SHEKA, today and onwards, as well as the rest of the months and years to come, may your trust in God illuminate your heart as you continue to mourn your dear wife, ROSE TARAWALIE. However, prepare yourself also for the foreseeable future. As your trust in the Lord engulfs you, May His serenity surpass your understanding. Be reflective of the Biblical Verse: JOSHUA 1: 5-9 “No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Photo: Shekito and Rose during their marriage. Rest in peace Rose).

Be strong and courageous …” The Grace of the Lord GOD Almighty will be sufficient for you in all that you do. His unending mercy will bring you favour and goodness. His genuine love will make you overcome every limitation and setback. His promises for you will come to pass, and His faithfulness will never fail in your life. You will have reason to smile and rejoice forever because your season of perfect celebration is here, where all things shall be made perfect unto you in the name of Almighty GOD.

NOW TO OUR DEPARTING ROSE!!!

ROSE, you’re missed so dearly as now you’re no longer here. When we think of you, we sometimes shed tears. ROSE, you are too precious to be forgotten! And too priceless to be ever replaced! We will always treasure you! You were so gentle, so caring, so kind, and so compassionate. Your love lives on within our hearts, with memories of you in our minds. We wish we could share another moment with you and see that smiling face.

Someone so special, as you were is truly rare to find. Someone with a heart so pure; loyal; honest; dedicated; devoted; committed; trustworthy; and diligently served as a wife; sister-in-law; friend; Aunt; mother; and a revered evangelist/pastor. We all cherished the memories we made together that still linger. For example, I can recall when Sheka and Rose got married on 21 July 2007 at St Thomas’s Church (the same church where the funeral service is held) today. I was one of the guest speakers. (Photo: From Manchester, England, Dr Fullah pays tribute to late Rose Tarawalie).

All the times we spent together with your loving and caring husband, SHEKA, our dear brother. For instance, when I was given the privilege and honour to bring the Word on 28 August 2022. I will surely hold those memories dearly in my heart and in our hearts forever. ROSE, you were such a blessing, so thoughtful and so true! I feel extremely grateful to have known someone like you, ROSE. But, the best of all is… God is with us. By late, John Wesley.

So, ROSE TARAWALIE, we say to you, the best of all these: “THE LORD GOD IN HIS INFINITE MERCY AND GRACE IS WITH YOU ETERNALLY” Sleep on, sleep on, ROSE TARAWALIE. We loved you, but God loves you best! May your blessed soul continue to rest in perpetual peace. From now until forever, we meet again…

The Husband’s Tribute to the Faithful Wife and Companion

Sheka Tarawalie on Rose Tarawalie – Just about 17 years ago, it was in this very church, with an audience not too different from this one today, that Rose and I said to each other: ‘till death do us part’. And, interestingly, that wedding was presided over by the same priest and wife, Rev Andrew and Mrs Biddy Dawson, who brought the sermon today.

God is good! 17 years, not 17 weeks, not 17 months, not 17 seasons, but 17 years we stood together against the odds, against all challenges, as lovers without borders (East Africa blending into West Africa), and lived our life together. Through it all, we did not part nothing could part us, until now, when it seems the vow we took has come to pass. Death, it appears, is parting us. But does it? Can it? No, it can’t. It is impossible for death to separate us.

You only need to read the verses we selected as the foundation of our marriage at our wedding – Romans 8:38-39. Those were the verses we inserted in the souvenirs that people went away with. ‘For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord’. (Photo: Shekito paying tribute to her lovely Rose).

Rose herself reiterated this in her Facebook page on our wedding anniversary in 2020 (after we had gone to Sierra Leone and returned to settle here again mainly because she had been diagnosed with and was being treated for breast cancer). This was what she wrote. I am reading it verbatim: “We thank God for another year added to this marriage. It is a match made and designed by God. Join us and celebrate this day with us. It cannot be taken for granted. These scriptures are the foundation to this marriage for those who were present….” And then she wrote the twin verses as you can see.

Therefore, my dear brethren, friends, sympathisers, well-wishers, I am here to tell you or to reassure you that, ‘It’s okay’. These are not really my words but those of one of the children in our church, Bobbie, a young English girl. I have received hundreds or thousands of condolence messages: cards from all over the world, via Facebook, email, Whatsapp, phone call; but I can say no message touched my heart as deeply as Bobbie’s (who took her time to make a handmade card)… And this was what she wrote: “Dear Sheka, I’m sorry about Rose but it’s okay! She is with God and Jesus now and they will keep her safe and happy. She will always be with you and I hope you feel better soon. Love from Bobbie”.

