EPISODE NINE
Great­Kali was really a professional in the game just as he claimed, imagine the big save which looks like a cupboard in his house. The save is even more secured than bank vaults, with the kind of locks he constructed to it. He went to the save and opened it with one of the keys in his key holder, arranged each currency domination in where they belong and golds at the bottom of the save. Immediately he is done with the arrangement of all he achieved in that days job, he yawned and laid on the bed; ME: So you have a mini bank in your house yet you still go out there to rob people of their peanut? GREAT­KALI: I saw something special in you, that was why I decided to help you, but it seems you aren’t ready to unleash that special substance in you. For your information i’m not an illiterate like you think, everybody have his or her story to tell okay, so you better buckle up and be wise ME: You amaze me, you’re a graduate and decided to dumb your certificate or what? GREAT­KALI: Not only did I dump it but I set it ablaze, as long as I am in this country it is of no use ME: What do you mean by it is of no use?. There is great tendency that it will be of use someday GREAT­KALI: Guy, if you depend on your certificate you will end up in the psychiatric home after much frustration from companies and those on sits. ME: You might be right but that doesn’t mean you will have to engage in such crafty job all in the name of making it big GREAT­KALI: Pack your bone face Mr. Adviser, when you are ready let me know I want to sleep now.
I watch him as he dozed off, snoring like an elephant. I tried to make myself comfortable in the house, and later reach for a vacant space in the bed where I will rest. I imagined all what he said thoroughly seeing sense in every statement he made apart from the business he later settled for, I can do any kind of business in this life but not robbery because it isn’t part of me, and my mother won’t be of support, if she finds out. I concluded to stay with him for the main time until I get a job.
———
THE NEXT DAY MORNING
I was still on bed sleeping, when Great­Kali woke me up; GREAT­KALI: My guy I dey go hustling oo, you dey online abi offline? ME: I appreciate your help and all you have done for me, but that job of yours is what I can never do GREAT­KALI: Na so you talk am? No problem na, make I waka (He was about opening the door when he turned back) GREAT­KALI: My spare key dey on top of the TV oo, in case you won go out make you lock my door well because thief full this area, I can’t afford to lose my hard earn money from the street. Manage this two thousand naira take eat today (throwing the money on the bed where I was) ME: Thanks bros GREAT­KALI: Nor thank me, thank your God for making me to pick you as my partner in crime. Bye (In my mind i was like: Partner in crime kê)
I stood up from the bed some minutes after he left, took my bath, freshen up, carried my file and was about leaving the house when my phone started ringing;
**picked** LUCKY: Brother Eli, Mama is down again oo ME: Mama….. down…. again….? Is she sick? (With fear flowing on my bloodstream) LUCKY: Yes, She hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday evening, and now she is laying on the bed since, without telling us what the problem is ME: You expect her to talk before you’ll do what is right eh? Please take her to the hospital and get back to me. LUCKY: Okay bros ME: Hope you have something with you, I mean any money? LUCKY: Yes, I have about six thousand naira ME: Then start going I’ll call you back. *Hang up* I could not go out again because of the present state of my mother, I called Lucky after an hour and he disclosed to me that mama is fine, but the doctor said if the operation is not done in two weeks time she won’t survive it. I kept on thinking of where and how to raised two hundred thousand naira, but couldn’t come out with a possible means. The only hope now is Great­Kali who has the money right in his house, but i don’t know if he’ll agree to borrow me the money. Just like a flash news, a strange suggestion came into my mind; I should just look for a way to break his big save and run away with the exact amount I needed. But running away with his money is the same thing as joining him in the job he does to raise the money, which I said I can’t partook. I kept on contemplating and concluded that taking the money is the best solution because he also took mine, and i’m doing it for a genuine reason not for a selfish purpose… My taught was still battling with my mind, when I saw a toolbox under the shelf in the house. I quickly reach for it and brought out the necessary tools to use. I successfully damaged the key in the next 5minutes. Wow! I exclaimed, I didn’t wasted a second as I started throwing clips of notes into my bag. Suddenly the door was wide opened with bright light rays moving directly into my eyes. What a mess! I didn’t lock the door.
I composed myself out of shock as I stared at the door to see the person who opened it.
TO BE CONTINUED…

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I was determined that the proposal would be creative. After I bought a diamond ring, I called Krickitt’s
room-mates, Megan and Lisa, to help me set the stage for my visit. Their apartment had a security gate, and my plan was for one of the other girls to answer the buzzer so I could surprise Krickitt. They were happy to play along and easily got me inside the apartment complex without Krickitt finding out. I showed up outside their apartment in a suit and tie, despite my unusual aversion to dress clothes. Then I started yelling Krickitt’s name.

