The Founder and Senior Pastor of Daystar Christian Centre in Lagos, Sam Adeyemi, has disclosed the reason he decided to stay put in the United States of America
The cleric said this during a virtual interview with Seun Okinbaloye on his programme ‘Mic On’ podcast.
During the interview, Adeyemi revealed that COVID-19, EndSARS protests, and, notably, troubling dreams about Nigeria, prompted his relocation.
He said:
“When COVID-19 started, all our children were in the US, so everyone stayed with their families. We stayed with our children. The week services resumed was when EndSARS started, so we were preparing to return to Nigeria. When the EndSARS protests ended in violence, we stayed back a bit. When we were ready to return to Nigeria, a different experience altogether happened.
My wife had a dream in which she travelled to Nigeria and returned to the US, which was a bad dream. I told her I wouldn’t say I liked this dream.
Three days later, I had a dream. We both travelled to Nigeria in my dream, and I was in a big fight. I was being attacked violently, and I had to ask the Holy Spirit in my heart what to do. He said I should call the name of Jesus Christ. I shouted ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’ in the dream and didn’t realize I shouted out loud in real life.
My wife woke me up at 2am by hitting me and asking what was going on. We decided to take it seriously, especially considering a dream we had three days earlier. We prayed fervently, sensing danger. Three hours later, I fell back asleep and had another dream. We were in Nigeria this time, and I was in a fight,” he said
He further disclosed that whenever he and his wife set dates and booked flights to return to Nigeria, he would have a bad dream about something terrible happening to him there (Nigeria). He further stated that he had never experienced two dreams about the same event in one night.
“A few days later, we called family members in Nigeria, and one person said, ‘I’m feeling very uncomfortable about you travelling to Nigeria.’ We called another family member who said, ‘I feel uncomfortable about you coming. What is going on?’ We just turned and looked at each other and were like what is going on. From that point onwards, whenever we fixed the date and booked our seats on the flight, I would have a dream and it would be a dream that something bad would happen to me in Nigeria. I then said I have been a Christian for 40 years. If God is speaking to me, I should have an idea that it is God speaking. Something is going on. I don’t know what it is, but I want to pray more. And at that point, we called a meeting of all the leaders in Daystar Christian Centre—the top 120 leaders on Zoom.”
Adeyemi added that he informed the elders of Daystar about the situation, and they agreed to keep the church running.
“They said you’ve never deceived us before. If God asks you to stay, stay as long as He directs. We’ll continue this journey,” he said
Adeyemi said he and his wife stayed in the US after the church leaders’ Zoom meeting.
“Six months later, we were still in the US for one year, tearing me apart. I discovered that, until COVID-19, I’d been out of Nigeria for eight weeks. To now be away when you had the church with 40,000 members” he said.
