Yemisi Ayorinde is a pastor and certified marriage counsellor. In this interview by Olawale Olaniyan, she shares her experience as a pastor, marriage counsellor and author. Excerpt.
What motivated you to go into marriage counselling, parenting and family issues?
Your background has a lot to do with what you become in life. My parents were not happily married so while growing up, I had to live with one uncle or the other at different stages of my life. I believed in my heart that by the special grace of God, I must have a happy home and God helped me a lot by giving me a good husband who has been intentional about his own marriage as well. Our union is something we are very grateful to God for. My husband himself said his parents were not happily married, his father had children from other women and they were like tenants living under the same roof, they were not particularly a happy family. So, we just decided that we will help people to have a happy home.
I must not play away from the role of God concerning my calling because God made it possible for me to have a happy home and when people see that you are happy, they will actually want to know how you were doing it and that was how I started. On parenting matters, people meet our children and they start asking me questions like; at what stage did Damilola start playing the keyboard? Or start commending my children for their good behaviour.
Eleven years ago, I was somewhere and I met one of the teachers in my children’s primary school, the brother said, ‘‘aunty, you were one of the parents that we teachers used to be afraid of. When you stepped in, we don’t usually know what to expect from you.” He said they had a lot of respect for me, adding that when I am around, they were always on their toes because they were aware that I know my onions. On that day, he pleaded with me that I should ensure I write a book on good parenting. That was how I sat down and started compiling the book on Parenting. He spoke to me for over an hour on that day.
Where did you acquire your knowledge in parenting from?
May the soul of my mother-in-law rest in perfect peace. She taught me a lot about how to care for one’s children. She was a London- trained midwife and she had a lot of thing to hand over to me on how to take care of my children, medically speaking because she had two children, she was passionate about them and I just took after her that you can not just do any rubbish with my children, I will have to thrash it out with you.
Are you saying your background motivated you to write on marriage?
The books I wrote on marriage was due to my background. My books on parenting was because I believed that having a child at all is a rare privilege. A lot of people have money, they have all it takes and they have not been privileged to have children. If God in His infinite mercy gives you children, you should be grateful to Him. I don’t believe that having many children mean that you love children. I believe in you having the number of children you can cope with, the number of children you can be sure that you will take proper care of because life is so expensive. I believe that you should have at least three. If God permits you to have children, I don’t believe it will be so hard to take care of three children but for me three is the minimum and it is also the maximum, that is the way I feel, but I know it may not be easy. There were days that we had to take a bank loan to send them to school. I believe in qualitative education and I believe in sending my children to the best affordable schools within our reach. I remember I was in the old Trans Bank and I was filling three tellers for our three children at Lifeforte primary school, a parent came and said is this money not too much? And this is a lady I don’t even know and I replied to her that it was nothing compared to what some parents were paying in Lagos, so, I’m prepared to pay, thank you for your opinion.
I also believe that parents should teach their children the right culture, how to behave in society because having a child is a privilege and you have to be close to your children because this world we are in, is a very funny place.
So, how do you finance your foundation and YouTube channel?
God has been faithful. As a pastor in-charge of a parish, I believe that God has sent me to the people in that parish. During my birthday, there was a drama about me, they said I always tell them about their lives, that I’m not just a pastor but a mother. That is because I want to see them fulfill their destinies. Seeing one of my sons, a photographer in a church, when I attended a function, covering the event, I was very happy. I was actually using a particular popular studio here in Ibadan to cover every of my programmes especially when I have couples dinner, I always have a yearly dinner for couples but immediately my spiritual son, David developed his passion in photography, I did away with that studio. I told him, David, I want you to come out with me and meet people and ever since God has been faithful and that is the kind of thing that makes me happy.
If anybody in our church needs any assistance, whatever it is, He has been faithful to provide whatever I need to take care of them.
So, how do you now combine your pastoral assignment, foundation with home front?
Home front? God has been good, to be candid. I became a pastor when my last son was in his final year in the university, so it’s not that I won’t be having time for THE family. And like I always say, God is good. My husband does not work in town, he is a federal civil servant. He hardly comes around but when he does, I give him all the time and we thank God for mobile phone this day. I don’t remember how many times we speak in a day, we speak regularly. When mobile phones came, for us in our family, it was not a status symbol kind of a thing, it was a necessity, my husband got phones for all the children, if he phones me two times and I didn’t pick up, he would start calling the children and ask where is your mum? What is she up to now? so, for us, phones have helped us to keep in touch with each other. We have one of us out of the country now, thank God for the mobile phone, we keep in touch regularly and the mobile phone had been of great use to our family. And we have a very interesting relationship, I believe a lot has to do with communication and God helped us to establish a very effective communication within the family and that has been very helpful.
