"Please, I Will Try." (said the first person baptized in Accra)

  Pricilla Sampson-Davis talks about her seeing a vision in the middle of the day and what she was taught by it.

Priscilla Sampson-Davis, who received her copy of the Book of Mormon in the Netherlands and was the first person baptized in Accra in 1978, told a story that underscores this sense of love that permeates these Saints.

She explained a vision that she had, “One day after having my lunch, it seemed I was in the church in sacrament meeting. I looked and saw somebody in front of the pulpit dressed in white apparel who was beckoning to come. I came up and stood by him and looked at the faces in the congregation. He asked, ‘Do you think they are all happy?’ I said that I thought they were. 

“He asked me to look again, and asked me if now I thought they were all happy. I realized that many of them had their heads bent down. He said, ‘They are illiterate. Wouldn’t you like to help your brothers and sisters so they could join in singing the hymns?’ She answered, ‘Please I will try.”

The vision or dream closed and immediately she started to translate the hymn “Redeemer of Israel.” She showed her work to Brother Joseph W.B. Johnson, who founded congregations in Ghana long before the Church came, and he said her translation was good.She went on to translate the hymns into her native language.

Some time later she was sitting under a mango tree, when she read an article in the Ensign about somebody translating the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian. She thought, if I translated the hymns, couldn’t I also translate the Book of Mormon? She began her work that afternoon. Since then she has gone on to translate the Doctrine & Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, the missionary discussions, five missionary tracts and three film strips—all out of love. “Wouldn’t you like to help your brothers and sisters?” and she answered, “Please, I will try.”

Source:  Meridian Magazine http://ldsmag.com/ldsmag/articles/040112impressions2.html