‘Kenny I don’t know why you like hurting me, I was talking to you and you ignored me and as if that was not enough, you walked out on me..” Jumoke complained bitterly, standing before Kehinde and Toyin with a sad face.
“Jumo I’m deeply sorry, I was thinking about something very serious and forgot that you were still with me. It wasn’t intentional. Please do forgive me.” He apologized, standing to his feet. He asked her to sit down on his seat and she swallowed hard before sitting down and when she observed that there was no other seat available for Kehinde to sit on, she asked Toyin to sit on her laps.
“Toyin darling, come and sit on my legs so that uncle can sit down on that seat.” She told her sweetly and she joyfully obeyed and climbed over her legs leaving the seat for him to sit.
Jumoke still loved Kehinde and just wanted to stay close to him but Kehinde’s heart was faraway, longing to see just one person. She initiated a discussion in order to break the silence, then Kehinde’s phone began to ring. He quickly glanced at the caller, thinking it was the church mummy, but got disappointed when he saw Toyosi’s name on the screen…
“I had come to love my father more after my death experience, and couldn’t bear the pain of losing him because of my sins, so I began to pray that God should heal him and restore his ministry.
” Lord, you didn’t bring back to life to tear your church and your servant, my father apart.
My coming back to life shouldn’t be like that of Ichabod. Heal my father and use me to revive your church in Jesus name. ” I prayed, crying as I was breastfeeding my son Temi.
I derived strength from the scriptures and from my mother who stood by me all through that season, so when Temi became six months, I gathered courage and started going out for evangelism and God granted me open doors as those I invited to my father’s church after telling them my story began to troop into the church but the challenge was that my father was not strong enough to handle the service every Sunday and the weekly activities. My father’s assistant pastor had left the church to open his own church, so it was a difficult time both for my father and the church and it became a burden to me because, the new members needed to be well fed in order to remain.
One Sunday morning, we went to church as usual and my mother led in the opening prayers while I took up the praise and worship. When it was time to preach, my father who had prepared his sermon couldn’t stand to his feet, so I collected his sermon note and mounted the pulpit to preach. I didn’t know what I was preaching but I saw people standing up from their seats praying without me giving them any prayer points. When I made an altar call, almost everyone in the church came out for the altar call and were baptized in the Holy Ghost to my surprise.
My father’s struggling church began to come back to life as the fresh breath of God’s spirit swept across under my ministrations and amazingly, my father began to recover rapidly in his health too. In less than one year, my father’s church increased numerically ten times better than it has even had ever since the inception of the church.
My father who was initially disappointed in me, became very proud of me and termed everything that happened to in my past as the act of God to bring back the lost glory of his church and our family. Even when he fully recovered and was fit for the ministry, he refused to preach and left me to do almost all the ministrations. Some of his church members who left the church started coming back one after another and when they saw the grace of God upon my life, they all forgot the errors of my past and began bring their wayward daughters to me for counseling.
My life became a source of encouragement to many other young girls who had missed it in the past and began to find meaning from their past mistakes.
Before Temi’s two years birthday, I already have numerous suitors and admirers that shocked me. I thought that being a single mother will hinder responsible young men from coming my way but I had them in their numbers, and most of them were good Christian brothers who had never married before. But I kept turning them down until Temi’s six years birthday when I met this my present husband who was just a young man in ministry.
God had told me to wrap up whatever I was doing in my father’s church in preparation for a greater work, and I put in my best effort , then from the proceeds and donations from the church members we erected for the church a one thousand seaters capacity cathedral which was the largest in my community in those days .
During the dedication of the cathedral, a handsome young man walked up to me and and introduced himself as pastor Ademola and without giving me a breathing space because he saw how busy I was, he told me right there that I was his wife.
I laughed at him and saw him as an opportunist who had come to reap from where he did not sow, but later that night, God confirmed what he told me.
I told him that I already have a child outside wedlock during one of our discussion and he laughed and told me that it doesn’t matter to him and that he is not even interested in knowing anything about my past mistakes. When we eventually got married, I was shocked to find out during our honeymoon that he had never slept with a woman all his life. I was a broken, used and messed up life from my past life styles, but God brought a brand new man,who wasn’t just handsome but a lover of God into my life for a husband.
I cried through out that night in regrets and he consoled me, then promised to take and treat Temi my son as his first son and that on no occasion should i tell anyone that Temi was born out of wedlock. ” the church mummy continued..
“Sade, your case is nothing compared to mine. I don’t see reason why you should settle down with one old man in the village. You are a gifted young lady with a great future ahead of you. Giving birth outside wedlock does not end the purpose of God for your life. You can still become all that God purposed you to be and God can still give you a responsible, Godfearing man as a husband…” The church mummy began to speak to Sade as she held her head crying remorsefully.
The church mummy, glanced through her wristwatch and found out that she needed to go out to meet her quests. She picked up her phone and on opening it, she saw Kehinde’s message and smiled…
Continued reading
