Priscilla Sampson-Davis's Vision to Translate the Hymns (Cape Coast, Ghana, 1979)
Contributed by
LDS Witness Archive (from the research of E. Dale LeBaron)
Priscilla Sampson-Davis of Cape Coast, Ghana, joined the Church in 1979, and through her faith her oldest son gave up a lifelong dream and a four-year scholarship to an Anglican theological school to be baptized; twenty months later he was one of the first full-time missionaries from West Africa. One Sunday after sacrament meeting, Sister Sampson-Davis had a vision in which she was shown some members of the congregation unable to join in singing the hymns, and she felt she was being asked to help them by translating the English hymns into Fante. Though she was not very skilled in writing the language, she did not refuse; she said she would try and do her best, and immediately took paper and pencil and began translating the hymn 'Redeemer of Israel' into Fante. She went on to translate the entire hymnbook, missionary pamphlets, Gospel Principles, Stories of the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon; by 1988 she was translating the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. Her vision is a faith-promoting witness that the Lord, by vision, calls faithful women to make the songs and scriptures of Zion available to every people in their own tongue.
In Their Own Words
“I wasn't asleep. I saw myself at a sacrament meeting and we were singing when I saw a personage in very bright apparel standing in front of the congregation. The Personage called me by name and requested that I come and stand by Him. . . . He then asked me why some were not singing with the others. I told him that they could not read English. . . . He asked me if I wouldn't like to help my sisters and brothers sing praises to our Heavenly Father. I said that I would do my best. Then the vision passed away. Immediately I . . . started translating the hymn Redeemer of Israel into Fanti [the major dialect in Ghana].”
— Priscilla Sampson-Davis, describing the vision she received soon after her baptism in 1979, in an interview with Church historian E. Dale LeBaron at Cape Coast, Ghana, on 19 May 1988, quoted in his BYU devotional "African Converts Without Baptism" (3 November 1998) and in All Are Alike unto God (Deseret Book, 1990), pp. 48–50
Sources & References
E. Dale LeBaron, 'How Saints in Africa Prepared for the Priesthood Revelation,' LDS Living (June 8, 2018); E. Dale LeBaron, 'African Converts Without Baptism,' BYU devotional (Nov 3, 1998); E. Dale LeBaron, ed., 'All Are Alike unto God' (Deseret Book, 1990). ; E. Dale LeBaron, "African Converts Without Baptism," BYU devotional, 3 November 1998, https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/e-dale-lebaron/african-converts-without-baptism/ ; E. Dale LeBaron, ed., All Are Alike unto God (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1990), pp. 48-50
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