Seeds & Synergies

On 7th April, I had just finished an exam, and I had to both prepare for the following day’s, plus celebrate my mom’s birthday. At about 4pm, unknown numbers started calling me.

Biggie, have you seen what’s on Facebook? Sam’s dad has posted something—that Sam has di—…”

My heart beat thrice its usual. My eyes were nearly popping out their sockets!

‘No, no, no… It can’t be.’

Another number called. Then another…”Is it true?” “Are you with him?”

I rushed on to WhatsApp. Sam’s sister Ruth had posted this,”Please call back Sam’s spirit! Resurrection prayers only.”

Hoooo. It was battle mode. The online networks were like a marketplace. We got onto a zoom call to raise a dead person.

I could remember all the conversations Sam used to have with me. Especially that one of him raising his brother back from the dead in 2015. In his book, The Tempest, Sam describes how, like his sister, texted his sisters telling them to call Solomon back to life.

Due to his sickler condition too, the brother Sam follows had just suffered convulsions and lost his pulse. Sam, confused while speaking in tongues, felt led to do heart compressions. That’s all he knew how to do in that moment and he wouldn’t stop.

After Sam noticing that Solomon had proper-proper died is when he was whisked into a vehicle by his parents to a hospital.

Twenty minutes or so into the road, Sam found his father’s car on the road as he drove behind it, commanding Solomon to come back to life. Solomon gasped for air in his father’s lap in the car ahead.

A resurrection had just happened. The doctors said if Sam hadn’t administered the first aid, Solomon could have been lost. Sam was thinking, “We had lost him anyway…”

While testifying at St John’s Church Kiwatule (the family local church), no one believed Sam. And still, many don’t believe it. But Solomon himself, confessed saying,

“I saw you Serwano. You and Dad, struggling to bring me back as I drowned in what looked like an abyss. Something was sucking me downwards. Until in the car when you called my name, and something sucked me back up into my body…”

That’s the faith! That’s what drove me to believe that I too would call Sam back that afternoon. Besides, I’d feel his squinting eyes look at me, as if saying, “If you dare not bring me back … ”

Gosh, I believed. I called Sam while on that zoom call having about 50 people praying for him from allover the world. Annoyingly, some people on the call were unmuted with people weeping in the background! I felt enwrathed saying,”Oh ye of little faith, MUTE!”

Sam used to call me his seventh sibling. He adopted me by faith. I couldn’t imagine him not returning nor hearing his elderly guidance ever again. Him dying was simply not the end for me! I ‘marked as read’ all those pitiful condolence messages. I needed only faith-filled texts. I went airplane mode…

For six hours straight we prayed, until midnight, having started at 6pm. To everyone who prayed that day, thank you. I wanted to give faith the benefit of the doubt. If Jesus claims that we can raise the dead, I had to see it this day.

Sam having raised Solomon was enough for me a trampoline, to bounce up onto the wings of ‘Lazarus come forth!’. Oh we called Sam. Oh we declared ‘Talitha Cumi’. ‘Tafudde yebase bwebasi…’

It was so hard to allow the reality that many had settled for. I knew of another possible reality, and that’s where I stayed, in that multiverse. After my exam the following day, I headed to the service. I wore white, specifically to represent resurrection. I didn’t want anybody crying to get close to me. “Keep your tears for the joy!” I would say.

God had promised so much, that I wasn’t ready to give up. Some messages started to come in. Messages contrary to the reality,

“Tomorrow is going to be glorious…” said one of them.

Friday was the burial day. I had an exam in the morning, which the lecturer decided to shift to the afternoon. I called him to explain my situation, he made his line busy. I texted him, but he blue ticked me. I told myself, “I am not going to miss witnessing this resurrection. I’ll do your retake if need be.”

To the burial I went. I didn’t gather with the mourners. I went up on a hill, a spot where Sam used to pray from while at his ancestral home in Kakumiro district. For an hour I was there. The rains came. I couldn’t stop praying in tongues. Time came to lower him in the grave. I looked at the casket and told it that it was joking.

Concrete was poured onto the grave. Bloodshot eyes worn out by tears surrounded me. I expected to hear a knock. A knock on that wooden coffin. I expected a voice. A sarcastic voice to say, “Get me out of here, I was playing a kiwanyi on y’all…”

Someone distracted me. I heard had something… I was pulled away brusquely from the grave. But I still believed. I still believed that even after 4 days, like Lazarus, I’d receive a phone call telling me “A voice was heard from the grave asking to be rescued.”

