Brian "Barnabus" Omulokoli, My friend

I woke up this morning knowing that I had a very important meeting with a man from a missionary sending agency that was critical to our support and ministry here in Massachusetts. I slept in due to a very long weekend at our Fall Retreat and a long day of service and ministry yesterday at church. I quickly jumped in and out of the shower and began to dress for the day. Our washer broke, so we had the repairman here to look at it and tel us what needed to be done to fix it ($150 and about a weeks wait of course). As I was telling the girls and Christie goodbye, I got a phone call from my friend Matthew Ussery. I thought he was calling to tell me about his internship at his church or maybe what dumb thing the seminary had done now. I began blathering on about our church and how great it was to be in Western Mass really doing what I felt God had created me to do. I talked non-stop about discipleship and ministry. Matthew waited for a pause, by this time I was nearly at the end of my driveway. Then he said, "Speaking of people you have helped disciple, have you heard about Barnabus? I saw a conversation on Facebook about him dying yesterday." I heard the words and as my brain processed this information, my body went numb which unfortunately meant my hands and feet which were driving the van. The van rolled to a slow crawl as I began to listen to Matthew apologize for having to tell me this.

I turned the van around and ran into the house asking the girls to move from the computer so I could confirm what Matt was talking about. I got onto Facebook and saw message after message from my friends and students talking about Barnabus and how much they miss him. I got off the phone with Matt and looked at my phone and saw that I had my phone on silent and that I missed several calls and my friend Shawn Elledge who works at the North American Missions Board had left a message last night telling me that Barnabus had died.

Barnabus is gone. I will never be able to pick up the phone when I see Barnabus is calling and hear him say, "Hello Mr. McCullah." in his thick African accent. I will never get to see him dance again hear on earth. I will not get to celebrate when he goes to Virginia Tech which he so looked forward to.

I will however get to see Barnabus again. He is now walking alongside Jesus and singing praises to Him. He is dancing for Jesus, because being near Jesus and knowing Jesus just makes you want to dance. He is there because of Jesus, because of submitting his life to Jesus and trusting that in Him is real life.

I will see Barnabus again. My heart hurts until then.