You seem to love your husband very much, can you share how you met him?
We met at his sister’s birthday, they had birthday for the sister. The sister was working in the same place with my father’s first cousin, aunty Bimbo Akindeinde now, I lived with Abiose’s family when I was a young girl. My father’s uncle, Chief Mobolaji Olatunji Abiose took a great interest in me, he actually took me from my mum because according to him, his late sister, my own paternal grandmother handed me over to him to take care of me, so he took me from my mum and brought me to Ibadan and I lived with his family, so in the Abiose family, I’m their last ‘child’ and he also handed me over me to one of his daughters, aunty Bimbo Akindeinde. My aunty was working with my sister in-law at the Federal Palace Hotel, the two of them were colleagues at the place and my husband elder sister now late, Mrs Kofoworola Moh told my cousin that they needed a wife for their brother, my cousin said oh! She too has a younger ‘sister’ that she wanted to see happily married, so when my sister in-law heard about it that my husband was organising a party for her, I was invited. I went with my father’s first cousin, aunty Bimbo, she is still around to the glory of God. She lives in England with her family but at that time, she was living in Lagos. We went to the party together. One interesting thing that my husband and I never really understood was that it was what people call love at first sight. We just liked each other from the moment we saw each other. His friends didn’t believe that was the first time we were meeting. My husband later told me he had been praying that he should never say ‘I do’ with a wrong spouse. He said when he met me, he had a lot of confidence that this was his wife and that motivated him to get to know me more.
He’s a very calm guy, unassuming and caring. I cannot forget that early in our relationship, a friend of mine came from England, she is Folake Oyemade, the brain behind Sam and Sarah garment factory. She was then into buying and selling. She brought some goods from England for sale at that period, so I said to him, ‘Tunde, I need to visit a friend.’ I thought he would stay inside the car but he followed me upstairs to my friend’s place and surprisingly, he bought shoes and bags for me, his sister and my mother-in-law. When I left, my friend told me ‘Yemisi, you have met your husband, he is so caring.” From that point onward, we stuck to each other and loved each other. We met in July 1989 and got married in November 1990.
Your advice for young girls of today who always say my spouse must be okay before we get married?
My husband was not that rich when we met, he was driving a Volkswagen given to him by his mother but I saw that he had a vision. Preachers will tell you that don’t marry a man with television but marry a man that has vision.
Back then, he jokingly would tell me that when he made it in life, he would buy a very good car for his wife and I thought he was just cajoling me but till today, he’s like that, he would ride any car but he would say for my wife, she must ride a very imposing car, so that when people see her, they would wonder who your husband is! And he has kept his promise.
For our young ladies, marry someone that has the fear of God. We met in July and his birthday was in September, for his birthday, I bought him Bible and perfume and that was why he wrote in one of my books that I have the fear of God.
Also, avoid lazy guys, one thing I know about my husband is, he is passionate about his job, no matter what is happening at home, when it’s time for him to be at work, he would go back to work and that has really paid off for him.
Though, we have had our challenges, for instance, he was stagnated on the job for 16 years, for his kind of his job, not having promotion was a terrible thing because it meant that in those 16 years, he was saluting his junior that rose above him, it was a terrible situation but God remained faithful.
Life at 60, what have you learnt ma?
Several lessons. If you read my book, “Counting my blessing at 60,” there are several lessons that I have learnt; relationships are for some seasons, I have learnt that but in all, don’t lose your friends, keep them. Everyone has one thing or the other they can contribute positively to your life, I have discovered that. Don’t look down on anybody, God can bless anyone at anytime, the people you are looking up to now, God can suddenly bless you beyond them.
The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God , Pastor E.A Adeboye had blessed us severally, that people we are looking up to, would suddenly start looking up to us, there is nothing God cannot do at anytime. I believe we should leave a very humble life. I love them in this community that when we move from here, I will miss them. In fact I see myself coming back regularly because this is really Isokan Estate (Unity Estate).
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