I continued believing. I had never believed so much in my life… Many things happened. Many things I’ll share in a book soon, for I can’t burden you with longer texts summarised too thinly, that your minds suffer from want of more…

Ruth told me she heard a soft inhale. A soft inhale after Sam had been pronounced hours dead…

Today, Sam would have turned 31. This is a tribute not just for him, but a story for your learning. You are a tree. Yes you the reader; You are a tree, and your seeds drop on paths you cross, in the lives of those you do life with.

Those seeds later influence your friends and family on how to relate or treat you in your highs or lows. For instance, Sam had lots of faith. Being a sickler, he had not to eat certain foods lest his immune system crushes ending him up in hospital.

Guess what! One day, he bought chocolate and ate it and made me swear not to tell his family or they’ll freak out! He believed that Jesus had healed him regardless.

He used to wear glasses. By force (after faith), he abandoned them, saying if Jesus healed him, something had to show. He drove without them, telling Jesus it would be such a shame if He didn’t keep His word or if Sam got an accident. His eyes finally saw well in the year of 2018. Jesus didn’t disappoint!

One time he confessed, (and do not take offence) “Biggie, God’s telling me to stop making noise about sickle cell awareness and instead focus on God’s-Word-awareness.”

As he did all this, I was watching. So, whenever it came to matters around him, by default, I found myself acting in faith just like he had around me. When he challenged me, I also challenged him. There was a dualism to it. It’s more like how the rich hang with the rich.

Who you hangout with moulds and shapes you. He who walks with the wise, shall be wise. This is (no wonder) why I found it so hard to sit back when he was announced dead. “On which grounds? Shyaa! Prove the word!” Sam would say, “What does God write about this?”

You find that he greatly influenced me to the point of doing what he could have done if I was in his position. I’m glad he had done it before. I was imitating him, acting how he’d have acted in this situation!

Sam never gave up on people! He would be so tired, past his home curfew, but he’d safely drop all of them at their gates and then return home. I don’t find it strange, if I as well sacrificed my exams to be there for him. It’s the principle of reaping what you sow. Sam sacrificed the same and more!

Let me ask you; how do people act around you? What seeds have you sown in them? When you commune with them, what synergies are a result? Do you provoke faith out of them? Do you stir joy? Because I’m now believing, we are the factors that determine our kind of environment instituting what we want it to be.

Sam while at TMR hospital, used to crack jokes yet in deep pain. His friends would laugh so loud we were threatened to be kicked out of hospital many atimes! See how his seeds had sprouted the kind of effect & environment he desired around him

Maybe you should stop blaming others about your sad environment and realize that it is you in charge of it!

Solomon died on February 7th 2020, and Sam a year and two months later. Yes they had painful lives filled with unprecedented episodes but Sam dreamt on. Seeing my heart still pumping and they gone, I am forced to treasure every breath, to live intentionally, and to chase every dream inside of me. For if Sam in his state did, then what excuse do the rest of us have!

I know many hate hearing such, but it’s the fact. One day we’ll be gone! May you live a full life! Full of determination, purpose, age, resilience, and audacity to go the opposite direction of the status quo.

Here’s an excerpt from Sam’s journal on 9th September 2020,

“Lord I thank you for this time. I thank you that I clocked 30. I thank you because you’ve been a faithful king, and as I begin the next 30, that your Holy Spirit may guide me. I thank you that I no longer have sickle cells. That my body will instantly respond to this word today! I thank you that our company will grow and be in multiple stores and outlets…”

This prayer had no expectations of death whatsoever. Oh what faith!

Choose to believe God regardless. And scatter the seeds of what you’d like your environment around you to be! Take charge of your life now…

And To the captain
With whom I sailed with
The boisterous waves
Of the sea called life
The seeds you sowed are budding

Quickly creating a forest of trees
Trees of sequoias called faith

Whose wood I’ve cut & sold
Whose sinew I’ve carved & shaped
Into boats & machines
That others can use
To sail the tempests of their own lives

I still feel your brotherly pat
Daring me to do the impossible
May God read you this tribute in Heaven

Happy first earthly birthday in Zion

(Bakuwe akathala 😂)

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Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap

Matthew 7:12 “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.