Armed With 25 Years Experience, The Olotus Share Recipes On How Young Couples Can Achieve An Equilibrium That Makes Divorce An Impossibility In Their Marriages
Marriage is sweet when you are married to the right person and sweeter when you both understand and apply the ingredients that make it work.
Pastor in Foursquare Gospel Church and Zonal Superintendent of Open Heavens Missionary Zone, Reverend Joshua Olaseinde Olotu and his wife, Pastor Vic Olotu, have been married for 25 years and they have great testaments to share that hearkening to the leading of God lays a solid foundation for happy matrimony.
In an interview with Daily Sun, the couple went down memory lane to recall how their love story started, how they both walked by faith to accept each other as a future partner and how 25 years after, they have no regrets.
From their experience, the Olotus give a recipe on how couples can manage their home and achieve an equilibrium that makes divorce an impossibility in their marriage.
Enjoy below…
How did you meet your wife and what gave you the conviction that she’s the one?
Husband: We were youths in Foursquare Gospel Church Idimu. We were there together for a number of years before we started thinking in terms of marriage. In those days, when you want to marry someone, you pray and receive direction. You must report to your pastor; that was what I did. When I felt a leading to talk to her, I didn’t go to her directly.
We discussed as friends. As youths, we met, talk, chat and we had different fellowship those days. We saw each other at evangelism, youth meetings, and prayer meetings. We went to camp together. When I felt I had a leading about marriage, I told my pastor who told me to go and pray, and I did for a while before he asked me to tell her if I was still very convinced.
I proposed to her at a vigil. At a youth vigil, I walked up to her and said, “Sister Vic, are you already thinking of marriage?” she said no and I said I’m already thinking that she should go and pray, which she agreed to. I didn’t say much after that.
So I postponed it again for some time before I finally told her my feeling towards her. She said she’d go and pray and by the time she finished praying the senior pastor called her and she confirmed to him before coming to me. That was how we started.
What attracted you to her?
Husband: So many things attracted me to her but they’re not the sensual things. Then she was a very neat sister, she was an usher, she was very diligent in the work of God. Those were the things that made me really like her as a Christian sister, not as a wife. She was usually the first usher to arrive and the last to leave.
For evangelism, she was always at the forefront. Even when youths were asked to contribute things in the church in those days, she was always at the forefront. When others were seeing impossibilities in things, she’d asked, why can’t it be done?
What’s your own story?
Wife: He proposed to me at the vigil and asked me what I think about getting married. I said I don’t have it in mind for now. He asked me to go and pray and I agreed. I told my senior sister, who was my mother and best friend, about what he told me. But I confessed to her that I didn’t like him because, as at then, he had pimples all over his body and I was the kind of person that liked a neat person.
His dressing too wasn’t appealing to me; we were not even close despite that he was the president of the youth fellowship. I also didn’t like him because he was too jovial. I discussed this with my sister and she discouraged me from praying, but anytime I kneeled to pray, my mind kept going back to what he told me. I didn’t know he had discussed it with our senior pastor who happened to be my mentor.
The day I was convinced about it, I went to my pastor and told him that I felt peace. When I pray about something and I receive peace, I know that that thing is good for me but when my heart is shaky, I’d go and pray more. My father in the Lord called us together and prayed for us. To the glory of God, we courted for four years.
Your sister opposed at first, what happened thereafter?
Husband: After receiving the conviction from God, I prayed to God that, if indeed He is with me in this journey, my sister should call and say she’s happy with it. She called me and told me that since the day I told her about him, her mind had not been at rest that he may actually be the will of God for me. That gave me a second assurance that God is truly in it.
Any opposition?
Wife: My mother was a major opposition. She told me not to marry him. She said she’s scared because we are not from the same village. I’m from Ilesha while my husband is from Ekiti. My mother was scared about moving from Ilesha to Ekiti, a place I knew nothing about. She said she doesn’t want anything like that.
My mother did not agree for one day that I should go ahead and marry him; then I told my mother that if any man is in Christ he is a new creature. This man is a new man and I’m a new girl, our coming together will be new forever and it had been new every day.
She told me she had asked prophets to pray for her and those ones told her that even if I marry the man I will not give birth; then I told her that the Bible says if any man be in Christ…” – if that is that, it means God is giving me a new body, a new soul and a new home, so don’t worry about giving birth. To the glory of God, I have three beautiful girls. She saw my three children before she died and was very happy. She urged everyone to worship my God.
Husband:Â There was no opposition [from my side]. My father in particular thought of me as an unserious person because I was very jovial. They all assumed I was going to translate that kind of nature to my marital life. When I told my dad about her, he agreed immediately. My immediate elder brother too knew her in the church and he accepted.
Did you see into his future that he’d become a pastor?
Wife: If I had seen into his future that he’d become a pastor, that would have given me fear because I didn’t want to marry a pastor. I had never for one day prayed to marry a pastor but when I gave my life to Christ in Surulere, all the mummies there were saying “this girl you’d marry a pastor…” I used to reject it then not knowing that they were prophesying into my future.
