Senior pastor of Daystar Christian Center, Sam Adeyemi, has opened up on why he decided to relocate to the United States.
In a recent episode of the Mic On Podcast, Adeyemi shared that he and his family have been residing in America since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
The 57-year-old pastor revealed that they had initially planned to return to Nigeria but decided against it due to the violence that erupted during the EndSARS protests against police brutality.
After the protest ended, Sam Adeyemi recounted how he and his wife experienced “bad dreams” about potential dangers each time they set dates to return to Nigeria.
Concerned for their safety, Adeyemi called a meeting with the leaders of Daystar Christian Center to discuss the situation. They collectively decided to keep the church operational while he resided in the US.
“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,” Sam Adeyemi said.
“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 would not 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 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 realise I shouted out loud in real life.
“My wife woke me up at 2:00am 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.
“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, pondering the situation. Then I said, ‘You know what? I’ve been a Christian for 40 years. At this point, 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 Center, the top 120 leaders on Zoom. 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.
“Six months, we were still in the US, 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.” (Vanguard)