MY JOURNEY WITH THE PILGRIM

This week, (April 2019) I received a gift, Growing in Prayer Devotional: A 100 – Day Journey by Mike Bickle. On arrival for a Public Relations conference in Kenya on a scorching Sunday afternoon this is the best welcome I could receive from Emily, the conference convener and a friend. Looking at this treasured gift took me back to the memory lane about a decade ago.

After university, I was among the lucky few fresh graduates that walked from class to office. The phobia of job searching made one to dread finishing school, as though staying in school was any better. Society made it look like those of us who didn’t know a someone somewhere were doomed. Had it not been by divine connection, I am sure I would have by now gathered enough experience in job searching. So here I was in my mid-twenties, renting an apartment by myself and totally in charge of my life without anyone’s influence. With my new-found independence, a job that many my age could only dream of, I knew I was beginning to see the lining at the epitome of success.

As Uganda planned to celebrate Martyrs’ Day in 2009, I strategically traveled to Kampala for official duties. The Organisation I worked for had her headquarters in Kampala and that served as a double blessing if one worked in the countryside. It gave you opportunity to travel and reconnect with your city friends. This time I had planned to travel and spend some time with my college friend, Shallon who worked in Entebbe then. My travel time was well calculated knowing it would be followed by a public holiday which would give me more time in the city.

That travel was to later have a major bearing in my life. It is during that official business trip that I met a young man who extended kindness while we sat together in the waiting lounge. While leaving he asked for my telephone contact. Just to reciprocate his kindness, I gave him my address, reassuring myself that if he was up to something he would be in for a shock. That night he called to find out if I had reached home safely. The next morning, he called to inform me that he was traveling back to his work station. Thereafter he found every reason to call me. Before I knew it, I was cocooned because I found out that some of my friends had been at college with him. Like they say, a friend of your friend is your friend! Asked where I met this friend, I told my friends that it was during the official trip cum vacation that I took during the Martyrs’ Day holiday. It is then that they called him ‘Omuramagi’ literally meaning the pilgrim. Like any budding friendship, I later learnt a lot from my new-found friend, who was a friend of my friends. My friend was over-zealously in love with Christ. Am told while at college he was famously know for carrying a bible that was bigger that his body size. A few months after our meeting he asked me to seek God’s opinion about our friendship. Well, I thought he was beginning to extend his handshake beyond the elbow.

The Muramagi did not leave my life the way he had found it. To this date I still have the pilgrim’s foot prints in my life. A year after meeting him, I ended up becoming his wife. A few months to our wedding, our best man to-be warned me. He asked me if I was ready for what I was signing up for. It’s then that he told me that my fiancé’s christian journey was laced with prayer and fasting.

‘You will hear that he is on a 40 days’ fast, before that is done he is talking about an upcoming 90 days’ fast’ our friend said ‘He will fast with or without a reason.’

‘Well, I hope he does not think this is going to be a joint venture after marriage.’ I jokingly responded.

True to Andrew’s word, the Sunday I went for the church pre-wedding introduction to the congregation, a 40 days’ church fast was announced. Knowing who yours truly was, I beseeched him not to engage in this fast. I had my valid reasons, first and foremost he needed food since we were in a hectic season preparing for the wedding. Secondly, I didn’t want an emaciated groom on our big day. He promised me that he would treat my wish as a command!

A night after our wedding, he said he wanted us to discuss something. My heart skipped a beat. What serious issues are there to discuss just a day after the wedding?

‘I am sorry I lied to you.’ he said, looking searchingly at me.

My mind run with a million guesses for this apology. Did he have a child that he had not declared during courtship? Did his family have a bad secret they were hiding? Did he have a disease he had not disclosed? Countless questions run through my mind!

‘I have been on the 40 days’ fast that was declared on our pre-wedding church introduction’ he said.

I didn’t have an answer. It’s then that it dawned on me that what had been said about the Muramagi as my friends fondly called him was true. I promised him that I would never get in the way of his fasting schedules.

The Growing in Prayer Devotional is my other opportunity to journey with the pilgrim in his quest for God, a decade later after our first meeting. Omuramagi Tumuramye Dickson, we have a cool 100 days of prayer with the pilgrim’s wife being the lead in this divine venture.

©Prim K. Tumuramye

15th April 2019

Prim is a Christian, wife, mother and Communications Specialist at Compassion International. She is passionate about reading, writing, youth mentorship and intentional parenting.