My husband was not a pastor when I married him; if he told me he wanted to be a pastor, I’d have begged him not to be one, because I know that the journey is not for babies, it’s for those that are ready to serve God but since I found myself in it, God has been my helper, I didn’t know I could do it. If I wanted to marry a pastor, there were so many pastors that had proposed to me, but I refused because I didn’t want to be a pastor’s wife.
God actually took my husband from me by force because when one of our fathers in the Lord wanted him to go to Bible College I refused. The man said: “Can’t you see that God is using your husband?” I still didn’t budge. Although, before we got married, he was already a council member of the church and a house fellowship leader and he preached in our Gospel Nights but I was still seeing him as a brother.
That time, he had malaria that refused to heal. I was so scared, all the drugs I gave to him, none of them worked. The pastor came and asked me if I wanted malaria to vanish, I said yes. Then the pastor brought out the Bible College form.
I asked the pastor: “If my husband goes to the Bible college, will he be alright?” and he said yes, that if it is not so, I should not call him a man of God, and till today when I see that man of God I revere him because he’s truly a man of God. Ever since my husband became a man of God, I enjoy him more than ever. If I had known, I would have allowed him to be a pastor since.
What year in your marriage did you become a pastor?
Husband: I became a full-fledged pastor in 2001. That was when I graduated from Bible College, but in 1991, I finished theological education, by extension, they’d changed the name to Certificate of Christian Ministry (CCM) and immediately I completed that course in 1991 they started using me at different levels.
As a mother, businesswoman, career woman how do you cope with all of these responsibilities?
Wife: God’s grace is enough for me. I’m a teacher, for me to teach, do the house chores, come to church and all, it has been God’s grace because I didn’t know I can do it but His grace is sufficient for me. I plan ahead of time. And I ensure that nothing truncates my mapped out plans and the Holy Spirit has been my supporter helping me to do all these things and has not allowed me to fail.
How do you handle anger, money issues?
Wife: The journey has been so interesting for us. If I had married another person, I would not have enjoyed my life because my husband is my father. I don’t have an earthly father and he has been in that position for me because I’m still his baby.
We do so many things together. We are like twins and the journey has been so interesting because we love each other with the love of Christ, not superficial love. He calls me his mother too because Christ is the builder of our home.
We base our love on Christ the solid Rock and our house is always full of drama and fun. Once I realize he is angry, I apologize from the bottom of my heart, not the tongue and once we apologize to each other, it is settled.
We don’t keep bad records and to the glory of God nobody has settled quarrel for us for the past 25 years, even our children do not get to know when we have a quarrel. We forgive easily and we learn how to say sorry.
Husband: As two individuals from different backgrounds, there’s no how there will be no differences. In our days there were no marriage counsellors. We read books, and in my house now, I have so many books.
When I was much younger, I buy so many books to the point that she once told me that I’d use all my salary to buy books. We read books and we depend on God. We also don’t keep malice; before we sleep, we must settle; there is no disagreement––and she’s a very good wife. She’s also a good mother.
She’s also a good planner, especially, economically. She manages money excellently unlike me; on a very large scale, the money issue is a major problem in homes, but in ours, money has never really been a problem. She knows that if there’s money, I don’t hide it. She knows what I have in my account and I know hers too.
Being involved in the same occupation, has it in any way impacted negatively on the home front?
Husband: She started out as a seamstress. Sometimes, I assisted her. She had a shop with a machine for grinding pepper. We bought the machine together; I also assist her with that. Over time, when we started having children, she went to Nigerian Teachers Institute; she then went for NCE at the Federal College of Education Akoka in 2010.
When she finished there, she switched to teaching. She’s a good planner. What we’d eat for the next one week she already has a time table for it. The course she studied, Home Economics, really helped her.
Those days when the children were very young, while she’s taking care of the first one, I’d be busy helping out with the second one, thus managing the home was not a big deal for us. Though I’m not too good with house chores, I try as much as I can to assist in the most possible way.
Does this occupation rub off on the kids?
Wife: Our children are doing fine academically. The first is a graduate now, she’s already working. Our second child will complete her university education this year. The third one is in the school of nursing. It really rubs off on them because they see that education is the best legacy we can ever leave them with.
Having only girls, are you happy with that?
Husband: It was God that planned our children, God helped us to space them. Right from the onset, I know that the Bible says, children are the heritage of the Lord. So I have no misgivings whatsoever on the gender of a child.
Initially, I wanted to have one child either a boy or a girl. When we had the first daughter, I was okay with it. But my wife begged to consider a second child which I did; when the second one came as a girl, I was very glad.
I remember the day she came back from the hospital after going for a scan for the third pregnancy and they told her a girl, as she was coming in, she was crying and saying “a girl again.” I pacified her.
I also remember the day she delivered at a hospital, I was jumping and the nurses were surprised that I was jumping that I had a girl child. I told them it doesn’t matter because whether a boy or a girl, if you give them the proper training and they know the Lord and they know the dreams they want to pursue in life, they would make it.