Tales from Umtata: Golden Investigator

Missionary Experiences Are What You Make Them

As missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we take the opportunity to study the gospel daily so that we may use that knowledge to lead people to Christ. Being a missionary does not exempt us from our human frailty, however. My weakness is in full bloom this morning.  

Wake up Elder Johnson,” Shouts Elder Thompson gleefully. “It’s time for comp’ study.” 

Glaring momentarily at him, I roll around n bed a bit before rising. Elder Thompson wakes me up in the middle of such a beautiful dream, resentment. I had a new companion in my dream. 

It was no secret that Elder Thompson and I have friction in our companionship, except to Elder Thompson. I hide it from him out of resentment. Younger than I am and chippier every day, I envy.

“What are we going to study today, Elder,” I said attempting to hide the irritation in my voice. Not that it matters. This guy is so oblivious to my issues with him. Or is he?

Elder Thompson furrows his brow and suggests, “The first discussion. If we study it today, we will teach it.” 

Resentment and all, I believe him. Tossing the word out there so often is annoying, but I resent him because he is such a good person even though I want him to be evil so that I could feel justified in being upset with him. I cannot stay upset long. He is too cheerful! I am not a morning person. He is not a good leader either. I have a detailed list of all his flaws. All of them!

After Breakfast and personal study, we go over the plan for today. We were told that planning in the morning is highly effective. We want, if nothing else, to be productive. So, we plan to do some street contacting for the morning and service at the Hospital counting pills. We scheduled a few appointments with the hope that they will not fall through. We have no backup plan because the concept eludes Elder Thompson. 

I am his “Greenie,” and I resent it! Did I say I resent it? I really resent it!

After coordinating some last-minute plans with the other two Elders in the boarding, Elder Danisa, and Elder Streadbeck, we shove off to start our day. About noon, we return to the boarding to lunch for two hours—planning not to return for dinner. 

Elder Thompson and I are off to work. All of our appointments seem to be canceling as we get to their homes! On top of that, we walk in the sweltering sun uphill both ways! How is that even possible! Only in Umtata (Mthatha now)!

Well, okay, maybe not both ways—but it feels like it. After rescheduling all of the appointments, Elder Thompson suggests that we tract Singqangana Crescent. (When saying this word, Singquangana, the "q" makes a popping sound. Xhosa is an exciting and beautiful language!) I agree fully expecting to find some good people to teach. finally. Resentment is at an all-time low due to the heat and tiresome walking.

The Heat Beats Down. 

We two, heads high, armed for battle, marched up to the first house to begin our adventure. Every door we go to no parents are home or they cannot speak English! A few said "No," which is uncommon in Xhosa Culture when it comes to having messengers of God. I remember that day like it was this morning, though it was 20 years in the past.

Discouraged, we shoved on with little faith in finding anyone. We tracted for 5 hours and it was getting dark. Elder Thompson wanted to turn back and do something more effective but we resolved to tough it out until the end of that long uphill street. After a few more rejections or no contacts, I gave up and wanted to go home. I was sick of no success. Elder Thompson felt the same way, but he looked at me, and then looked up the street. We had five more houses, and we wanted to get them. 

“Let’s just do a few more,” he said. “We might have some success.” 

“Well, if we are going to have success, we are teaching at the next house.” 

“We will teach at this next house,” promised Elder Thompson with determination wanting to get a good investigator for us to teach. (A person interested in our message was an investigator. Missionaries call the friends where I live currently.) We had prayed for such an experience. We hoofed it to the door and knocked but no answer. As we, crestfallen, moved to leave, the door crept open revealing the face of a lovely middle-aged Xhosa woman. She regarded us intently waiting for us to explain our presence at her door at such an hour in the night, about 7 pm.  

Spiritual High

“We are missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-days Saints,” began Elder Thompson. “We have a message about a plan that God has for us to be happy and we want to share it with you and your family. Would you be interested?” 

“O yes, I would like for you to share it with us, but I have nowhere for you to sit. In our house live others who I let out to (rent), and my family and I only use this one room.” 

“We don’t mind,” I said. “We are here to share with you not for comfort, but out of love.” 

“Is your husband home,” asked Elder Thompson. 

“No, I am divorced,” she responded. Red flags went off in our minds. We knew better than to enter a woman’s home without a male escort with us. It would look shady to the neighbors and our Mission President. Something burned inside of us to teach, though. 

“Can we teach you outside before the night becomes too dark,” says Elder Thompson. 

