The story of my redemption....

My first encounter with the Lord was at the tender age of nine at Amandas Sunday School when I was led to the Lord by a woman named Denise Gaisford who was then my teacher. I got my first bible then after reciting 3 memory verses to Denise, I fell in love with the Bible then and couldn’t stop reading it. I enjoyed reading it so much that soon my fairytale books like Cinderella and Snow White then took second place to the Bible because it captured me and I was so busy memorising new memory verses so Denise could give me more Bible stickers to stick in my new Bible. My family was Anglican and yet not regular attendants at that time. I was so hungry for God that at the age of eleven I asked Denise to pray for me to receive the gift of tongues, I never received it then but I was still yearning for more of God. I attended many Scripture Union Camps at that time.

At the age of twelve I was a boarder at my school and young lady who was Anglican and a bursar at my school told me she was getting confirmed the following week, I begged her to ask for permission to leave the school with me so that I could also be confirmed. The hostel matron allowed the bursar to take me and so I was confirmed and got my first communion. My parents found out that I had been confirmed when they came to visit at school. I never knew how much that touched them until they suddenly became regular churchgoers and even arranged for my younger brother, the following year to be confirmed and this time the whole family was there to witness him receive his first communion.

I was so in love with Jesus in Junior School I never thought it would go wrong. I attended many Scripture Union camps and had an intimate relationship with God. Then I went to High School. Again, I was a boarder and there I suffered from an identity crisis, encountered rejection from peers and was a constant rebel in class just so I could get attention. There were a couple of times I went to Scripture Union but I never changed. This went on for five years until my last year of High School. On the 23rd of May in the year 2000 and my final year in school, all the boarders from my school went to watch a play called ‘Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames’. I made a recommitment to the Lord that night and was baptised by the Holy Spirit two days later and spoke in tongues.
That was the turning point. The call upon my life had been placed on me at Amandas Sunday School and I had strayed but The Good Sherpherd had come to find me and put His seal on me and suddenly all the verses and stuff I knew about from the Bible were illuminated in my memory even though it had been so long.

After my ‘A’Levels I moved to Marondera a town here in Zimbabwe and joined the Vineyard Movement. I lived in a Christian Community where I experienced the love of God and received healing for the wounds of being raped at the age of four, molested and abused by female housesitters and being rejected because I was not born a boy and many other painful things.

In God have I found and continue to find wholeness. I know there are many broken women who need to hear my story and realize that there is hope……..and even for the orphans because I am also an orphan and have also experienced many losses, having lost 3 siblings and a nephew to date.

God’s love has proved to me that I have no reason to be ashamed of anything I have been through in my lifetime. God used all those life experiences as stepping stones that have made me, shaped me and moulded me to be the woman of God that I am today. Though I have wrestled with a past that has been fractured and wounded ,God forgives and forgets and is pleased to use any vessel just as long as it is cleaned by His blood.