Chapter 25
For the Gospel’s Sake
On June 14, 1989, mission companions Alice Johnson and Hetty Brimah noticed people staring at them as they walked back to their apartment in Koforidua, Ghana. “Why is everybody looking at us?” Hetty wondered aloud.
“We look beautiful,” Alice said. They had just had their hair styled by a hairdresser they were teaching. Why wouldn’t people be staring?
When Alice and Hetty arrived at their apartment, however, their landlord told them they needed to report immediately to Alice’s father and stepmother, who were also serving as missionaries in Koforidua.
Alice was the daughter of Billy Johnson, whose devotion to preaching the restored gospel had helped establish the Church in Ghana. He had been among the first people baptized when missionaries came in late 1978. He then received the priesthood, became the first branch president in Ghana, and later served as a district president. Now, a decade later, there were some six thousand Ghanaian Latter-day Saints. As missionaries, Billy and his wife were assigned to help Saints who were no longer attending their Church meetings.
Alice and Hetty walked to the mission house in the city and found the Johnsons there. Alice’s father calmly explained to them and other missionaries that the Ghanaian government had banned—for reasons unknown—all Church activities in the country. Several other Christian churches were also barred from meeting.
“I need all of you to remove your name tags,” Billy said. News of the ban had already been broadcast over the radio, which explained why so many people had been staring at Alice and Hetty. “You have to go to your apartment and pack your stuff quickly,” Billy instructed. “Tomorrow morning, we have to report to the mission home in Accra.”
Growing up, Alice had always admired her father’s prayerfulness, kindness, and enthusiasm for the restored gospel. In fact, his faith and eagerness to serve God had inspired Alice to go on a mission at age eighteen, which was permitted in some parts of the world.
Now, as he spoke of the government ban, he urged Alice and the other missionaries to fast and pray for its end.
The next morning, Alice and Hetty traveled fifty miles south to the mission headquarters in Accra. When they arrived, they found dozens of missionaries gathered there. Most of them were Ghanaians, and every face was streaked with tears. The ban had taken everyone, even the mission president, by surprise. Local militias had seized meetinghouses and other Church buildings. Police officers had turned missionaries out of their apartments and impounded mission cars and bicycles. And armed guards had taken position outside the mission home.
Gilbert Petramalo, the mission president, informed everyone that they would have to be released. Only Alice’s parents would remain full-time missionaries, but they would act in an unofficial capacity. They would continue to minister to the Saints, but they would dress in everyday clothes and not use name tags.
Following her release, Alice went to live with a friend in Cape Coast. She felt lost and confused. The abrupt end to her mission left her unsure about her future. It was as if everything important in her life had suddenly come to an end.
After all Church activities were banned in Ghana, Church member William Acquah was hungry for news. He read the local papers and listened to the radio constantly, all the while hoping to find out more about the “freeze,” as the ban was soon called. Sometimes he and other Saints met to compare what they had learned.
Decades of colonial rule had left some Ghanaians wary of outsiders, and it seemed the Church’s American headquarters and evident prosperity concerned government officials. Many people in the country had also watched a film that cast the Church as sinister and immoral, and it stoked fears about the Saints. By restricting the Church, the government apparently believed it was protecting Ghanaian citizens. Officials seemed unwilling to lift the freeze until they conducted a thorough investigation into the Saints and their activities.
William lived in Cape Coast. His wife, Charlotte, was part of the Andoh-Kesson family, who had been early supporters of Billy Johnson’s ministry. Charlotte had introduced William to the restored gospel in 1978, but he had waited more than a year to get baptized. He came from a prominent family in the region, and as a younger man his education and life experiences had made him suspicious of God. His heart began to soften when Charlotte introduced him to Reed and Naomi Clegg, a missionary couple in Cape Coast. They were patient as he studied the Book of Mormon and other Church literature, giving him time to gain a testimony and make the decision to be baptized.
When the freeze began, Church leaders had authorized the Ghanaian Saints to administer the sacrament and hold Sunday School in their homes. William and Charlotte did this every Sunday with their children. Afterward, William would often leave home to check in on other Saints and make sure they were well.
On Sunday, September 3, 1989, William came upon a group of Church members clustered around a taxi. They told him that two fellow Latter-day Saints, Ato and Elizabeth Ampiah, had just been arrested for holding Church meetings at home. William hopped into the taxi with the others, and they drove to the police station.
The building was a dreary structure from Ghana’s colonial era. Inside, an officer stood at a counter. Behind him, the Ampiahs sat barefoot on a bench in front of the iron bars of the prison cells.
The officer looked at William. “Are you also a member of the Church?” he asked.
“Yes,” William said.
He brought William behind the counter. “Remove your shoes,” he demanded. “Give me your wristwatch.” He gave the same orders to the other men who came with William. One of them asked if he could call a friend, a local government official. The officer was furious.
“Into the cells!” he barked.
A foul stench hit William as soon as he passed through the gate. The small room was crammed with ragged prisoners who looked shocked to be sharing a cell with a group of Saints still dressed in their church clothes.
“What is happening in our country,” one prisoner asked, “that harmless priests like you would be brought in here?”
