Thread by @GbengaWemimo

I learnt a tough lesson five years ago.
I was working as the PA to a Big Pastor at the time
The church had a maternity centre in the heart of a local community where pregnant women were attended to from conception to delivery for a token of ten thousand Naira
The church planted

the maternity centre as a CSR initiative and paid the salaries of all the nurses, midwives and doctors from the church purse
The stipend paid by the pregnant women was used mainly for administrative purposes
As the pastor’s PA, I had the duty of interfacing with the heads of such

Establishments and making recommendations to the pastor as needed
This lady walks into my office on a Wednesday afternoon, she was the administrator of the maternity centre.
She looked very puffed up and sickly
I got alarmed immediately
I asked her what was wrong
She said she

Had appendicitis and needed the church to support her with money for an operation
I quickly wrote a letter of recommendation and forwarded it to my boss
My boss signed it immediately
She got a cheque of two hundred and fifty thousand Naira
I slapped myself on the back for a job

well done
A week later, a young man walked into my office
He introduced himself as the fiancée of the lady
He asked me if it was proper that the church gave her money to abort a four months old pregnancy
I asked the young man to tell me the whole story
The young man said they had

Been together for four years and had set plans in motion to get married
He said the lady’s mother insisted she must be pregnant before any wedding can take place
They tried to get pregnant for two years after they had done court wedding (he had not paid bride price and according

To their culture that was the real wedding)
He was the one that insisted they had to do the registry thing before getting pregnant
Finally she got pregnant
He told his people the traditional marriage will proceed as planned
Then she came home one day and told him the Pastor

Called her and asked her why she got pregnant outside of wedlock
She said the pastor gave her money to get an abortion or get sacked and she had done the abortion because she didn’t want to lose her job
It was a very clumsy story
The pastor didn’t even really know her and neither

Did i?
Yea she was a church member and a staff of the maternity but I had never seen a wedding ring on her and there was no reason to pry into her private life
I explained to her “husband” that the money she got was for surgery on appendicitis and nothing more
The young man cried

bitterly
After the young man left, I decided I had to write a report and forward it to the pastor
It will help in covering both our backsides
Only God knows how many ears will hear the story and people are very gullible
They believe anything as long as it paints a believer in a

bad light
Just as I finished my report, the lady arrived
Someone in our office was her friend and the person told her she saw her husband in my office
The lady came with a moving story of how she never loved this guy but got into a relationship with him because they were poor as

a family and he sponsored her through school
She said she had been working as a slave for many years to pay him back everything that he invested but he still wouldn’t set her free of the yoke of bondage
She said she was sorry she lied about what the money she collected was for

But she had to get rid of the pregnancy because it would have tied her to him irrevocably
She said if I escalated the issue, she would lose her job and have to go back to him on her knees
The job was her only source of security and independence
She begged and cried and pleaded

I didn’t know what to do at that point
I told myself I can give it a week or two to seek clarity
There was no harm in waiting
So I waited
The following Saturday, this lady got sick and had to be rushed to the hospital
The church was contacted and the hospital visitation team went

to see her
The doctor insisted she needed a surgery
The doctor said she had undergone a D&C which was not properly done and she might die if the surgery was not done immediately
The hospital team reached out to the pastor on the phone
The pastor called me at 5am in the morning

I had been blindsided
I started stammering and apologizing
I told the pastor the full story
He was very angry
It was not in my place to play judge
What I ought to do was send him all the details and let him as the pastor decide
I was a PA and I didn’t know my place!
It was a

stinger but it was a good lesson to learn!
The church paid for the lady’s treatment
As soon as she recovered, she eloped with another man
Her husband came crying
I said “Sorry sir” and minded my business
I know his heart was broken but you cannot force someone to love you or be

be with you
The lady duped all of us and ran off with the golden goose
I almost lost my job and I had to work hard to regain the confidence of my boss
He was better off without her and so was I
Two years later, I went to Ibadan for a Christian conference
The preacher that was

Invited to speak from Ghana came with eight people
This lady was one of them
As soon as she saw me, she turned her face and started working hard to avoid my gaze
Eventually, during the break period, I walked up to her
She was with a young man
I introduced myself
The young man

Introduced himself as a young pastor in the ministry of the big preacher from Ghana
He told me the lady was his fiancé
He said she made him love Nigeria
She was a good Christian
He kept talking about her as if he had found Something more than gold
I nodded and smiled throughout

Before the end of the conference, I sent the young man a message on WhatsApp
I said “Good morning, please be mindful that evil can be sold as good and good sold as evil but God cannot be sold as anything other than God!
Be close to God at this time and he will show you himself!”

The message was a puzzle for him
He asked if I could explain better but I refused to reply his message
Six months later, the young man sent me a message stating that this lady cleaned her out and eloped with another guy to the UAE
He said my message kept coming to him as he tried

Hard to come to terms with her betrayal
I told her I learned the hard way that evil is not on the surface of all things and good is not also on the surface of all things
Many of us are surface Christians
We judge all things by sight
We judge all things by our senses
We don’t know

the difference between right and wrong
We serve God but we assume his ways
Sometimes we support an assumption and say it has to be God
Like Jonah, we didn’t think God should be lenient on Nineveh and tough on Israel
Even when God had clearly stated what he wanted
We still argue

We need to do better!

We have arrived Enugu for the GSWMI Meet-Up