York border to have a good time the 2 hundredth anniversary of the First Imaginative and prescient. The challenge had been delayed by COVID-19. Right here’s the story from Good Morning Wilton.
The Idaho sheriff who pulled a gun on a Younger Girls’s group was sentenced to a few years’ probation and 10 days in jail. Final November, the church group was taping “grateful turkeys” — thank-you notes within the form of a turkey — on doorways of their neighborhood. They left one on the sheriff’s door for his spouse. He got here out, grabbed the Younger Girls chief by the hair and held a gun to her head, threatening to shoot her in the event that they group didn’t depart, the East Idaho Information reported.
Hopefully, these feedback from the creator of “The Chosen” put an finish to the bizarre allegation that the present used a Guide of Mormon quote. Learn what he mentioned right here.
What I’m studying
If you wish to learn one thing enjoyable a few goofy topic with a noble sensibility at its middle, then learn “The key identification of the NFL’s final barefoot kicker” on ESPN.com. I learn the primary two paragraphs to my spouse, as a result of the ultimate sentence of that story lead is the sort everybody needs they’d written themselves.
I’m devouring the Robert Crais novels about detective Elvis Cole. Unsure how I missed these, as they're over 20 years previous, however he’s a tough-acting, wise-cracking man with the softest coronary heart. I simply completed the seventh ebook, “Indigo Slam.”
I’m wanting ahead to the brand new Jack Reacher novel that simply went on sale, “No Plan B.” Identical for the brand new Cormac McCarthy ebook, “The Passenger.”
My spouse and I've began watching the ABC TV sequence “Alaska Day by day.” It will get many issues proper about being a reporter and dealing at a newspaper. I really like a whodunit the place the investigators are journalists.
Behind the scenes
Charlotte Acquah, who joined the mass baptism on Baptism Seaside in December 1978, reads a narrative along with her husband, William, daughter Wilhelmina E. B. Acquah, granddaughter Justine M. Dzitse and grandson Howard S. Dzitse on the Acquah residence in Cape Coast, Ghana, on Sunday, April 22, 2018. Wilhelmina Acquah the grandchildren’s aunt and introduced them to go to.
Ravell Name, Deseret Information
William Fiifi Imbrah stands contained in the Cocoa Home on Monday, April 23, 2018. The meetinghouse was for a big congregation of people that accepted the beliefs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Cape Coast, Ghana within the Nineteen Sixties and ‘70s however had no approach to be a part of the church till it despatched missionaries after the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy males.
Ravell Name, Deseret Information