Despite their rough appearance, the prisoners made room for the Saints and treated them with respect. It was fast Sunday, and as William and his companions talked over their situation, they decided to continue fasting. They were tense and afraid, but word of their arrest had spread, and other Church members were working to get them released.
Sometime that afternoon, William’s uncle came to the station. He was a calm, dignified old man who was not a member of the Church. He spoke with the police but could not persuade them to let William go. The officers said the Saints were a threat to national security and could not be bailed out.
Hours passed, and afternoon turned to evening. Friends from church came to the jail and likewise pleaded for the prisoners’ release, but the officers only threatened to arrest them as well. Finally, when it became clear that William and the other Saints would be spending the night in prison, they joined hands and offered a prayer.
The next morning, the station’s commanding officer told the Saints he was waiting for orders on what to do with them. William passed the time talking with other prisoners. Some had families nearby and wanted to contact them. William memorized their addresses and promised to take messages to them. He was inspired when he thought of the New Testament apostle Paul and his imprisonments for the gospel’s sake.
Another day passed, and finally, on Tuesday, William and the Saints were brought to see the commanding officer. “You are free to go,” he said without further explanation. He tried to sound friendly, but he warned them not to tell anyone about their arrest.
No one said anything in reply. At the counter, the police returned their belongings and sent them on their way.
On the evening of November 18, 1989, Olga Kovářová was waiting at a bus station in Brno, Czechoslovakia, when she noticed dozens of police cars swarming a nearby theater. “It must be on fire,” she thought.
The bus soon came. Olga climbed aboard and immediately saw a young neighbor who usually rode with her. She looked excited.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Olga said.
Her friend lowered her voice. “Well, about the revolution!”
“Where?”
“In Czechoslovakia, in Prague—here!”
Olga laughed. “What other joke do you want to play on me?” she asked.
“Did you see all those police cars around the theater?” her friend said. “Actors started a strike, and it has been spreading.”
Olga was still skeptical. For over a year, a wave of peaceful public protests and other demonstrations had sparked political change in Poland, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, and other nations allied with the Soviet Union. In Berlin, just a few days earlier, people from both sides of the city had begun demolishing the massive concrete wall that had divided them for nearly thirty years.
In Czechoslovakia, though, the government had made no concessions to its citizens’ pleas for greater freedom.
Olga longed to worship freely, and she and her fellow Saints had been fasting and praying for this blessing. Elder Russell M. Nelson, meanwhile, had been working with the Czechoslovak government to get the Church officially recognized in the country.
Olga did her best to practice her faith. Fortunately, the gospel continued to fill her with joy. In 1987, she and her parents had driven to the German Democratic Republic to be endowed and sealed together as a family in the Freiberg Temple. The experience had strengthened her. “This is a really beautiful foundation,” she had thought, “like you are touching a ceiling, and the ceiling becomes a new foundation.”
Now, two years after that experience, Olga came home to her apartment and turned on the television and radio, listening for news. She heard nothing. Could things actually be changing?
The next morning, Olga arrived at the youth center where she worked and found her colleagues rushing up and down the hallway. Many of her coworkers looked distressed. “Something really serious is going on in Prague,” Olga’s manager told her. “I have an emergency meeting right away.”
Other colleagues soon arrived with news of the revolution. “It’s true,” Olga thought.
Within days, signs in shop windows announced a general strike against the government. Olga joined thousands of people who marched to the city’s main square, her heart pounding as she witnessed history unfold around her. She thought of all the hardships her parents and grandparents had suffered. She felt the Spirit of God in the unity and love of the people around her.
After days of protest, the government resigned its power, and a new government began taking shape. The atmosphere in the country changed. People talked openly in the streets. They smiled and helped one another. At church, the Saints were optimistic about the future and happy to meet publicly for the first time in decades.
One day, around this time, Olga visited Otakar Vojkůvka at his home. She found him in tears. He was overjoyed that young people like her would be able to live and worship freely.
He told her he had been waiting his whole life for this to happen.
Dignardino Espi, lead security officer at the Manila Philippines Temple, was apprehensive as he arrived for work on the evening of December 1, 1989. Earlier that day, armed men in Manila had staged a revolt, throwing the city into chaos. It was the seventh attempt to overthrow the Philippine government in four years.
Despite the political turmoil, the Church enjoyed a firm foundation in the Philippines. Over the past thirty years, its membership had grown from a small group of Filipino believers to more than two hundred thousand Saints. There were now thirty-eight stakes in the country and nine missions. And since its dedication in September 1984, the Manila Philippines Temple had been a source of great joy and spiritual power.
At the temple guardhouse, Dignardino found his colleagues, Felipe Ramos and Remigio Julian. Although they were finishing their shifts, the two men were reluctant to go home. Across the street from the temple was Camp Aguinaldo, a large military base. Knowing the camp could become a target for the armed men, the guards worried about leaving their posts and being caught in the fighting. They preferred to stay and help preserve the sacredness of the house of the Lord and its grounds.
Around one o’clock in the morning, government troops set up a roadblock at an intersection near the temple. A few hours later, a tank plowed through the roadblock, damaging the wall around the temple.
