Lost But Found After 2 Years: The Power of Faith and Loyalty

It was a beautiful Tuesday morning, April 7, the year of our Lord, Two Thousand And Nine. The sun shone at its full glory while the birds sang heartily as they flew out of their nests to find breakfast. Back in the hospital, which housed the sprawling garden of trees, the atmosphere was palpably tense. Here was Mr. E. pacing up and down the ward. His wife had just been rushed into the labour room. Praying under his breath, he hoped that God will help deliver his wife of the baby safely.

Suddenly, the nurse opened the door of the labour room; and with a toothy smile she nodded to this daddy-in-waiting to come over. Lo and behold, it wasn’t just a baby, there were two of them – a beautiful set of female twins, whom the couple later named Praise and Glory.

Two years went by and the children grew up under the watchful care of their loving parents, up until Sunday, April 17, 2011 when the unexpected happened. Church service was over that fateful day, the couple made for the Children Department to retrieve their kids, a simple routine which they undertook every other week; but to their shock, one of their twins was nowhere to be found. Praise was missing.

How could this be? Was this the result of their prayer from the just concluded Anointing Service? There was confusion in the air. “Who had come for the girl?” “Did she wander off?” There were more questions than answers. Later that day, however, after a frantic and fruitless search, the couple, had the chance to meet with the leader of the church who, upon hearing the sad news, prophetically declared that the little girl would be found. And indeed, Praise was found. When? Two years later.

According to the June 16, 2013  testimony by the parents, the kidnapper who had confessed to his atrocity (having been struck by a strange disease, blindness and unceasing nightmares) narrated how he took the innocent toddler away from the Winners Chapel Children Department in Ota, Southwest Nigeria, to sell to a buyer in Kano, northern Nigeria. It was indeed a harrowing experience for the family. But despite the mockery, ridicule and scorn suffered from neighbours, friends and family, Praise’s parents never gave up on her. To be sure, there are many obvious lessons to be learnt from this couple, but two virtues do stand out: faith and loyalty.

“Faith is the vision of the heart”, says an unknown writer. “It sees God in the dark as well as in the day”. Indeed, to have unwavering faith is to be dead to doubts, dumb to discouragements and blind to impossibilities. Mr and Mrs E. had every course to lose their faith in God, afterall, their little girl was stolen from His ‘custody’, but instead, they remained steadfast, believing that someday, their night will turn to day and their mourning into dancing.

Meanwhile, another question suffices: What made this couple stay put in that church? Couldn’t they have switched church to find ‘solution’ to their problem? Why didn’t they consider the option of filing a suit in court, charge the church for criminal negligence and demand monetary compensation? Truth is, these guys had a choice to fight it dirty. They could also have engaged the media in dragging the reputation of the Bishop and the church in the mud. As a matter of fact the couple reserved that right and the world would have been sympathetic with them. But instead, they chose otherwise, for they took solace in Charles Swinburne’s submission when he quipped: the highest spiritual quality, the noblest property of mind a man can have, is this – loyalty; a man with no loyalty in him, is as evil a case as man can be. Mr. & Mrs E are a classic model of loyalty. They were loyal to God, His Servant and His Church. And at the end, they were vindicated.

“Don’t ever give up”, Richelle Goodrich counsels. “Don’t ever give in; don’t ever stop trying; don’t ever sell out. And if you find yourself succumbing to one of the above for a brief moment, pick yourself up, brush yourself off, whisper a prayer, and start where you left off. But never, ever, ever, give up.” Selah.

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Sam Adel’

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