PART 29

©Opeyemi Ojerinde Akintunde

With Mmesoma’s help, I recklessly abandoned myself to God. I went back to the basics. I started chasing after God and not men. At that point, I knew I was no longer interested in men or marriage. Was I created to just get married, have kids and die? No! God must have created me for more. I started attending a Bible believing church close to the house. The church was a ‘holiness and word-grounded’ church. I grew in the Lord and committed myself to the service of God. It was there I became a lady of virtue. I went through the drilling of God. It wasn’t easy but God’s grace was sufficient for me. I also worked on the evil spiritual covenant between my uncle and me. I stood on the word of God, claiming the new covenant I had in Christ and breaking all negative covenants. I used my money for the Lord as I also concentrated on my business. The gas station Odi bought for me had been under the supervision of a man, but when I got a hold of myself, I decided to step up in all aspects of my life; one of it was, being serious with my work… Along the line, I met different men wanting a relationship with me, but I knew I wasn’t ready yet. I knew I was not yet at the spiritual level I was aiming for, so I humbly turned them down. This went on for another two years. Two years of self-development and self-love. I got to love and appreciate me.

One faithful day, I went out for my early morning cry as usual. I wanted to continue my mother’s legacy, so for close to 6 months, I had been on the road every day, evangelizing from 5:30 – 7:00 a.m., before going for my daily business. That day, I was led to go to a new environment to do the morning cry. As I was preaching, I kept hearing a familiar male voice preaching on the next street. As I was approaching the end of the street, his voice started becoming clearer.

“Bro Stephen!” I screamed in the midst of the preaching… We both ran towards each other like two friends who had not seen each other in a while…

“Sis Timi…” We comported ourselves as we rounded up our morning cry… “Sis Timi; my goodness! If someone had told me I would set my eyes on you today, I wouldn’t have believed it…. I am so happy to see you”.

We spoke at length in his vehicle which was an exquisite one. He asked about Jadesola. I told him about all that had transpired and he was short of words. Jadesola’s disappearance hit him the most. We exchanged contacts and promised to keep in touch. After departing from each other, it dawned on me that I didn’t ask him if he was married; but did it make any difference? The last time I saw him was close to 8 years ago; I knew in that time he would have gotten married. We established a mutual friendship and chatted occasionally. There was a nudging in my spirit to go back to my father and ask for his forgiveness for absconding. It was a difficult thing to do but I knew I had to, but I was scared of my father. When I got there, you would not believe who I saw there…

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As I alighted from my car in front of my father’s compound, I saw Jadesola reading a Bible. She was taller and looked very beautiful. She was already 18 approaching 19 years.

“Mummy…” Jadesola said on recognizing me.

“Jadesola!” I said in what was not more than a whisper. “My God! You are alive… my daughter is alive,” I said screaming loud.

My father and my other family members rushed out. There were mixed reactions; some were happy to see me, while some were angry at me, but I cared less. What I was concerned about was how my daughter, who I had not seen for close to 5 years, was standing right in front of me…

“How did you get back here? What happened? I thought you had been killed by the kidnappers when all efforts to rescue you proved abortive…”

“God saved me…!”

“I know… but how did it happen?”

“I remember Aunty Rose, the caregiver, whispering to me that we had been kidnapped when the cab we took went off the main road. When Aunty Rose and the other passengers started asking why the driver went off the main road, the man seated beside the driver drew out a perfume and sprayed it in the car; immediately everyone went to sleep, but as for me, it threw me into my asthmatic crises. The perfume smell was choking and I could not breathe… I kept coughing very strongly as I was struggling for breathe… “Action, this small girl is not sleeping; it seems she is an asthmatic patient; this one may die with the way she is coughing,” the man who sprayed the perfume had said.

“So what should we do?”

“Let’s dump her body; if she survives, her luck, and if she dies her luck too,” they said. The car then stopped and they threw me out of the car with my school bag. After they left, I kept coughing and it felt like I was going to die. Suddenly, I heard a woman’s voice that was singing and worshiping God. I struggled to get closer to the voice… From a distance, she heard a loud cough.

“Who is there?” She had said as it was already dark… I couldn’t talk as the cough was overpowering my ability to speak. She raised her torch and saw me. She rushed at me when she saw that I was a school girl… “What are you doing here, little child?” I brought out a paper and scribbled ‘Kidnapped’, hoping she could read and write. “You were kidnapped? So you escaped?” She asked and I nodded in the affirmative… She pulled me into a little hut and brought out a bottle of palm oil mixed with salt. She gave me two tablespoons of it and the cough, in no time, subsided. The woman told me she was a prophetess who lived in the city but spent some days in the bush to be alone with the Lord. I stayed with this woman for three years as I could not remember the way home, but by the third year, we came to visit one of her family members around here. The moment we passed here, I screamed… “Mummy, look at my house”. She then stopped and brought me here. The moment Grandpa saw me, he screamed my name which gave the prophetess assurance that this was my home…” Jadesola said. I wept as she narrated how God had taken her through this amazing journey. “We didn’t have your number to contact you and I couldn’t remember the way to our house… How is Daddy?” Jadesola said.

“A lot has happened Jadesola… I now understand why God allowed what happened to you to happen. I guess God knew I couldn’t train you in the way of the Lord, so He sent you to a prophetess who could give you that training…”

“Is he dead?”

“No, we are just separated!”

“The baby?”

“I lost her!”

“No!” Jadesola broke into tears and I wrapped her in my embrace…

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Much later, I knelt before my father… “I am sorry for absconding; I am sorry for keeping away from you all these years… I am sorry,” I said weeping before my father… He kept a very firm face but his emotions betrayed him as tears dropped from his eyes. I knew I had caused my parents a lot of pain and disappointment… “Dad, I know I have not been the child you wanted me to be, but I want you to know that I am no more that girl; I am a changed girl who is more passionate about getting things right and fulfilling destiny. I want to make up for the years I wasted; just find it in your heart to forgive me… I thought marriage was the ultimate, not knowing that God was the ultimate… I may not be able to follow your religion but I promise to be a good child to you,” I said. My father wept and prayed for me. I insisted that he and Jadesola come spend the weekend at my place after narrating all I had been through. He agreed with me. My father, on getting to my home, gave me an advice that got me back to my parent’s house…

To be continued in part thirty…

(Story copied from another source)

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