Yemisi Adeniyi
I’m the sixth of seven children. My daddy was a pastor. Unfortunately, he and my younger brother passed away in 2001. I’m currently an attorney, but that might change soon. My immediate older brother teases me by calling me a “professional student” because I’ve been for the greater part of my life. LOL! I have a Bachelors degree in Philosophy from Obafemi Awolowo University, an LLB in law from University of Lagos (Unilag) and a J.D from William Mitchell College of Law. I’ve been married for 5 years to the best man in the world, Ayo, and we’re blessed with laughter of joy, Erinayo.
One Thing we don’t know about you
My first name is actually Abiodun. My name is Abiodun Oluyemisi (Coker) Adeniyi, but since everyone called my daddy Abiodun, the Yoruba belief was that when people call me Abiodun too it would appear like they were disrespecting my daddy by calling him by his name, so I ended up with my middle name Yemisi.
As a child, I was really attached to my mom and I wanted to go everywhere she went thinking she was going for party every day. Whenever she was going out I’d dress up in my mini heels and “magsy” and wait for her by car. Most of the time she would trick to go get something some upstairs and before I returned she would have left and I would cry profusely for her (how life has changed!). My uncle used to call me “Iya afe” (mother of party), in fact one or two people still call me that. At the age of 7, I went to boarding school in Bedfordshire, England and was there till lower six, about 9 years total . While I was there, I detached myself from my mom and became Miss independent. After lower six I moved back to Nigeria. Moving back was a culture shock and took a while to get used to the mosquitoes and the “9ja factor”.
My return to Nigeria brought me closer to my daddy and I really started to appreciate him. It was kind of odd since we all viewed daddy as an extremely strict person before we went away and even my siblings couldn’t understand how we became close. They were surprised I got away with a lot of things they couldn’t when they were living at home.
Daddy’s influence
Yemisi of today was definitely influenced by her daddy. Even though my father has left us, his legacy still lives on- he was a huge role model in my life. I grew up in a house where at any given time there were 30 people living with us, the majority of whom were people from church or those who needed help one way or the other. My daddy not only fed all these people every day but he also financed their education till they graduated. I grew up seeing a man who not only preached the word but also lived by it. He didn’t hesitate to spend his last penny on helping others. His kindness and generosity was truly admirable and his life exemplified a God-fearing man. As a P.K. (Pastor’s Kid) I didn’t know anything else but God right from childhood and it meant we were involved deeply in church (Christ Apostolic Church). Back then when daddy made us go for choir practice or church functions I used to complain to no end about needing a break. It was not until later in life that I began to appreciate the need and importance of why he made us go through all the 6AM prayers and church services. My daddy was definitely a huge influence. As for my mom, she played the “supportive wife” role excellently. She supported whatever direction daddy was leading us. The fact that she upheld daddy’s directions made it easier on us on which path we needed to follow. She is spiritually gifted and very prayerful and her prayer protected our family in times of troubles.
Passionate or Fiery
I’m always looking for new challenges; and I think that is crucial to getting where I want to go. In the process I’m therefore always hungry for new opportunities and at the same time I love the process of getting things done. Definitely, I might come across as extremely passionate or aggressive about a task, but I can’t help committing my all whenever I embark on a challenge. And because of my drive and energy, I often find it difficult working with passive or laid back people. I know that I could probably get irritating sometimes, but aren’t we all! But thankfully I don’t have a problem apologizing afterwards. I must say I try not to put myself out there always as being too aggressive especially when I get passionate.
Strong Tower Story
Back in 2005, some friends invited me to Strong Tower. Initially I was skeptical about coming because I was uncomfortable with the church being a predominantly African congregation. I was surprised when I came and liked what I saw so I decided to start coming since I was beginning to lose connection where I was worshiping at the time.
Since we joined Strong Tower, Pastor and his family have been a blessing. My family and I have been blessed by the dynamic preaching and I love the people. The funny thing is the reason I was skeptical about coming to a mostly African church is what I have now fallen in love with here. And I also enjoy the sense of belonging. Good examples are the family picnic and the Thanksgiving dinner – it’s like one huge family. Truth is as immigrants, we have our unique issues which may not usually be addressed by an All-American church. For instance, the prayers may not speak to my unique background. Or even native-born Americans may not be able to relate to the importance of us sending money home or that you have enemies from back home. But Strong Tower Parish gets my immigrant issues and situations and addresses them very well. Those are some of the personal examples of the benefits of being here.
Making Progress
We should do more to be less churchy. And we should be fine with being an immigrant church. We are immigrants! Praise the Lord! Let’s reach out to others based on who we are rather than portraying ourselves only as an international church. Yes, we are an international church but we are also immigrants. I think we should embrace our personality, uniqueness and who we are and use it as a winning point rather than a down side. We should also be mindful that the attention span of the average person right now is reducing by generation and having long services tends to lose the younger generation.
Glorywood (Drama Group)
I believe this group can go further than even Mount Zion Films. But it’s left to the individual members to stir the passion to make it happen. One person cannot make everybody do it. It takes collaboration and team work. And if a team is not willing to collaborate, it’s a total waste of time. I know we can be huge; with a name like Glorywood? C’mon! We can only go up and up. There is exactly where we want to be. Our biggest challenge is commitment. We started with a stage play the next thing should be motion films we will sell globally. It’s amazing how far movies and drama ministrations can take us places we ourselves can’t go and that’s the benefit of being in the film industry. Also Glorywood can actualize the notion of church without walls. It’s having the passion, drive and believing that this is workable. If we don’t all have that, stage is all we’ll get to do.
Final words
We all need to pray for relocation to Zion City, to pray for Pastor and support the vision. Also we should all please make efforts to reach out to others we don’t usually talk to or know. I know we all have our comfort zone, but we need to push ourselves to go beyond that. You’ll be surprised at the impact of your conversation with others.