English was not her first tongue, though she spoke it beautifully. Elder Thompson and I had grown into the habit of speaking very simply and directly among our Xhosa-speaking family. So, if the dialogue seems contrived, it is.

“Yes," she responded agreeing to meet with us, "On my stoop. I will get you some chairs and I will sit on the stoop.” She went inside. We looked at each other, knowing our goal to teach families. We questioned each other with our eyes. 

We walked around the house to the open area where the stoop was, “Do you think we should teach her," I asked. 

“Yeap.” 

“I do too, I hope it goes well.” 

We sat well in the open where neighbors and passersby could see and commenced the introduction of ourselves and the discussion, the first discussion. Immediately the Spirit attended us. Her name is Nomakwasi Magwensthu and she listened to us. I felt as if my heart would burst with joy as I spoke and listened—bearing testimony of my companion’s words and those of my own. 

She believed all. I asked, "If we gave you a copy of The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, will you read it?” 

“Yes, but I cannot have it now.” I was crushed by her response. Did she not feel the spirit, I questioned internally? “I will take it later because I have no money to pay for it now. How much does it cost? I will send my son after it.” Immediately my soul delighted again.

“Nothing,” answered Elder Thompson gleefully, “It is a free gift to you from us.” 

With that, she took the book, hugged it, and caressed it. We continued with the discussion and scheduled another appointment to follow up. With that discussion, we knew a baptism would come. Our walk downhill to our boarding seemed almost effortless as we floated on the feelings we experienced just moments before at Sister Magwentshu’s. My respect and love for Elder Thompson increased and my acrimonious thoughts of him ceased too.

Street Contacting On Umtata's (Mthatha) Town Square. Missionary Stories.

One of the hottest days that I could remember is in February,  the middle of summer in South Africa! Being a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was one of the dreams of my life I fulfilled as I went about with Elders Thompson, Streadbeck, and Danisa doing community service at the medicine dispensary counting pills and putting them in bottles.

The city, Umtata (now Mthatha), was always alive with pedestrian activity in the center of town near the government buildings. We four headed there to do some street contacting to tell any interested passerby that we had a life-changing message to share.

Any and everybody who is anybody passed through that town center in front of the courthouse on business—at least once a week. So of course, it was the best place to open our mouths to the public.

As usual, we four prayed and separated to do our work. We always made sure we remained within earshot of each other, but on this particular day, earshot rules proved challenging to keep. Missionaries follow rules that protect them from things, kidnappings, and scandals in the local area that would cause the locals not to listen or trust them and the Church. The rules also help to keep the Church out of the news in the wrong ways due to the misbehavior of its representatives.

Street contacting was not one of the things I enjoyed doing because of the rejection that usually followed and how public and embarrassing those rejections could become. Being a new missionary at the time, I really did not want to be out there. Cold-calling with faces is what I called it--my face to another person's face who might spit in mine!

Remembering that I was there to share the truths that I had come to know because I loved God, I pressed forward. "Excuse me, sir," I said to a smartly dressed man walking in the courtyard in front of the Courthouse. "I am a missionary from the Church of--"

"I no English," was his brisk reply as he moved on dismissively.

"Excuse me, Sir," I said to the next man near me. "I have a message from the Lord!"

"You are so young to teach me emfana (young man)," the other man laughingly retorted before moving passed me with an incredulous smirk on his face. I hate rejection. 

Rejection was not so bad in Umtata (Mthatha). It came so infrequently because of the pleasant nature of the Xhosa people that I learned to look past it. Those who did accept my invitation were not precisely the ones I targeted. Black Americans did not frequent Umtata. I was a novelty. That little bit of celebrity would get attention as the people strained at my message only to get a chance to speak to a Black American.

I recorded their names and weeded them out by inviting them to Church. If they pitched up at Church, we would teach them the message we promised would bring them joy in life. The ones whom we targeted, capable men, I hesitated to pitch on occasion. We were discriminant of whom we tried to actively teach. Such discrimination was not due to any belief that boys, women, or girls would not add value to the Church. We proceeded that way so that we could find men with wives and children who could, as a family unit, explore the Gospel together. That was our goal, families. We targeted men because women tend to be more willing to seek out the missionaries on their own. The best way to get to whole families was through the husband, we determined. 

In this mode of discrimination, I found myself when I jolted at a sight. There I stood in a suit in the sweltering hot sun of South Africa when my estranged girlfriend walked up! At least that is who she reminded me of the moment I saw her. I spoke to her.

"Hello," She said. "What are you doing out here?"

