A Higher Calling

Usher Duties

The year is 2022. I am young, I am vibrant, and life’s responsibilities are hitting me with the frequency and precision of someone who has a personal vendetta and genuinely excellent aim.

First year me was soft life personified. I walked campus like a man whose parents had a retirement plan, a contingency fund, and a separate envelope just in case the contingency fund had feelings. I was the ambassador of comfort. The voice of the money. The ATM machine that never ran out and never asked questions. People looked at me and saw stability. Hope. A man with data and snacks.

Then second year happened.

Second year found me, grabbed me by the collar, looked me dead in the eyes and said “LOL.”

My parents, God bless their disciplined, receipts-keeping souls, decided somewhere between first and second year that I was now a startup with poor fundamentals. Funding? Ilifutwa kama government tender after the auditors walked in unannounced. Investor confidence? Gone like a Nairobi pothole repair crew, briefly attempted and quickly abandoned. My mother looked at me the way KRA looks at a small business owner who forgot to file returns for two consecutive years and then showed up smiling. My father communicated entirely through silence and a very specific stare that loosely translates to “I had high hopes for you specifically.”

I was a divorced man with an enforced prenup. I left the marriage with the clothes on my back and a Huawei phone, and if you have read the previous chapter of my suffering, you know exactly which Huawei phone. The one. That one. The phone that humbled me in ways the education system never could.

So naturally, like every man whose back is against the wall and whose M-Pesa balance reads like a radio station, 105.5, dangerously low and playing sad songs, I did what any rational 21-year-old does when all other options have been exhausted.

I found God.

Not casually. Not “I’ll say a quick prayer before I sleep” found God. I found God with the energy of a man who had genuinely, thoroughly, embarrassingly run out of alternatives. I joined a local church and became the most enthusiastic congregant that building had seen since its foundation was poured. I was THERE. Every service. Every midweek gathering. Every event that had free tea and mandazi. I was so present, so committed, so visibly on fire for the Lord, that within three months they gave me a cell group to lead.

Three months.

That is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a speed promotion. I was employee of the month at the House of the Lord. There are people who have been faithfully warming the same seat for four years, waiting for recognition, waiting for assignment, waiting for God to notice them specifically. I walked in with my broke energy and my genuine desperation and was handed leadership before I had finished learning the words to the second worship song.

God works in mysterious ways. Mostly in my favour apparently.

Now, every long Saturday I had a ritual. A sacred one, arguably more sacred than the cell group I was leading. I would go to school. I would sit down. And I would download. Long series. Epic ones. Nineteen episodes, fifty-eight minutes each. The kind of content that requires planning, patience, and a stable Wi-Fi connection, three things I could actually access completely for free. It was during one of these divine download sessions that I first saw her. I will not over-describe because some things deserve to remain sacred, but she walked into that space and my brain, which had been operating in strict monk mode for weeks, rebooted entirely.

She eventually typed her number into my Huawei and looked at me. I smiled like a man whose entire philosophy of restraint had just been handed back to him with a receipt. We talked once, twice a day. I offered what I could: companionship, conversation, the full emotional curriculum of a man with nothing but time and personality. Talking stage economics at its finest. High output, zero financial liability.

Now. The Sunday in question.

I, a campus man who owned exactly two pairs of formal trousers and wore them only under protest, woke up at 8am, took a cold shower like a man of discipline and questionable life choices, and put on official clothing with a tucked-in shirt. I trekked one kilometer to church. I was an usher. An actual usher. Standing at the entrance in a tucked shirt, directing people to their seats with the authority of a man who has his life together. The audacity. The cosplay. The commitment to the performance.

The service was going beautifully. God was in the building. So was I, holding down the entrance like a professional, nodding at latecomers, maintaining the energy of a man who absolutely did not have 105.5 in his account.

Then my phone vibrated.

I silenced it with the speed of someone who has been caught before. It rang again. I looked at the screen.

It was her.

I would like to tell you I hesitated. I would like to tell you I weighed my options, considered my role as cell group leader, reflected on the three months of genuine spiritual investment I had made, and arrived at a measured, God-honoring decision.

But I am an honest man.

I walked outside that church with the urgency of someone whose appendix had just filed a formal complaint. I answered the call. I heard her voice.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Can you come over? I’ll cook, we can chill, spend the evening.”

Now. If you are a human being with basic reading comprehension, you understand that sentence. It has diplomatic language and a very clear subtext. A terms and conditions document that everyone has already signed before the conversation even started.

I told my fellow ushers I had an emergency.

This was not entirely a lie. It was simply an emergency of a different classification than what they were imagining.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I received my first ever booty call in the city of Nairobi. Not at a party. Not at a lounge. Not during some culturally appropriate secular moment. At church. In my usher shirt. One kilometer from home. Three months into my salvation journey, with a cell group that met on Thursdays.

The Lord giveth, and the Lord apparently also giveth in other ways entirely, depending on the day of the week and the strength of the Wi-Fi signal.

If yours was less dramatic, I don’t want to hear it. If yours was more dramatic, the comment section is open and God is watching.

Cheers. See you in the next one.