Beloveth, Being A Church Worker Is A Worthy Cause

Sunday June 09 2013

I think I remember shutting up my two phones as the 5:00am alarms went off like most of you do. Those irritating noise, they shouldn't just test me now for their own good. The next time I looked at the clock it was 6:20am! What?! I'm supposed to be in church by 6:55am for church workers meeting! How could I have overslept on a day like this? We all know the answer to that irrelevant rhetoric. I hurried like I've never hurried before. My nickname today should be Flash. I made it to church before 7:00am. What a relief. We had a church workers meeting before the service proper. Today was a thanksgiving service. It was wonderful

Finally The Redeem Christian Church Of God Light Of The World Parish has posted us the new church workers to different departments. I was posted to the Ushering and Sanitation Department as my Primary and Secondary departments respectively. We are yet to be officially presented to the congregation as church workers. I had wanted to be in the technical but it’s all good. I have no problem with the departments I found myself except I'm not much of a suit and tie person. As a matter of fact I have only one suit and a couple of ties. Lara was like I'm tall, handsome and suitably qualified for the ushering department. She was posted to the Technical and Evangelism Departments. I went home.

I slept first. I slept off in the middle of writing this entry. It would've been creepily nice if I continued in my dreams. A knock on the door ended my sleep. It was Deborah, another church worker. She came for the package she put in my fridge last night. I grabbed my laptop to surf the web and check my mails. I wanted to prepare sometime but once I get glued to the web and its informative as it's usually is, every other emotions is overrode. I was still online when Caesar came over.

This is the second time he has come to my place after my roomies started sleeping somewhere else. He never showed up when they were around. He was quick to point out the greasy look my room aesthetic wore as opposed to the shiny, fresh and clean look it was before the arrival of my roomies. We spent some time at my place then hit the spar to pick a few things. I picked an Adidas deodorant. He picked some drinks. I drove on our way back but we switched again when we got to the flooded road. I don't know where the potholes are so I don't want us to get stuck. The gist flowed nonstop till we got to his place.

Blessing prepared a hot meal for us. It was semo and ogbono soup. Blessing is a church worker in her church. I'm not friendly with ogbono soup. I haven't eaten it outside my house before. Well my stomach took the decision against all my protest. Should I say my protest fell on deaf stomach or empty stomach? The ogbono soup had a little bitter leaf in it hence the bitter taste. I finished and thanked them. Caesar gave a wheat wafer, sorta like baked cornflakes. I went home to warm my bed.

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RCCG Light Of The World Workers Retreat/Graduation Wednesday May 29 2013

RCCG Light Of The World Workers Retreat/Graduation Wednesday May 29 2013 - Cross Section of Graduates and Instructors 

Yaaay!! Today is Democracy Day in Nigeria. Typical Nigerian attitude towards Democracy Day is “there’s nothing to celebrate about democracy day” It's a public holiday. Some say we have too many public holidays, I wouldn’t know about that. It originated when Nigeria transited into democratic government for a third time after decades of decays of military rule. Some school of thought believe military rule regime returned more development and growth. This subjective conclusion will be the premise for argument on another day.

Pastor Abraham Annam of RCCG Light of the World

Today is also our RCCG Light of the World Workers Retreat day at Atican beach. Time for assembling at the church was 7:00am and departure time to the beach 7:30am. I showered and left for church. Imagine my surprise when I got to church. I was the first person. I thought I went late. ''African Timing'' or ''Nigerian Time'' is a bitch! I didn't quite take it casually. Seriously we need to stick to time for God’s sake, time is money. The rest continued to trickle in till 7:30am. I could've work on my new pet project before coming here this morning. Anyway it's all good. After killing a considerable amount of time we left.

I was in the same car, a Nissan Pathfinder with Omolara and Jide at the back seat. Me and Lara short for Omolara talked all the way to venue. She happened to be a cartoon lover and a fan of Naruto! It couldn't get better lol. Where two or three Naruto fans are gathered, endless chakra and excitement for discussing Naruto is unleashed! The scenery on the road to the beach nostalgically evokes the images of my village in my head in a soothing way. You’ll drive past Ajah community, make a right at Abraham Adesanya Estate road and drive deep into the less developed massive land mass. We got to the place safely. We were the first set of beach goers to colour and enliven the vicinity with our presence.

I familiarized myself with the foreign environment. I haven’t been here before. I wouldn't have been here today if not for RCCG Light Of The World Workers Retreat/Graduation. The beach is not big. Someone bought a piece of real estate by the shoreline and converted it to personal beach. The person is one Mr. Atiku from Igbo Efon. It has a sandy courtyard where you can play football. At one corner is a wonky looking basketball rim, just one. There was a one-storey raised wooden platform overlooking the courtyard and the beach area. The lower part of this platform can serve as a stage. Lara said she didn’t trust the strength of the platform, I agreed. There were three other brick building and one sizeable tent structure including the raised platform surrounding the courtyard to form a square shape.

Me

We kicked off the workers’ retreat/graduation proper by 10:00am. Open Heavens was shared. The graduating workers, that's us, were admonished and prayed for. We took pictures with pastor and the facilitators. We had light refreshments and a thirty minutes break. The burn in my mouth from yesterday was still wreaking havoc in my mouth. It hurts badly.

After the break we did two team activities involving everybody be ye a graduating worker or not. One was a three point evaluation of RCCG Light of the World in the past one year and the other was a game. The evaluation was very insightful and the game was fun. Lunch followed immediately on the heels of the game. What's for lunch? I dare say it was delicious gourmet meal of jollof rice with two large pieces of chicken, lucky me I got two king-sized drumsticks. We all got specially served like kings and queens. I prayed and did excellent justice to my food. The burnt roof of my mouth is still shooting painful feedback to my brain. Fortunately this killjoy can't ruin my feast. I no be gentleman as I finished my food.

By now other beach goers have trooped in and music is blasting from every corner of the beach. I moved to a cooler tent cuz ours has gotten really hot. I cooled off a bit and went to the beach area. Some daredevil guys were playing football under that scorching sun baking the sand in the courtyard of the complex. I don’t wanna sweat.

At the beach area I saw Lara sitting alone on bleached wooden beach deck chair overlooking the ocean as the waves kiss the shores and hurry back to sea. You can also see other beach goers having fun, playing soccer, dancing to blasting music, taking photographs, etc. The sight of the bluish green ocean with the azure sky sitting calmly on the horizon invokes a rare sense of serenity and closeness to nature that feels therapeutic. It's so exotic. God I love this view. I joined Lara. We sat on the same deck chair sitting straight or laying back occasionally. We talked about a lot of stuff. I confess I totally enjoyed the quality time I spent.

Pastor's wife Funto Annam

Pastor’s wife called everybody back for the final item on our agenda and subsequently bringing the outing to a resounding close. We went back as we came in the same car. Me and Lara talked some more. We got back to the church at exactly 5:06pm. I went home and stayed indoors throughout. I express my profound deep appreciation to all responsible for successfully organizing this Workers Retreat/Graduation Event. I had a great time. May God bless you all. May God bless everyone that attended.

My new neighbour Deborah came by my room. She came to ask for a favour. Her fridge hasn’t arrived yet, and she wanna share mine. She went and brought a package, a meal package she intends to go to work with the next morning. She said she’ll pick it up by 6:00am the next day. I tried to stay longer on the computer but I couldn’t keep eyes open any longer so I gracefully and humbly submitted to authority of sleep.

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