"I'm sharing a message about Jesus Christ,” I returned overcoming my amazement. I saw two gentlemen pass by who looked as if they would speak to me, but saw I was engaged with this young woman of marital age and moved on. Frustration began to well up inside of me because this woman made it hard for me to think clearly.

"That is good,' she continued."I too am going about speaking of God and His word."

Deciding to make the best of this I said, "So what church do you belong to?"

"Jehovah’s Witness, I go to the Kingdom Hall"

Yes! I shouted within myself. If I tell her I'm a "Mormon," (though we prefer to be called members of the Church we belong to) she will run away in fear. "Really, I have an older brother in that church? I am a Mormon." She did not move.

“I attend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons.” Still, she did not move.

“What church is that?” she returned interrogatively. 

She had a smile on her face and she kept the sweat from her eyes with a white kerchief. I thought profoundly of my estranged love and how much I missed her; but also on my mind were the dozens of potential priesthood holders passing me by as I explained things to this woman, who looked like the woman I loved!

Also, Jehovah's Witnesses tended to not appreciate "Mormon" Missionaries in the United States. Apparently, that was not the case in the good old Republic of South Africa, RSA!

For some reason, my companion had not rescued me from this lengthy conversation with the girlfriend look-alike. The rule is if the conversation went too long, the other missionary would come and join the conversation or save the other from mobs, which Elder Thompson had to do several times for me. But he was engaged with someone too!

The purpose of this young woman was to convert me to her beliefs. I could tell after a few minutes. She and others of her faith were in the square competing for proselytes,, and I was the enemy. Her whole purpose was to keep me occupied as the others sought out candidates after she discovered I was in direct competition with her beliefs. 

“Elder Johnson," called Elder Thompson finally coming to my aid after the woman left.  "How come you did not end the conversation and move on?" I had moved out of his eyesight during my interview with the South African girlfriend doppelganger.

I shrugged it off, and he never let me too far from his sight again. I think I may have mentioned to him later how much that lady looked like my "waiting for me unofficially" girlfriend. I learned that day that polite conversation is good, unless you are a missionary, and the person you speak to is a replica of the woman whom you left in the States missing severely!

Getting Personal With Christianity: Overcoming Doubt

I never thought of prophets as perfect. The Book of Mormon even claims prophets are not perfect. I did not believe in Jesus as a God until I read the Book of Mormon since I had lost my faith as a young Christian--if I had faith at all back then. I suppose I had tradition and I accepted the things that were familiar to me.

Over and over, the prophets in the Book of Mormon claim that if there are mistakes in the record, they are errors of men. To me, that is an admission that there would be mistakes--that we should expect some! Joseph Smith, Mormon, Moroni and Nephi were all important men associated with the coming forth of the book to us. If they made mistakes how do they diminish God's role in revealing to them the truth? It does not change the fact, in my case, that I spoke to God about their work/writings and He told me that they are true, a true testament to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

God told me in answer to my prayers certain things. I care, but less what Joseph did before he became a prophet or how many wives he had. And? 

It kills my spiritual high sometimes when people find out that I am a LDS Christian and they say, “Well, you know that they don't like Black people." 

I want to say, "Really? I am so glad you told me that! I've been in this faith for more than twenty years, and I just could not tell! I just assumed they were nice to me because they were Christian, but know YOU let me know that they were pretending! Yeah, and all the Black Mormons had to be pretending a nice also since there are so many of them in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now!"

Umm, yeah! The members of the church come in all the variety of humanity. I wish that I could say it and it be overwhelmingly accurate that because LDS claim to have the restored truth that it makes us better people. 
Who doesn't want to think their faith makes them the best? Humble people don't want to think that I suppose.  If anything, our faith makes us more accountable before God since we claim to have a direct line to God through a prophet, but people are people.  Israel had a direct line to God through prophets and look at what happened to then. They still worshiped false gods! 
People will be good or bad regardless of the religion. I hope that as Christians, we are more inclined to do good deeds rather. It has been my experience at the beginning of my walk with Christ that LDS earnestly endeavor to live the teachings of Christ. 
I have been a LDS Christian too long to assume someone will be nice to me just because we go to the same church. It is not the case. I have met people with racist ideas and notions. I have met rude people. I met these people in church!

So, do I believe that Mormons have been racist in the past and that some are still racist? Yes, I do believe that. Since when did being a disciple of Christ, mean that we are instantly perfect as a person, community or faith? It is not the church I am converted to per se, but the faith, the teachings of God through the imperfect people in the church.

