After Bateman and Cannon reported the results of their trip, Cannon and his wife were called and set apart as the church's first missionaries to West Africa. They—along with Rendell and Rachel Mabey—preached in Nigeria and Ghana, baptized hundreds of converts, and established 35 branches and 5 districts of the church. The first convert baptized in Nigeria was Anthony Obinna. In the late 1980s, Cannon and his wife were the directors of the church's visitors' center in Nauvoo, Illinois. For three months in 1989, Cannon was the interim president of the church's (Germany) Hamburg Mission, while the regular mission president was working on getting church missionaries admitted to East Germany. Cannon later served as the second president of the Frankfurt Germany Temple from 1989 to 1992. Cannon died at and was buried in Salt Lake City, Utah.