Forgiveness

(A friend asked for this testimony and I thought to share it here as well)

When I was working in the Media and posted at Marsabit, I encountered an armed robber.

As a background, there was no public transport in the Isiolo – Marsabit – Moyale route those days.

We therefore rode trucks transporting goods, and paid very expensively for that.

Another dynamic was that there were highway robbers (called shiftas after the shifta menace of the 70s).

This meant that the trucks would travel in convoys.

The journey goes through the desert and so many times it meant the trucks would leave very early.

I had been on leave and was therefore going back to work.

On this day, I had spent the night at my brother’s place some distance from town.

I left shortly after three.

Not long after, I met someone I knew as a robber.

In fact, he proudly called himself a murderer.

His name was Ibilisi (lucifer), a name he was proud of so I suspect it was a nickname.

The last time I knew he had gone to prison.

More surprising was that he operated from Meru and not Isiolo.

I therefore pretended not to know him for obvious reasons.

He asked for money and I gave him and thought the worst was over.

I suspected he realised that I knew him because he hit me with that bolted club at the back of my head.

I came to probably two hours later, completely unaware of where I was.

But it was still dark.

I started walking anyhow.

The only thing I knew was that I had been attacked and was severely wounded as I was bleeding even from the ears.

I then stumbled on a church mission where there were watchmen at the gate.

I told them I was wounded and needed help and they turned me away.

I fell again and became unconscious for some other minutes.

When I came to again, I was able to recollect where I was.

I started walking toward the Police station which was kilometres away.

The officer I met wrote me a note to take to the hospital so that I could be helped.

The hospital was also some distance away but I walked.

By then dawn was approaching.

I met a distant cousin who worked at the hospital as he was coming from his shift.

On seeing me, he took me back to hospital so that I do not struggle with much protocol.

He left when he was sure I was being attended to.

Then they required an X ray and required payment.

Interestingly, another cousin was the accountant of the hospital who was told about my case when he met the other one.

He therefore was able to authorise that X ray.

My skull had been dented by that knock.

Then I was taken to the wards.

I was initially taken to the observation ward because the nurses thought I would somehow die.

Many would come and look at me and openly wonder

You are not dead? And many other such questions.

It appears that the guy was a professional and only God frustrated his mission.

Two days at the observation ward and I was taken to the normal ward after which I was discharged after another two days.

It took some time before my memory was fully healed.

As an example, I would be holding the guitar to play the intro to a song in church and I can’t recollect the tune and someone has to hum for me to catch.

I probably need to state that he took my bag which had tools I had bought very expensively and some Bibles especially a Study Bible I prized.

After I felt better, I went to the police to report since I knew the guy.

After several visits, I realised that they were not in a hurry to do anything. And I was then operating from home in Meru.

In fact, I at one time saw him at our market. When he saw me, he was so shaken because I think he had been convinced that I had died.

The family decided that we will need to take the police to court to force them to take action, especially since the offender was known.

But I had been praying.

And the hospital had been extending my leave, especially since the clotted blood stuck in one ear was not in a hurry to come out.

God told me to go back to work and so I went and the plan of taking the police to court died.

As I continued praying, God challenged me to start praying for the guy.

But how does one pray for someone who had killed him but for God’s intervention?

Incidentally, God had given me Psalm 34:7 as the reason I did not die.

As I prayed, God slowly started working on my heart until I started praying good things for him; he finds salvation, he ministers alongside me, etc.

Eventually, I was able to completely forgive him.

But I didn’t know that until God confirmed it.

After I left work, I went back home to await other orders.

I got involved in a denomination that planned a youth camp in the school near the shopping centre.

There were many events, but in the evenings, we had meetings where we would talk to the youth and share the Gospel.

On this day I was the one leading and I asked whether there was someone who wanted to get saved.

Who do I see walking from the back?

The guy who had ‘killed’ me in Isiolo.

But instead of feeling bitter or edgy, I felt such a release and love that I gladly led him to Christ.

But this is not what I have been asked to write about.

Yet the next story would not be clear if I had left out this one.

Marsabit had enough drama for me and my faith.

I went because God told me to ask for the transfer.

I therefore expected ministry to thrive because at that time we were praying through Operation World and combined it with praying about unreached people in Kenya.

I went and there was confusion and pain all over, for the most part.

After that assault, and combined with some intense persecution at work, I decided that God did not call me to Marsabit and I had just imagined it since there was so much pain (at one time my salary had been stopped for six months)

I requested for a transfer and even looked for transport to move.

Then I thought to ask God for a sign, a sign that I knew He could not beat.

But He did it anyway.

This confirmed to me that He wanted me in Marsabit.

I therefore settled.

He had showed me a church deep in the Manyattas and I went there with gusto.

Even the bosses who had engineered the stoppage of my salary had gone and so I thought things would get better.

Incidentally, my friend, who had been at loggerheads with those other bosses, was the one who was made my boss.

But my joy was short-lived, especially as ministry opportunities started opening up

I will not speculate, but as ministry started getting clarity and results, my friend completely turned against me, started placing as many blocks as he would to those ministry openings.

He even started accusing me of anything, asking for explanations from me for very funny (let me not say stupid) things.

The other staff could not understand.

The others had done the machination in secret. This one was openly fighting me as a person.

To imagine I had to walk twelve kilometres (one way) to town and back to do my shopping yet the rest of the staff would be taken by the station vehicle is one such reality.

My life became one battle after another.

Incidentally, that persecution and incessant accusations is what God used when He wanted me to leave employment because I told Him I would be ready to leave employment but I was not ready to resign.

But this time I was no leaving as had been the case of planning to go for a transfer. God had clearly asked me to leave employment.

It is only that I wanted Him to work out in such a way that I would never be in doubt that He had asked me whatever else happened.

I was later called to start a student ministry in Nairobi.

As I had learnt when I was dealing with the guy who had attempted to kill me, I was sure that God wanted me to pray for this guy who had made my life a living hell of sorts.

After a few years, I felt that God had healed my heart of bitterness and anything else that would stand between me and what God wanted for me.

I prayed and asked God to give me the evidence that He had healed my heart.

God is very interesting.

I had friends in the tallest building in Nairobi (then) and would visit them.

That was a government office which had an unending stream of visitors at all times. The lifts are packed at all times.

I therefore got into one lift and this former boss enters.

Nobody else enters and I know that my heart has healed.

But it does not stop there.

We start talking.

The lift goes up to the 29th floor without anybody entering. It would stop, people would look in and simply not enter.

Then it goes down to the ground floor the same way.

It then went up, again the same way. But this time he stepped out at the floor he was visiting.

That was how God confirmed to me that He had healed my heart of any bitterness against him.

Any questions?