Text by: Maurine Jensen Proctor
Photography by: Scot Facer Proctor

Meridian Magazine’s Senior editorial staff is in Ghana, West Africa, this week for the landmark dedication of the first temple in black Africa.  Stay with us in the days to come for on-the-spot reporting of the historical events surrounding the temple dedication.  West Africa is one of the Church’s most unique settings because congregations who responded to the gospel message grew here spontaneously long before missionaries arrived.

click photos to enlarge

It is early morning on Saturday, January 10, 2003, as a group gathers in a large room in the LDS office building on Ghana’s temple square.  Their historic task for the next few minutes is to put documents, pictures and books into a box that will be inserted into  the cornerstone of the temple to be dedicated the next day.

The gathering itself is significant, but it is made more so by the song that is wafting in through the window as the choir, who will perform at the dedication, is practicing.  “Now let us rejoice in the day of salvation,” they sing, but here are the words which are most poignant, “No longer as strangers on earth need we roam."

This temple, built in a land where Church pioneers started their own congregations in 1964 and begged for 14 years for the official Church to come and organize them, is the culmination of the prayers and hopes of a people who wanted eternal blessings.  The revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy males, received by President Spencer W. Kimball in 1978, was the key to undoing their bondage, and this temple which allows easier access for all of West Africa to receive their own ordinances without prohibitively expensive travel, throws open new eternal blessings for themselves and for concourses of their ancestors waiting beyond the veil.

It is truly a day of rejoicing, a day of celebration.

Click here to go to Part 2 of A Day of Celebration