Three friends I’ll never forget

Today, I want to write about three friends I’ll never forget. I have a good number of friends, people who showed me love and taught me how to love others- my friends Hayat and Hono fall into this category. When I was in ALA, Hono took such good care of my hair, it was unbelievable. Whenever my braids got old, Hono would sit me down in her room, and carefully detangle all the knots in my hair, as she oiled it with shea butter. She also always smacked my hand whenever I wanted to pull my hair.

On the other hand, Hayat was a Community Adviser (like a Residential Assistant), so she had a room to herself and a spare bed. Whenever I spent the night in her room, once Hayat noticed I was awake, she greeted me with “hello beautiful”. That’s quite cheesy, but it made me really happy! What lovely words to hear first thing in the morning! Hayat made me my first cup of coffee, and whenever I was too lazy to leave the dorm for snack, Hayat brought me a cup of coffee and some toasted bread.

Truly, there are several friends that I can never forget, but these are just three people that have been on my heart for a bit of time.

From my June update, I mentioned a friend that made me fall in love with learning about God by reading the bible. Her name is Comfort Samuel, a friend of mine who recently graduated with a first class honors in Architecture from Covenant University in Nigeria.

Comfort and I were in the same hostel in JS3, and she read her bible everyday. She had a fun bible study book for teenagers called Topz, and as she worked out her riddles and puzzles on bible verses, she grew in the Lord. So, curious little me asked if her mother would also get a copy of Topz for me whenever she brought one for Comfort. And that was how about 7 or 8 years ago, I started this journey into discovering God through the Bible.

I remember those days, I did not have a system by which I read the bible, I mostly still do not. I just prayed, opened a random page, and read whatever I found on that page. I remember reading through the books of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel. I also read several other books in the New testament. This happened all because of one girl who lived her christianity through reading her bible. Her action defined her life, and by extension, I started to actively live out my faith. I became very curios about the person of God, and how else would I learn? I started to take bible reading seriously.

The second person I’ll like to mention is a friend I met about four years ago. We spoke a lot, and we spoke about all sorts of things. I was particularly inspired by this friend because they too, live out their faith, especially through  discipline and resolve to serve God through actions. I remember asking one day about the kind of music they enjoyed because I was trying to hone my personal tastes. I found out that they mainly listened to Hillsong. I now know that there are several people with similar interest i.e listening to mainly contemporary gospel music. But back then, I definitely did not know contemporary gospel music was a thing, although we had those tapes which were a compilation of popular gospel songs at home. They also often played music while we spoke, and I began to learn about several Christian artistes. In fact, they were the person that played me Matt Redman’s popular worship song “10,000 Reasons”. I miss those days haha!

The last person I will mention is Priscilla. It’s a little weird how Priscilla and I became friends during prep on my 17th birthday. While I sat whiling away time (as per usual), she came and sat beside me. She said happy birthday to me and proceeded to give me my birthday present. This random girl opened a random page of her bible (which I soon learned she usually carried with her). She read one of the verses in Songs of Solomon that goes “Do not awaken love until it so desires”. I should have listened, lol.

Here is a not very particularly flattering (but no one cares) picture of Priscilla and I…

Anyway, that was the beginning of a fantastic friendship that I remain grateful to God for! Priscilla has made me realize that God should exist in every facet of our lives. She explains her relationship with God with her “wifi analogy”. She says that the presence of God is like Wifi, once you have connection, you’re good. When there is Wifi, no one has to tell you, your device connects automatically, all things being equal. Similarly, you may not physically see God’s presence but it manifests.

I asked Priscilla to read this post before sharing, and she said “if anyone feels bad their name is not here, this chair is for them…” She’s a shady kind of girl….

I don’t know why this came to my mind, but I’m glad I’m sharing this.

What kind of friend are you? What will you be remembered for?

---

Image from here.