I’m very careful in choosing my friends. However, recently God gave me a close friend in a very unexpected way. Chérie is a 19-year-old girl I have known since she started attending church several years ago, but I didn’t know her very well. In September or October last year we found out she had made some poor choices and had gotten pregnant. She had been staying in a town four hours away for a while, but as soon as she came back to Natitingou, I started spending more time with her and helping her with medical expenses.

The event that cemented our friendship was pretty dramatic. One Sabbath afternoon, after Chérie’s boyfriend, who is not the father of the child, had broken up with her, she sent me (and several others) a text message saying she had gone out into the hills behind her house and had drunk some poison. She didn’t think she would see me again. I messaged her back; “Where are you? We’re coming to find you. God loves you, and so do I!”

A search party went out, and Jason kept looking for Chérie until 11:30 p.m., when we finally decided to end the search for the night. I stayed home with the kids, praying over and over that God would spare her life.

Sunday morning I got a phone call saying she had been found, so Jason jumped back on the motorcycle and headed out to help bring her back to town. With the help of several other church members, he brought her to our house so he could take her to the hospital in our car. When they took her to the hospital she was unconscious, but after some medication and heavenly intervention, she came to, sat up and said; “Can I go home now?”

The drama of those 24 hours are hard to put into words, but we all praised God the next day when an ultrasound showed that nothing was wrong with Chérie or the baby. “I don’t know what was wrong with the poison I took,” she said later. “It should have worked. Maybe it was out of date.”

Chérie stayed at our house that night so I could give her doses of charcoal and keep a watch on her physical and mental state. Petra and Kaia doted on her, and every time she woke up from her naps they wanted to play with her. I didn’t know exactly how it started, but I knew that God had planted a love for me in Chérie that caught me by surprise in its intensity.

After this we started spending more time together. One day we invited Chérie to visit the village of Boukoumbé with us so she could get out of the house a little. A few days later she asked if we would be going again because her dad wanted her to come with him to greet some family members in a village nearby, and they wanted to get a ride. I told her we would try to arrange something.

Our car has been having quite a bit of trouble lately, and the week before Christmas, when we had planned to go, Jason told me to tell Chérie we wouldn’t be able to go after all until he had fixed the car. He was also concerned that her father wanted to take her there to do ceremonies. When I told her we wouldn’t be able to go, I also asked; “Are you sure you’re not going to do ceremonies there?”

She replied confidently, “No, my parents told me that because I’m not together with the father of the child, I don’t have to do any ceremonies.”

But later we heard through other sources that the plan was indeed to go and do ceremonies. I was disappointed that she had lied to me, and I kept my distance for a few days. I had thought about inviting her to celebrate Christmas with us but didn’t feel like it anymore. I have a hard time with people who don’t tell me the truth. I would keep helping her financially, but I didn’t feel like there was much point in trying to keep the friendship going.

Finally, on the morning of Christmas Eve, Chérie came by to visit. “I just want to tell you what God has done in my life,” she told me, smiling. I nodded as she kept talking. “God kept your car from working so you couldn’t take me to the village. I didn’t know they wanted me to do ceremonies there. I found out when I went to visit my older brother [a church member]. He told me to think long and hard about whether I really wanted to return to the old ways, now that I am attending church and have been baptized. I don’t want to return to the old ways! My parents lied to me. They said I wouldn’t have to do ceremonies, but that was the plan all along.”

I was so rebuked. As Chérie told me her story, God was speaking simultaneously in my mind. Why hadn’t I prayed more for her when I heard about the plan to do ceremonies? Why had I automatically thought she was lying to me? Why hadn’t I sought her out to find out what she was thinking and how she was doing spiritually? I could have helped her, but instead I had shied away from her, so easily letting the enemy of souls quench the God-given love I had felt for her. I apologized to Chérie for not trusting her and invited her to come for lunch and celebrate Christmas Eve with us. When I asked her later in the afternoon if she would stay until after supper or if she wanted to go home, she said; “I’ll stay. I’m at home when I’m here.”

This is the first time in my life that someone this close to me has attempted to commit suicide and I was able to play a part in their recovery, and I hope it’s the last. But more than that, I hope and pray that I have learned my lesson when it comes to friendships. I want my first response to challenges to be prayer. What about you?

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