She soon came out onto her balcony, a modern-day Juliet in shorts and Nikes. I was holding flowers, a teddy bear with balloons tied to it, and a ring box. The unusual sight struck her speechless, but only for an instant.

“What are you doing here?” She yelled down to me.

“Well . . . Will ya?” I shouted back.

My heart dropped as she disappeared from the balcony, but it was only a second before I could see her flying down the stairs toward me.

“Will I what?” she asked expectantly.

I got down on one knew, looked her in the eye, and asked the most important question of my life.

“Will you be my lifetime buddy? Krisxan, will you marry me?”

Krickitt took a quick breath and said the words I knew would come but was still dying to hear, “Yes, I will.”

After embracing we stood back away from each other and after a pause asked, “Now what do we do?”

My original plan was that we’d get married the following spring. Krickitt admitted she didn’t want to wait that long. I agreed with her thinking, so I tossed out a nearer date: Christmas. That was still too far off for her. So we set September 18, bare3ly three months away, as the day we would become husband and wife.

I went back to Las Vegas to get the apartment ready for my future wife, and Krickitt jumped headfirst into wedding planning. She began making long-distance arrangements from Anaheim for a ceremony at Scottsdale Bible Church in suburban Phoenix, near her parent’s home.

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Episode 1 http://www.shadowstories.ml/2016/11/the-vow-chapter-1-episode-1.html

Episode 2 http://www.shadowstories.ml/2016/11/the-vow-chapter-1-episode-2-true-events.html

Episode 3 http://www.shadowstories.ml/2016/11/the-vow-chapter-1-episode-3-true-events.html

I made the two-hour trip to Albuquerque to pick her up at the airport. In those pre-9/11 days there were no restrictions on who could go through the security checkpoints at airports, so I was able to meet her at the gate.
I spotted her the second she emerged from the jet way. I had seen her picture, so I knew who to look for, but I think I could have picked her out of the crowd even If I hadn’t known what she looked like. I felt we had so much in common and had such a wonderful friendship already. Even though I already knew she was very attractive, when I finally saw her in the flesh I could hardly believe how beautiful she was. After all those hours on the phone, I finally had a real live Person to match with that amazing voice.
Once we finally didn’t have to worry about an astronomical phone bill we talked almost nonstop all weekend. That first evening we talked about everything: our childhoods, our families, our jobs, our love of sports, our friends, and our incredible long-distance friendship. But more than anything else we talked about our faith. I already knew she was much more mature in her faith than I was, but I soon discovered that she didn’t feel like she was superior to me. Instead she encouraged me to get to know God better and to follow him completely. She was so confident in who she was and in who God is.
After many hours we both stopped to catch our breath at the same time. In the silence, Krickitt glanced out the window. I saw astonishment on her face as she pointed at something outside. I turned to look and discovered that the sun had already risen. We had talked all night without realizing it.
The next day Krickitt attended the Cowboys’ double header, and both games were one-run losses. That evening, after the games, we talked again. I wasn’t in an especially happy mood after the results of the days’ games, and I got even more depressed while I told Krickitt about my mother, who was going through a serious illness. Yet for some reason I opened up to Krickitt in a way I never had with anyone else. l was amazed that she understood me and sympathized with me in a way I’d never felt before, and I knew then that this was something special. She wanted to know about my fears and challenges, and I wanted to discover the same about her.