People cannot accept that I asked God on many occasions about the church and His prophets and He tells me they are authorized to act and speak for Him. I trust God, so I accept the prophets as His official reps on the earth.

I still have my doubts and my issues about this or that doctrine or policy, which I speak about appropriately, but my purpose is to promote faith in others and challenge the things that make me doubt. I still have bouts with God about if He is there! I could see myself slip away from Him if I were to stop praying because then He becomes a distant memory and His revelations just the fanciful whimsy of my simple mind.

I choose not to indulge my doubts. I am sure President Thomas S Monson has issues that his family would confirm if they were inclined to do so. That would not change the fact that for me, God has told me Monson is a prophet. He, Monson, will have to repent of his sins just like I do, but he still represents the Lord officially as His spokesman.

Prophets can fall and lose their way just like any person, but they can also repent and be forgiven without losing their calling. They can also be wrong about something all the days of their lives and teach it as if it is right! That is the reason God gave us the Holy Ghost so that we can discern.  That is why we have 15 prophets instead of just one. We as a people have to learn to trust our personal revelation. We must also learn to keep the commandments so that we are not being led astray because the devil can give revelations too!

We are never to trust the prophet in a way that we exclude prayer and due devotion to God ourselves. If we did, it would be Satan’s plan: to follow blindly in obedience.

Apologists have the wrong idea. I used to be one before I came to my senses. I received such a convincing jolt to my misunderstanding of my faith that I rebooted. I found out that I knew only these two things: that God is real and the Book of Mormon is true. This happened post-mission 12 or so years ago.  Apologists rattled me to the core. I alarmed my wife and friends. They had warned me to stay away from it.

See, foolishly, I had stopped reading my scriptures much and praying with faith while I engaged in apologetics. I only wanted to debate with people about the LDS religion and its preeminence over all others. What rattled me was something that ended up being false anyway! I was just so far from my relationship with God my mind was weak. Doubt worked its way into my mind. Apologetics is great if it is tempered by sincere faith.

We do not NEED to prove the faith or make exceptions for it. I find it comforting that there are people willing to give intellectual explanations for things that are not clear. Those exercises on intellect should never replace sincere and abiding faith in Jesus Christ on a foundation of keeping the commandments He has provided.

Faith is to believe in the absence of proof, which comes with revelation after the trial of our faith. I can promise any of you who are struggling with your faith that read this blog that if you keep the commandments prayerfully, God will reveal the truth to you as many times as you need it.

He set it up this way so that we would seek Him. I know I would not pray as often if I had all the answers right now. What need would I have to talk to Him or develop an open communication with Him at all? It is hard! I have to put my remote down and stop entertaining myself to do that!

There is no proof of any religious belief other than personal revelation. God designed life that way so that we can have the freedom to pursue the gospel or reject it without condemnation if we lose sight of the truth.

For example, we know the law gravity exists, so if we jump off a building expecting it to go away, we will suffer the immediate consequences. It is not so with the gospel. If we choose to leave the gospel level of consciousness we espouse, Mormon, Baptist, Muslim, spiritualism, etc., we lose a little bit of our testimony at a time until it is all gone. We are not doomed to outer darkness but only to a lower kingdom which is still a part of heaven if we fail to repent. Atheists, in my estimation, still go to heaven! Devil worshipers still go to heaven!

I find comfort knowing I can still mess up and get a great reward. I have not seen God, so I do not qualify for outer darkness. But, oh boy for those who have seen Him and decided to reject Him afterward. There are few people with that reward. Nephi lets us know that the hell they will endure exists only for them, and the devil.

So, it is okay for you all to have your doubts. Just, doubt your doubts more than you doubt the things you know. Since many of us still have not seen God face to face, we can get away with more. However, since some of us have heard His voice, we need to think hard how we dismiss past spiritual experiences.

Mormonism is a culture, but the gospel is more than a culture, it is the truth, and I would give up all my heritage and cultures for that.

Memory Piece. Great Book. Read it. Buy it. Drama.

Hello my cyber-land readers!

Okay, yes that was a "special" greeting but I thought I'd try it out. I wrote another book.

My first book I think I spent about $400 on getting the word out. For this one, I spent nothing even though I enjoyed writing and reading this second book more than the first.

Well, Memory Piece is my baby! I have had the idea for this book in my head for almost 20 years. I was too immature to actually put the book together because I had to write about things I was unfamiliar with at the time. My, how times have changed. I am familiar with death, marriage, heartache and pain now--all the right ingredients to write a drama!

