The “Freeze”

The Revolutionary Military Government of Ghana had been observed to be very uneasy with the presence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the country. There was fear that the American senior missionary couples were CIA operatives bent on infiltrating the government and bringing about a coup. Ghana had exchanged eight full-blooded Ghanaians accused of being agents of the CIA with one man of Ghanaian/foreign parentage who had been accused of being a spy in the USA. The mention of the CIA evidently sent shivers down the spines of government officials of the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC), and anybody labeled as having any relationships with that organisation would normally be severely punished before any questions were asked.

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) had visited and interviewed Church leaders on a number of occasions. There was even known to be a joke within the BNI about officers scheduled to conduct such interviews: “There goes another victim. He will be converted to the Church before he comes back.”

With this awareness of the government’s feeling about the Church, ecclesiastical leaders planned to have native Ghanaians take full control of the Church should the expatriate missionaries be kicked out of the country, as eventually happened in June 1989. Soon after the announcement of the “Freeze,” President Jack H. Goaslind, the Area President responsible for the Church in Africa, visited Accra and put the emergency plan into action. It was a leadership pattern set up by the Area Presidency for administering Church affairs in the absence of expatriate missionaries. Dr. Emmanuel Abu Kissi, the Accra District president, was called to be the acting mission president in the Ghana Accra Mission of the Church. His first and second counselors were Presidents S. A. Kwaw and Ato Dadson, respectively, with the late Brother C. K. Kuta-Dankwa as secretary. Brother Isaac N. Addy, the regional manager of temporal affairs, and Professor B. A. Dadson were co-opted members who attended meetings regularly with the presidency. All the district presidents had been invited to attend a meeting with the newly formed interim administration, and the district presidents became aware of the emergency plan that was being implemented. They got to know the emergency leadership structure. . . .

During the eighteen-month Freeze on the activities of the Church, congregating in the meetinghouses was prohibited by decree, so most members met in their homes and in small groups to study the scriptures, sing, and administer the sacrament. Where it was possible, families without the requisite priesthood authority were to join with families with priesthood authority to hold sacrament meetings. Faith-promoting talks were given at these meetings, and members who were normally too shy to speak at church services were able to overcome this weakness by being practically involved in these smaller units of the Church. (The advantage the Ghanaian Latter-day Saints had was that 40 percent of the country’s citizens are Christian by the most current census, and traditionally people will have devotionals, singing and reading, in their homes.) Saints gathering informally to worship in their homes were not official meetings sponsored by the Church. So that was no offense. It was the Church organization—not the religious practices—that the government targeted.