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EPISODE 2
It was no surprise to anyone that Krickitt as energetic and athletic. Her dad had once coached high school basketball and baseball. Her mother coached gymnastics, which Krickitt had taken a liking to from the time she was old enough to make her way down a
balance beam. In fact, she learned how to do a back handspring before she knew how to write her name.
I thought I was a sports fanatic, but Krickitt put me to shame. From kindergarten on, she practiced gymnastics every day after school in her mom’s gym, and she put in five hours a day during the summers. At sixteen, she tore the rotator cuff in her right shoulder, but her orthopedic surgeon told her an operation would probably kill her chances for a college scholarship. So she suffered through and just kept at it, excelling in floor exercises and the balance beam she didn’t let a little pain stop her.
It was no surprise that Krickitt got multiple scholarship offers from schools with reputable gymnastics programs. She ended up choosing California state university at Fullerton, which had offered her a full gymnastics scholarship. She was a two-time Academic All-American there before giving up competition after she tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during her senior year.
Though many of our initial conversations were about sports, Krickitt wasted no time getting to the spiritual part of our relationship. A few months into our friendship, she wrote this: “You said I can ask you anything, so I must be honest, Kimmer. You know that I am a Christian. Being a Christian Is having an ongoing intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. I guess what I have been wondering this whole time is if you were a Christian too --- if you had made the decision to ask Christ into your life to pay the penalty of your sin, and give you eternal life like he has promised if we ask.”
Her faith was her life, and no matter what else she thought about me, she had to have a peace about my spiritual side before she could have any sort of relationship with me. As we talked through this part of our lives, we learned we were both Christians and had discovered Christ at the same age, but from that point our spiritual journeys had gone in different directions.
I was fourteen years old when I first learned about Jesus while at a friend’s house. When I heard that Christ had died for me so my sins could be forgiven, it was the most awesome news I’d ever heard. I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my parents about it. But when I started telling them what I felt, it didn’t click with them at all.
My parents were nominal churchgoers, but I don’t think they had ever felt what I was feeling at that moment. We had never gone to mass regularly, although Grandma Helen took us when she had the chance. As a family we never talked about religion. But the message of Christ had touched me. It wasn’t a quick process, but in time I came to fully trust and follow Jesus as my savior.
Krickitt learned about Jesus from a little booklet called The Four Spiritual Laws. Its message filled her with excitement and curiosity, and she decided then and there that she would commit her life to following Christ. But no one else knew she made that life-altering decision on that day. She didn’t even totally know, at the time, what that decision would mean for her life and for eternity. She didn’t confirm her decision with anyone and didn’t get involved in church programs at the time. When she started college, she finally got involved in a church, the Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton. While there her spiritual life transformed through the teaching is Pastor Charles Swindoll and College Pastor Steve McCracken.
During the summer of 1991, Steve led a mission trip to Hungary. Since Krickitt had just blown out her knee, she suddenly had time on her hands after years of daily workouts. When she heard about the Hungary trip, she saw it as a God-given opportunity to pour all the time and energy she had always put into gymnastics into something else. So she and her friend (and later roommate) Megan Almquist took on the challenge of being missionaries for nine weeks that summer. They had the incredible opportunity of spending time with and talking to people who were starved for Jesus’ message of hope after generations of religious oppression.
I thought I was pretty faithful, but when I saw how Krickitt lived her life I was amazed. She had incorporated her faith into every part of her life. She wasn’t a Christian just on Sunday mornings; being a Christian was the core of who she was. And I adored that about her.

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Good morning, and thanks for calling Jamming sports- wear. This is Krickitt.”

When I called Jamming that fall morning in 1992, I had expected to be greeted by a bored-sounding customer
service rep that would rather have been spending her morning doing anything other than answering a phone. But what I got was quite the opposite. When Krickitt said, “Good morning,” it sounded like she meant it. And she even sounded like a cricket, all chirpy and upbeat.

“Hi, Krickitt,” I answered her, “I’m Coach Kim Carpenter from New Mexico Highlands University. I’m calling about the baseball coaches’ jackets in your catalog.”

I have loved baseball from the time I was a little kid. I could always see myself coaching someday, just like my dad, so when I got my first coaching job with the Highlands Cowboys in Las Vegas, New Mexico, it was a dream come true. But even dreams have their mundane moments, and so I found myself ordering jackets for my assistant coaches and myself.

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Life as Kim and Krickitt Carpenter knew it was shattered beyond recognition two months after their marriage when a devastating car wreck left Krickitt with a massive head injury and in a coma for weeks.


When she finally awake, she had no idea who Kim was. With no recollection of their relationship and while Krickitt experienced personality changes common to those who suffer head injuries, Kim realised the woman he had married essentially died in the accident.

And yet, against all odds, Kim and Krickitt fell in love all over again. The Vow tells the true story of this journey, one of a commitment unbroken and a vow fulfulled.

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