I first started the book day dreaming about how I wanted my life to be when I matured to adulthood. As I wrote, however, I quickly changed my mind as mayhem began to filter into the story. So why the title Memory Piece? I wanted to show how one singular event in life can cause a domino effect--whether for good or bad.

We all make choices that lead us down certain paths. We all have experiences that influences our choices. I wanted to capture those experiences and choices back to the first experience and choice of my main characters to show how the choices we make compound a situation.

Check out the book at Amazon.com. It is worth the read and safe. The first chapter is a bit steamy. I believe in PG rated writing. If you want something that does not need to have profanity in it to communicate the drama, I'm your man! That is what I have to say today--okay? CLICK FOR BOOK

Doing Right When not Wanting to Do at All

Sometimes tragedy or serious situations make us reflect on what is really in our hearts Cyber Family.

I am so happy that when I reflected, I found love in my heart. Adversity and challenges really reveal when we are the best and tests our integrity.

If you feel a little down because you did not feel like listening that extra hour to your kids talk about that cool TV show--but did it anyway--don't. In your heart you truly care about that person and are willing to put your own needs aside for their benefit. This applies to any act of service we decide on our own to complete against our selfish desires.

I took my mother to have knee surgery Cyber friends.

I did not want to do it because I did not want to wake up early enough, but I put my selfish feelings aside for a moment. I am glad I had the privilege of seeing her off because I was able to talk to her on the way to the surgery center.

The thoughts of something going wrong made me focus on her and how wonderful she has made my life.So , while my mom was getting her operation, I had my own operation to go along with it. It is called operation acknowledgement. I will acknowledge that I am not always selfless in thought, but I can be in action and character.

What we think will bend to the will of what we do in the long-run. That has been my experience. That's my story and I am sticking with it!

Check out This Article about Healing

The Lie of Blacks' Pre-Mortal Refrain from Christ: My Experience

As a newly baptized member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the false notion that people of Black African ancestry did not support Christ before birth came with full satanic freight toward my fragile new faith in the validity of the Restored Gospel.

Budding hopefully in the faith that teaches where we come from, why we are here, and what happens after this life, nothing could derail my faith, I supposed. Satan would try nevertheless.

Thirsting to consume everything to do with the Restored Church of Christ, I guzzled book after book from the time I learned of the Church in 1992 forward wantonly disregarding the source of the information--not knowing detractors existed. It would not have mattered in the beginning. Missionaries had whetted my pallet for knowledge! Providence would have it that two books would pique my interest so that a divine lesson of forgiveness could occur.

I read two books reprinted in 1978 but on the library bookshelves in the 1990s:

• Mormonism and the Negro: an explanation and defense of the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in regard to Negroes and others of Negroid blood by John J. Stewart
• The Church and the Negro by John L. Lund. 

It could have been both or one, but the path that the words in these books laid before me was one with upturned nails of hopelessness and shards of glass of low esteem to scrap along the edges during my walk with Christ for a spell.

Where The Books Led Me

Never before had I considered my lineage, but from the teachings in those works, I read that my heritage was through Ham because my skin was black and that I did not side with Christ in the pre-mortal life but remained neutral. 

Pre-mortal neutrality was a foreign concept to my budding spiritual system; then again,  so was the concept of pre-mortal life. Not knowing how to articulate my musings I believed life before birth personally until the missionaries who instructed me gave it a name.

Strangely enough, my Protestant background conjectured that Blacks are the seed of Cain in the most unsatisfying manners. Without delving into the false teachings I heard there, they did not affect me since I had no concept of continuing revelation and authorized oracles of God. 

Without the appellation of prophet after their names, the words of those Protestant opinionists bore little if no weight in my spiritual system of understanding.  With similar teachings added with the accusation of neutrality, during a war in heaven against Lucifer,  disadvantage destroyed my new fellowship with the Saints because I was a son of the descendant of slaves and devil worshipers! Thanks, Cain and Ham!

I was devastated. Bitter tears wet my pillow nightly for a week because the author was a leader in the Church. Having received my own personal witness that President Ezra Taft Benson was a prophet of God, I assumed that a witness of him meant that the books also spoke the truth. The first lesson that the missionaries taught me, to pray, escaped me regarding the matter. I thought that since this person was a leader in the church, those things he recorded about Blacks must be true.

Where The Books Left Me

During that week, loathing myself and disdaining my African ancestors, I went to my Bishop informing him of what I read and showing him one of the books. He tried to explain to me the difference between a prophet speaking by authority and revelation and one giving his fallible opinion. 

