Ola's Story
- Posted on:
- December 6, 2006 at midnight
- Trackback:
- http://es-africa.com/articles/trackback/olas-story/
- Posted in:
- MBCstories
I was one of those people who never thought he'd move back to Nigeria. Quite frankly, even today I prefer the US to Nigeria. There are just so many things one takes for granted that are not even options in Nigeria. But then again, that's an entirely different story. I left Nigeria after JSS 3 and finished high school in the States. Going in at such a young age, I quickly adapted to the American way of life. I didn't maintain ties with anyone back home due to the abrupt nature of how my family moved and I didn't have any Nigerian friends my age in the US. Little wonder that I never had any desire to move back. Apparently God had different plans for me. I had a successful and lucrative career in technology consulting and had achieved some of the major career objectives I had set out for myself. But I still was not happy. In my quest for an answer, I gave my life to Christ. As God started to shape and mould me, I started to realize that life was truly like a box of chocolates. I asked for the box but certainly didn’t know what was going to be inside. I had been praying to God for guidance on what the next step of my career was going to be. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but knew this decision was to have a direct impact on fulfilling God’s will for every area of my life. Waiting to hear from God can be a frustrating experience. You find yourself, trying to bargain with the Creator, just to put an end to all the suspense. I found myself saying things like “Lord, just speak to me! I know you want a change in my life. Even if you want me to serve you by working in McDonalds for the rest of my days, I’m willing! Just say so! I want nothing more than to do your will!” Well, when God spoke to me, God didn’t direct me to go put in an application at Mickey D’s. Instead, God introduced me to a young entrepreneur from Nigeria who was visiting the US and one day shared the vision for his small company with me and some other friends. When you’re in that “waiting to hear from God” stage, everything looks like a sign and you have to prayerfully and carefully be able to discern. In as much as I knew this was what God wanted me to do, it wasn’t easy for me to accept. It would require me giving up my life of comfort and security in the US for one of uncertainty in Nigeria. If I was left to make that decision on my own, I wouldn't have had the strength to make the right choice. That's actually the beauty of life with Christ. When you align your decisions and choices with God's will, God also gives you the strength and courage to execute. I still apply a lot of the principles God showed me on decision making, from my move back experience. God showed me you have to calculate the cost of all your decisions. In the process of doing so, you'll find out the things in your life you have placed above God. This gives you an opportunity to reset your priorities and align them with your purpose here on earth. You'll find out things like the security of living abroad is so important to you that it can stand in the way of heeding to a call to move home. Living abroad gives us a level of comfort that we control these areas of our lives, something extremely difficult to achieve in Nigeria, due to its volatile nature. Truth of the matter is if we place our security in our own hands, even in the safest, most stable environment instead of in God's hands, we have our priorities out of order. However, if our priorities are in their proper order, it becomes easier to set out a plan of action for what you want to do when faced with such life changing decisions. Then the rest now boils down to faith. Three and a half years down the line, I can say by the special grace of God that my return home has been a success. I've played an integral part in building a respected private sector organization. We have grown from a four man entity to a company of well over a hundred employees. We have impacted lives, our community, our industry and our peers positively. We are also respected in the international community as a Nigerian company with good business ethics. Personally, I have also had the privilege of working with kids in the inner cities that haven’t had the privileges God granted me in my life. I have even come to appreciate the fact that being the child of my parents is a privilege I always took for granted. The extremely self gratifying activity called sports was a big part of my life growing up in America, so I teamed up with some missionaries to start an NGO that reaches out to teenagers through sports and teaches them life values and about Christianity. One of the kids in the program lost his parents in a car accident that claimed over 20 lives. He has lived in the streets as an orphan ever since. Sometimes when I think about people like him, I understand better that God created us to serve. That is the natural order of things. God shapes and moulds us for this responsibility by the experiences in our lives, be it growing up abroad or another life developing experience. We should never take for granted the lessons we learn and the people we have become due to this privilege. It is not one everyone enjoys. I have learned that I am here in Nigeria to share who I am, with Nigerians, as difficult as that may be sometimes. May God help me.
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