Well, Bobbie, I just have to feel better after reading such beautiful reassuring words. Time cannot permit me to recount my love story with Rose (there’s time for it in books), but I will summarise that when Jesus said in John 10:10 that, ‘I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly’ this is true of Rose’s life. We both found life more abundantly together. And these are the verses that Rose wrote on a piece of paper and pasted it in our bedroom: “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.” (Photo: During the marriage).

What a great woman of God! Rose followed me to Sierra Leone with the assurance that ‘your people shall be my people because your God is my God’. I know people usually say marriage is not a bed of roses but you know, or I can tell you, that my own bed was different –  I had a Rose in my bed all the time! Our marriage became so successful by all standards that we actually became marriage consultants – not only would young people wanting to get married come to us for advice but even elderly couples consulted us on what our secret was.

And we lived life to the fullest, in abundance. Rose was a wonderful housewife who could not leave the work to domestic workers; she was a helpful companion who willingly took over the running of our newspaper (she was even writing a weekly column); a marvellous woman of God who took church work to a different level, studied theology in Sierra Leone and graduated with a diploma. Rose interacted with the highest and lowest in society, from the President to paupers in the street.

When we returned to Oldham and immediately found ourselves locked up during Covid 19, but at the same time had to be attending hospital appointments, I devised the idea of writing another book. But instead of doing it all by myself as the previous one, Rose agreed to a proposal to be typing what I had written. This got us very busy throughout and did not feel the effects of the isolation, especially when she was placed in the vulnerable category because of the cancer. So, even then, we had life in abundance.

And I must tell you that it was not all piety and seriousness all the time. We had time to have fun: to stay in hotels, go to the beaches to have lobsters or shrimps, to islands to just be together, and travel abroad for holiday. What God did through our marriage is to show that love, all by itself, does work, without any strings, without any preconditions. On top of the biological children we already had, God literally made us a mini version of Abraham and Sarah, parents of many nations: so among our children, we have Sierra Leoneans, Rwandans, Ghanaians, Nigerians, Ugandans, Kenyans, English, Burundians and more. (Photo: Late Rose and Shekito).

Ultimately, she ended up being the pastor of Family Church Saddleworth. If that is not living life in abundance, what is? There is then no wonder that two churches in Sierra Leone are on this same day organising services to celebrate the impact of the life of this great woman of God on many. For someone who 20 years ago believed she was coming to the end of her life to have lived not only this long, but with grace and style, God could not have been more magnanimous in His love and mercy. And Rose was always grateful for that. This was the reason for her evangelism zeal. And I am more than humbled by that.

Our love for each other, rooted in the love of Jesus Christ (as you may know that we met in church), did not fade to the very end. When she was admitted in hospital and was asked to tell what would make a difference in her day to be written on the wall by her bedside, she said: ‘Seeing my husband’. And I made it a point of duty to see her every day. Several times a day. And when eventually I was given a bed there, we turned Royal Oldham Hospital into a kind of honeymoon centre, as I slept by her side till her last day on earth including on Valentine’s Day!

So cancer, or death, does not have the last say in the matter. Because Jesus said it clearly in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in Me even though they die, shall live.” What is true is that female cancer victims have now got a powerful representative in Heaven who will constantly plead with the Lord for a cure to the disease. I will not be very surprised if sooner rather than later a university will proclaim a breakthrough in the fight against cancer. Hope is therefore alive through the death of Rose.

That we should be able to do this funeral on a bank holiday weekend, in fact on Easter weekend (something unheard of in this country) is a great testimony to the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a daughter of God. So it’s okay – as Bobbie said. ‘It’s ok because she is now with Jesus’. I’ll just end my tribute by singing a song that she would want me to sing: ‘APO NOI YIBEH – ALL MY SINS ARE TAKEN AWAY’’. This was a hymn in my Temne language and Rose loved it so much that when we came with a copy of the hymn books that she and I donated to the Mabanta Church, she would always sing it even by herself. The translation is on the hymn sheets.