THE SEED BEARS FRUIT

“After the expulsion of the brothers,” Emmanuel wrote, “I came to realize the role that the Catholic Church had played in the matter. So I collected together all my Catholic books, booklets, magazines and even some Gramophone records of hymn-singing. I made a pile out of them and doused them with plenty of paraffin and burned them. I prayed to Jehovah that he help me to serve him. Two days later, I received through the mail my first copy of The Watchtower in French. I felt that was really an answer to my prayer.”

For a few months during 1968 a brother from France came to live in Ouagadougou. He was a real help to Emmanuel, but soon he had to leave. So Emmanuel carried on alone preaching the Kingdom message. He was strengthened by letters from brothers and sisters in several countries who had seen in the Yearbook that there was just one publisher in Upper Volta, and had written to encourage him. In December 1969 Emmanuel traveled to Abidjan for the “Peace on Earth” assembly, where he was baptized.

[Picture on page 197]

Emmanuel Johnson, the only witness of Jehovah in Upper Volta for many years