Jude Inmpey's Dream of the Organ: “Now the Music Is Much, Much Sweeter”

When the gospel came to Nigeria after the 1978 revelation on the priesthood, Brother Jude Inmpey of Nigeria was asked by his mission president, at a social gathering with mission couples, to share his feelings about the gospel coming to his people. He responded by relating a dream that he had never understood until that very moment.

In the dream, he was in a gathering where an organ was playing background music. It sounded terrible, and people were complaining. They discovered the organist was playing only on the white keys. Brother Inmpey then explained the meaning that had just unfolded to him: "For many, many years the Church has been playing only the white keys, but now we are playing on the white and the black keys, and the music is much, much sweeter." Elder E. Dale LeBaron, who gathered oral histories from more than 600 African pioneers, cited this dream as summing up the significance of the unique chapter of Church history in which thousands of black Africans received the gospel and its priesthood blessings.

Fuller account of this event (as retold in E. Dale LeBaron, All Are Alike unto God (Orem, Utah: Granite Publishing, 1998), p. 123):

I remember one evening at a social gathering with mission couples, President LeBaron asked Brother Jude Inmpey to share his feelings about the gospel coming to his people. Brother Inmpey responded by relating a dream he had had years before, which he had never understood until that very moment. In the dream, he was in a gathering where an organ was playing background music. It sounded terrible, and people were complaining. They discovered the organist was playing only on the white keys. Brother Inmpey then explained the meaning that had just unfolded to him: 'For many, many years the Church has been playing only the white keys, but now we are playing on the white and the black keys, and the music is much, much sweeter.'