During my third year in school, I had a street neighbour, Gift by name, that I always liked to pull to church. At one point, she totally surrendered to my beckonings, to the extent that she was not missing any church service at all, including the daily one-hour service that lasted from 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.
One special evening, she called to tell me not to bother checking her out the next morning for the daily one-hour service.
"Why?" I asked.
"Ummmm...there's electricity, and I'll charge my phone at home," she replied.
"I knew it's because of the opportunity to charge your phone that made you agree to be following me to church." I joked, and we both laughed.
"You're going with me, whether you like it or not. See you tomorrow!" I said and she was about to respond when I ended the call.
The following morning, around 5:40 a.m., I woke up, got prepared, and headed to her house. I got there and decided to call her on the phone instead of knocking at her, which might disturb her neighbours.
I dialled the number and it was switched off, so I braved up and banged on the door, "kor kor kor"
"Ooooh! Kingsley I know it's you. Hold on, I'm coming," she responded, and I patiently waited for her to dress up.
Within a few minutes, she came out with her Bible, charger, and phone in her hands.
"You're still charging your phone? Didn't you charge it with light at night?" I surprisingly asked.
"I charged it, but I need to top it up at church," she replied, and off we went.
We got to the church premises and searched for a wall socket to plug her phone in the auditorium, as people are not always much in a service like that, but all the sockets were occupied.
So we decided to go and plug it at the security house situated at the entrance of the church. We got there, and luckily, the socket was empty, so we plugged it in and left to engage in the church service.
The service was about to end, and she hurriedly left the auditorium to secure her phone before the crowd came outside.
After the benediction, I walked out of the auditorium in the midst of a crowd, and I saw Gift walking towards me, "Kingsley, did you remove my phone?" She asked, expecting a yes
"Your phone? We plugged it there, na," I answered.
"It isn't there; it's only the charger that's left. I was thinking maybe you came to remove it." She wasn't herself anymore when she said this, her phone was missing!
"Jeeez!" I ran off to the security house, and lo and behold, the charger was left on the socket while the phone was not there.
When we plugged the phone, the security man was not there, and at that moment, he was still not there, so there was no one to ask, absolutely no one.
Before I knew it, tears had occupied her eyes. I couldn't console her, I was just there racking my brain over what to do to recover the phone.
We can't go and report to the church because they always warn not to charge phones in the church, in fact, posters of such warnings were pasted everywhere.
At that moment, it dawned on me that I'd caused her to lose her phone. I started feeling guilty, if I had not dragged her to church that morning, she wouldn't have lost that phone.
All through that day, she cried so hard, and I couldn't just say anything, I was short of words.
She stopped going to church with the statement, "What's the essence of going to a church that they steal?".
I felt the guilt the more knowing that I had indirectly stopped someone from attending church.
So bad!馃挃
That guilty conscience stayed with me until she regained herself and started attending church again.
Thank you for reading.