As violence erupted in the street, Dignardino and the other security officers recruited the temple’s two custodians to help them keep the building and its grounds safe. Seeking shelter from government fire, a group of men soon broke open the temple gates. Dignardino tried to compel them to leave, but they refused.
Later that afternoon, Dignardino spoke with temple president Floyd Hogan and area president George I. Cannon over the phone. President Cannon advised him and the staff to take shelter inside the temple. A short time later, the phone lines went dead.
The next morning was fast Sunday, and the staff began their fasts by asking God to spare the house of the Lord from being desecrated or harmed.
The day passed much like the one before it. Helicopters swooped overhead and sprayed the temple grounds with bullets. A plane dropped several bombs nearby, shattering the windows of the Church distribution store and damaging other buildings. At one point a fighter jet fired two rockets over the temple and caught a neighboring field on fire.
In the early afternoon, Dignardino found ten armed men near the temple entrance. “What you will find inside the temple building is purely religious and sacred in nature,” he told them. He was nervous, but he kept speaking. “If you insist on entering the sanctity of the building, its sacred character will be gone,” he said. “Would you deprive us of these blessings?” The men were silent, and as they walked away, Dignardino knew his words had touched them.
That evening, Dignardino gathered his staff, and they again took shelter inside the temple. He offered a fervent prayer, putting his trust in the Lord to preserve His holy house.
All night, they waited for the bombs to fall, but the hours ticked away in silence. When dawn broke Monday morning, they cautiously emerged from the temple to survey the situation. The armed men were gone. Nothing remained but abandoned weapons, ammunition, and military uniforms.
Dignardino and the other men inspected the grounds and found some damage to a few of the outside buildings. But the temple itself was unharmed.
Late in the day on June 7, 1990, Manuel Navarro and his mission companion, Guillermo Chuquimango, were walking back to their house in Huaraz, Peru. Manuel had begun his mission in March 1989 at the Missionary Training Center in Lima, one of fourteen MTCs around the world. He enjoyed being a missionary—working hard, visiting different regions of the country, and bringing people to Jesus Christ.
His current area could be dangerous at night, though. A revolutionary group called Sendero Luminoso, or the Shining Path, had been warring with the Peruvian government for more than a decade. Lately, their attacks had become more aggressive as rising inflation and economic strife beset the South American nation.
Manuel and Guillermo, another native Peruvian, knew the dangers they faced as they left home each morning. Groups like the Sendero Luminoso sometimes targeted Latter-day Saints because they associated the Church with United States foreign policy. There were now more than a million Church members in Spanish-speaking nations, with around 160,000 in Peru. In recent years, revolutionaries had assaulted Latter-day Saint missionaries and bombed meetinghouses across Latin America. In May 1989, revolutionaries had shot and killed two missionaries in Bolivia. Since then, the political climate had only grown more intense, and attacks against the Church increased.
The five missions in Peru had responded to the violence by setting curfews and restricting missionary work to the daytime. But this evening, Manuel and Guillermo were feeling happy and talkative. They had just taught a gospel lesson and had about fifteen minutes to get home.
As they walked and chatted, Manuel spotted two young men a block or so ahead of them. They were pushing a small, yellow car and looked like they needed help. Manuel thought about lending a hand, but the men soon started the car and drove off.
A short time later, the missionaries approached a park near their home. The yellow car was parked on the pavement about five feet from where they walked. Nearby was a military base with a detachment of troops.
“It looks like a car bomb,” Guillermo said. Manuel saw some people running away, and in that instant, the car exploded.
The blast slammed into Manuel, throwing him into the air as shrapnel whizzed around him. When he hit the ground, he was terrified. He thought of his companion. Where was he? Had he taken the brunt of the explosion?
Just then, he felt Guillermo pick him up off the ground. The park looked like a war zone as soldiers from the detachment—the bomb’s apparent target—fired their guns past the smoldering remains of the car. Leaning on his companion, Manuel managed to walk the rest of the way home.
When they arrived, he went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. His face was bloody, but he could not find a wound on his head. He simply felt faint.
“Give me a blessing,” he told his companion. Guillermo, who had received only minor injuries, placed his trembling hands on Manuel’s head and blessed him.
A short time later, the police came to the house. Thinking the missionaries were the young men who planted the bomb, the officers apprehended them and took them to the police station. There, one of the officers saw Manuel’s condition and said, “This one is going to die. Let’s take him to the health center.”
At the police health center, the chief officer recognized the elders. Manuel had recently interviewed him for baptism. “They are not terrorists,” he told the other officers. “They are missionaries.”
Under the chief’s care, Manuel washed his face and finally found a deep wound beneath his right eye. Once the chief saw it, he rushed Manuel and Guillermo to the hospital. “I can’t do anything here,” he explained.
Not long after, Manuel fainted from loss of blood. He urgently needed a transfusion. Saints from Huaraz came to the hospital, hoping to donate blood, but none of them had the right type. Doctors then tested Guillermo’s blood and found him to be a perfect match.
For a second time that night, Guillermo saved his companion’s life.