The week after that day was one of the most emotional weeks in my life. At some point I had to tell God, what I was going through was more than I expected. The teenagers had tripled, and they came with different baggage. Some were homeless and had made Baba Agba’s corridor their sleeping place. They also came hungry for spiritual food and physical food. After going out to sell water, I would give them the stipends to eat as I didn’t want them taking from Baba Agba’s food. We didn’t hear from Mercy, she was not at her Grandparents’ or at school. Favour was losing it. She still had to go to work. She called everyone she thought Mercy might run to but no one knew where she was. Ajaara was always with Favour assuring her that Mercy will come back home. We had a prayer time on a daily basis to intercede for her. Ajaara’s uncle got back from detention very angry. He came to see me… “I heard you have found a new house for Ajaara, let it just remain that way, I don’t want to ever see her near me, or else I will kill her. Even her parents’ property in my custody she should forget it. She almost took my uniform from me,” he said as he walked out of my compound angrily. Fortunately, Ajaara was not present. The children kept coming for the daily class and the number increased also. The more I spoke with them, the better I became with the Scriptures. Whenever the children asked me questions I couldn’t answer, I would sit with my Bible and find answers. Their zeal to get closer to God strengthened me to do more. It wasn’t easy combining my water selling business, the classes, the midnight prayers and the expectation of Mercy’s return to her home. Ajaara shocked me six days after Mercy left home. Favour was present during the class, but you could tell she was worried sick about Mercy as she occasionally glanced at the entrance of the compound. “Uncle Chuks, please do I have permission to ask for a favour?” “Please go ahead.” “Thank you, I know what it feels like to be lonely and have no one to talk to, for years I lived that way. I therefore can understand how Mercy must have felt being the only child who never had the opportunity to have friends and be social. She wasn’t any different from me… but I have a great fear… and that fear is I don’t want Mercy to turn out the way I turned out, I don’t want her to make the mistakes I made… Right now, she is out there trying to find love and acceptance, she will be searching for friendship, but I can tell you the friendship she will get out there, will destroy her.” Everywhere was silent… “Kenneth said he saw her with a group of friends he was sure were into drugs. They were hanging out at the restaurant he works as a cleaner. He said he tried calling her, but she pretended not to know him. As we speak, I won’t be shocked if by now, she has pierced more holes in her ears, I won’t be surprised if by now in just six days she has started trying out scandalous wears… Please let us get her back before we lose her completely.” “Yesterday, I went back to reading my Bible and this verse in Proverbs jumped at me… Prov. 24:11-12. It states… “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?” …and I knew this was meant for us. I guess that was the mistake my parents made with me. They felt since they had three other good children, if I was rebellious it wasn’t a big deal, but maybe if they had tried to find me, I wouldn’t have become this way, sleeping from one friend’s place to the other,” said the rebellious, Pastor’s daughter. I was shocked and moved to tears. My heart was heavy. Over the week I had seen the teenagers whispering and talking in low tones in circles. “What do you advise we do, because from the look of things, you all have something planned,” I said as I watched Favour’s reaction. She had tears in her eyes as she kept watching Ajaara. “Kenneth noticed Favour still logs in to her social media accounts…” Ajaara was saying. “She is even online as we speak…” Kenneth cut in. “So, I was thinking apart from praying, I think we should reach out to her. Right now the voices of the new friends is all she can hear, but she needs her to hear our own voices telling her we want her back. We can do a video talking to her and telling her we miss her and if her Mum can talk to her also, we believe it will go a long way to bring her back. We will tag her in the video. That way, she gets to watch it and with our joint prayers, I believe she will come back.” Wow… I would never have thought about that. I looked at Favour and her face could not reveal what was going on in her mind. Did she like the idea or not? Was it necessary for us to do a video begging her to come home? Was that not going to give her more power and make her think that what she was doing was fine? To be continued.
