The Telegram That Saved the Mission—and the Biafran War (Nigeria, 1965)

After four years of intense effort to obtain visas for the first mission in black Africa, LaMar Williams was at the embassy in Nigeria when he received a telegram from the First Presidency to discontinue negotiations and return home immediately. Shocked and confused, but obedient, he returned home. President N. Eldon Tanner assured him that the Church would yet go to Nigeria and that they would both live to see it, adding that they did not know why they had called him back, only that it was urgent, and that there was a reason they would know someday. Within three weeks, Africa's most devastating civil war, the Biafran War, exploded in Nigeria, with much of the fighting in the very area where the unbaptized congregations of believers were located; two ambassadors were killed on the steps of the embassy where Brother Williams had received the telegram. Brother Williams then turned over fifteen thousand names of unbaptized African converts to Elders Spencer W. Kimball and Gordon B. Hinckley. This timely recall is a faith-promoting witness that the Lord, who knows the end from the beginning, preserves His servants and His waiting Saints, and brings His promises to pass in His own time and in His own way.