His words tingled in my ears like cymbals. I did not understand how a prophet could have an opinion unless it was also God's opinion. He then tried to convince me that it was false and not church doctrine, but I had received a witness that prophets lived and confused it with all church leaders at the general level being equally inspired and able to preach doctrine for the Church--at least I thought the author was a general church leader at the time and so did my Bishop.

I also lacked the spiritual maturity to understand that the 1978 revelation repudiated all the opinions related to the curse of Cain. 

When he saw I would not relent, he told me that I could prove to God in this life I would choose Christ. I accepted that compromise of the spirit for years, though it did nothing for my feelings regarding my race. The Spirit opened my mind to consider what my bishop said about the teaching being false, which came some few years after I was married.

Why do I share this? Many Black Members of the Church may have had a similar experience with finding out this malicious perspective of the fence-sitting children of God who became Black and cursed before birth. I have seven children who I do not want to feel the level of self-hate I felt because they learned about a teaching that was popular in the church among the laity, but never established as doctrine.

Where I Left The Books

The opinion about the fence-sitting pre-earth spirits becoming Blacks of African heritage is still a belief among some Saints; though it is denounced by many, and admitted by church authority as incorrect.

The is a document published on the LDS.org church site denouncing racism and such. There is no particular person who denounces the teaching. I assume the church leadership as a group denounces it, though I am not sure. It reads in part:

Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse, or that it reflects unrighteous actions in a premortal life...  

I have perpetuated the false teaching until my eyes were open by the revelation included in Doctrine and Covenants as an official statement in 1978 to extend the priesthood to all worthy men.

Now I can boldly testify that all that was taught by Bruce R. McKonie and others is fallacious and unsound regarding the Black person. Many taught that the Negro would not receive the priesthood until some distant time during or after the millennium of Christ's reign. 

Since I am Black and I also am a priesthood holder, that conjecture of past is... well, conjecture! McKonie has also admitted that his best scholarship ended up being dull in comparison to revelation from God--being that Elder McKonie was present when the revelation was confirmed to all the apostles by the Holy Spirit of Promise.

Where God Has Me

Why should The Church of Jesus Christ apologize? God allowed it for a spell and ended it with revelation. 

It is of no consequence that President Brigham Young instituted it as a policy or if he received divine revelation about it. The fact that God allowed the ban is His prerogative.  For those of us who know the church is true, our question should be to God Himself. If the church should say anything, it can reaffirm the truth that Blacks of all nations are, and have always been, children of God just as any other group and are not cursed. 

Any hatred perpetuated from the past dealings of Black members of the church needs to embrace the healing balm of Jesus Christ. The church has made a statement about the ban among other things Race and the Priesthood. 

It has instituted a group called Genesis to help Utah minorities, specifically Blacks, who may feel alienated because of the so few numbers of Blacks in individual congregations in Utah.

As a Black man, I say we need to focus on putting God back at the center of life in practice and not name only. In my culture, we can sing praises all day long, but unless we keep the commandments all we are singing are slaps in the very face of God!

God has delivered my people from the wicked slavery of the White man and the oppressive hand of the racist White man. He has set His daughters free and given them a powerful voice to shape the nation independent of man. 

He has allowed laws to be passed to protect the weak and innocent from the predatory persecution of people who disdain people because of sexual preference. He has done all these things in preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ so that we can truly learn to be prepared to receive His Son. 

If we are mistreating our brothers or sisters because of race, gender or sexual orientation we will not enjoy Christ coming for we will not be prepared. 

If we are harboring ill will towards those who have persecuted us because of our race, gender or sexual orientation we are not prepared. 

We will only be prepared as we love unconditionally all around us, or at least put ourselves on the path that leads to this love so that when Jesus does come He can sanctify us for our humble attempts!

Read These Things!!

Race and the Priesthood Link On LDS.org! It has come much later than many have wanted, but an acknowledgment that Blacks are not cursed or the representation of Satan on the Earth is a big step in the right directions.

• Blacks & The Curse of Cain President Brigham Young refuted the possibility of this falsehood in his support of a first presidency message declaring that all who obtained the first estate of life did so with earnest. No soul sat idly by in the war commenced in heaven
• The Truth about Being Black in America The fact that African Americans are called African at all is an indication of the limited explanation of this group's history. The nationalities of Black American ancestors are a mystery for the great majority of the group. Slavery stripped this group of the choice to decide to merge with American culture.