Saved from Suicide

A loud scream in our compound sent Phionah rushing out of our house. When she got out, a young-looking lady was on her knees crying.

For a moment Phionah thought the lady had received bad news of the loss of a loved-one because she was screaming while looking at her phone.

Asking what had gone wrong, the lady refused all help. All she wanted was to commit suicide. She pleaded with her. I arrived back home about the same time and found my wife pleading with her.

The lady fell down and rolled as she wept. To avoid a crowd building around there, we decided to carry her to our house, forcefully because she didn’t want to come in. She refused to tell us anything about herself.

We also didn’t allow her to leave our house, especially after learning that she had ordered for anti-termite chemical to use to kill herself.

We offered her tea and she refused. But later she allowed to drink water, which she gulped like she had not taken water in a long while.

We asked for her name, in vain. We asked to pray for her and she told us prayer doesn’t work. She told us she had prayed and prayed for her situation and nothing was changing.

Apparently, she had been laid off her job a few days prior. The final blow was that after losing her job, her boyfriend, whom she thought was going to marry her, decided to dump her for a relationship with another girl.

“Do you know how much I have prayed? Now I don’t have a job. I don’t have a man. I don’t have a family. Life is hard? If I don’t have a job, I should at least have a man and a family.

Look at me! I’m now 30 years but I’m not yet married. I wished I had gotten pregnant with that man. At least I would have a child by now. I have been with three men and all of them have dumped me. Meanwhile my younger sister is married and settled in her home with two children. But look at me. Am the elder sister but I don’t have anything. No man. No family. No job. Am sleeping hungry every now and then. So what’s the point of living? Leave me alone. Let me go and kill myself. The sun won’t go down today before I die,” she ranted.

It took nearly an hour before she could tell us her name.

We shared the gospel and tried to persuade her that there’s hope in Jesus Christ. But she wanted nothing to do with Jesus. In fact she said she would rather die and go to hell than to remain in this life seeing her ex-boyfriend enjoying his new relationship meanwhile she’s suffering.

We did everything we could. We counseled, prayed and persuaded her but to no avail. So we surrendered her to God. We couldn’t imagine letting her go and hearing that she committed suicide. So our last solution was to call police. They came and took her to police custody.

We prayed for her to come back to her senses. We prayed that God would work through this circumstance to reveal himself to her. After sunset, just as our boys went down to sleep, we heard a knock at our door.

There she was, standing at our door. “Come in!” She came in and sat down. “You didn’t need to call police to pick me up“, she complained. “Sorry! We didn’t know what else to do“, we apologized.

She told us she had changed her mind. We ate dinner together and then went with her to her house to see where she lived.

Phionah and I continued to pray for her. Recently we invited her to our house and she told us she has been called back to her previous job.

Praise to God who has rescued her from that desperate and suicidal situation.

Please pray for her. She is safe for now, but she’s not yet saved. Pray that God draws her to faith in Jesus Christ and that she would “seek first the kingdom and all its righteousness and all these things shall be added to her.” (Matthew 6:33).