Born Without Borders

BORN WITHOUT BORDERS

BY

CHIEDZA MAVANGIRA

Photograph

By

Christopher Broek

INTRODUCTION

By

Kathy Benedetto

“I don’t know who you have praying over there, but it really worked!” Chiedza Mavangira replied gratefully over the phone to one of the Pastors from Saddleback Huntington Beach.  Chiedza had come to America from Zimbabwe looking for an opportunity to use her talents in the writing and film industry. She had a dream but was unsure how to begin in this strange new country.  She started in San Francisco, then went to LA and found many opportunities but they all came with a cost.  Opportunities yes but ones that required her to compromise her values.  Her mother warned her about such concession.

She had said that if you give up yourself, then who will you be when you finally succeed?  Even in the midst of potential prospects, nothing satisfying ever seem to present itself.  She felt empty in the pursuit of her dream.  She moved on to Orange County where she met Anne Latour during a book club get-together.  Chiedza’s parents, Christian missionaries in Zimbabwe, had founded two churches so she felt she knew all about being a Christian, the routine; but the relationship was lacking.  Being so far from home, she hoped to fill the void with a church family.  Visiting many, but finding none that offered her refuge until she came to Saddleback Huntington Beach.  Things were about to change.

On her first visit to Saddleback, the greeter Jo hugged her and welcomed her, asked her where she was from, and then during the service sat with her.  Jo became Chiedza adopted mom. She filled out the registration card with a prayer request for her brother who was mentally ill and had been missing from the family for over a year.  The next week she had two blessings.   First, a surprise call from her brother, then a call from one of the pastors just to say “Hi.”  He said, “I’m just calling to let you know we have been praying for you.”  She exploded in gratitude.  Of all the churches she had visited, this was the first phone call greeting she had received and her prayer to once again connect with her mentally ill brother had been answered.  However, God wasn’t done yet.

Her friend Ann invited her to attend a Night of Worship.  She wasn’t sure about it.  Unsure of what it would be like.  Anne made her sit up front and Chiedza felt awkward.  Questions flooded her mind about the purpose of worship.  Then Pastor Moses stopped and addressed the crowd.  He explained that worship is simply connecting to God.  “I have never thought about worship that way before.”  As the praise team began to sing and worship Jesus their faces were radiant.  “They were physically in front of me, but you could tell they were busy interacting with God.  Almost like an out of body experience.”  So I closed my eyes and surrendered myself to God, and He began to speak to me.  “It was as if a lost wire that hadn’t been in my heart for a very long time was reconnected and that I was part of a bigger purpose.”  I knew that I wanted this.  I prayed, “God, I want you to take all my plans, dreams, and agendas, and instead I want to live your plan.” Instantly all my burdens were laid down, and I knew God had a purpose for me.  For the last 14 years I had been at war with God.  I was in a new country, and I didn’t know how to make my dreams happen.  The projects I had been planning just weren’t working.  And in a sense my talents were buried because I was not using them for His purpose. It was joyous for her to discover that God would keep the dream but gave her a new topic. He connected the dots.  He did want to use her skills and talents in the writing and film industry but in a different way.   The project I was to work on became concrete.  I heard God saying, “This is where I want you to be”.  He was leading her to make a documentary. To give voice to those women of faith back home whom she had meet in her travels.  Those women who go the market each day to sell their tomatoes and spend the day in a harsh climate and still believe that God is there, and that He will provide.  Those women who daily believe Him for the food that will be on the table, the war that will go away, and somehow He will make ends meet for them.  “You know their struggles and you can be the connection, the bridge, for them.”  The project before that had been so obscure and directionless now took on a new shape.  It was a kind of grace, a new mindset, and her heart was navigating a new course. The tangled web in her mind was now cleared of confusion; the dream was now possible.   I felt born again with new joy, thankfulness, and purpose.   All the past now made sense. “I am not worthy, but I don’t have to do anything just be in His presence.”
     “Before I tried to do this on my own, and I was always so tired and frustrated.  Being a single mom I was always in control of all we did.  I made all the decisions of where and when and how our lives were to happen, but now I know I don’t have to do anything.”  Worry is a lack of faith.  Chiedza realized that when you believe God,

When you surrender it all, then all you have to do is pray and worship and you will see things fall into place.  “I let God take the lead and put all of my burdens in His hands.  It’s like you activate God when you surrender.”  The things she used to worry about are now in His care.  “This is an amazing time in my life. No more brick walls to hit up against; just  doors opening, meeting people who share my dream, events happening, and pieces falling into place.”  In reflecting she realized that we are all part of a greater plan. One needs to begin to see obedience to God’s leading as an answer to the prayers of others.  If Anne hadn’t been bold enough to invite her to church, if Jo hadn’t hugged her…  “If we don’t allow God to use us, if we are not obedient, then we break a link in something that is much bigger than ourselves.  If we knew what was lost we would have broken hearts when we don’t play our part in God’s plan.”  This is God’s kingdom and everybody has a part to play whether it seems big or small, but we are all called to make a difference.  “Somewhere out there someone is praying, and I hope by my actions in obeying God with this documentary, I too will become an answer to their prayers.”

So the secret of surrender to Chiedza is to trust, work hard when you are working, and then with a light heart leave it in His hands.  Don’t try to fix what you can’t fix; just trust.  “Sometimes I go to God with a list, but mostly I go to God just to thank Him for what the situation is and thank Him in advance for what He is going to do.  I feel joy even when things are not OK.  Nothing has changed on the outside, but inside I’m am happy.”

Chiedza decided to take class 101 and learn about the principles Saddleback is founded upon.  Understanding what you are committing to gives you strength, you can’t connect with your leaders if you don’t know the principles for which they stand.  “Besides not joining the church would be like always dating and never getting married.”  Joining the church is taking the next step.  After the class, there was a call to be baptized. “I didn’t want to because I wasn’t prepared.”  She thought about not having a change of clothes, her hair would get wet…Excuses.  Yet, one by one, as her mind challenged her on why to say no, the pastor seem to answer and quiet all her concerns. “They had everything I needed!”  So she did it.  At first there were only a few people there.  But as she came out of the water, the Tree Lighting ceremony was taking place and there were hundreds of people present.   “It was a very warm moment for me to have my new church family cheering for me.  It's just like in the Bible where it says that we are all connected to one another by faith.”  When Chiedza called her mom in Africa and told her about her surrender and baptism, her mom was over joyed with the news.  “This is what I have been praying for.  I’ve been waiting and praying for this day”.  Chiedza had thought the way to make her mother proud of her was through accomplishing her dreams, but all her mother ever wanted for her was to experience that deep, rich faith, that personal relationship with Jesus that was the heritage of one who is raised in a Christian family.  Nothing could have made her mother happier.

Chiedza had to take several leaps of faith when she surrendered it all to God.  She advises anyone who is waiting for the perfect time to stop and just jump in.  When one finally surrenders there is joy yet sadness because you realize that all the time you didn’t listen to God was just time wasted. “It’s like meeting the love of your life, and then only having an hour with him or her.  The grief you would feel because you wasted so much time.  So don’t wait any longer.”     Chiedza is looking forward to this coming year.  She knows she has a Kingdom work to do and that she has a part in His plan.

Video Testimony

By

Pastor Moses Camacho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jr1BgE8FE-c

DAY ONE

Kumusika is a place of great sacrifice. It is the field of the fragile labors of sweating women with hungry children bound to their broken backs. It is the open arena of the poor where brilliant minds succumb to the harsh reality of a life without education and without God. It is the sun-burdened, rain-disillusioned wound of the underprivileged, infested with law enforcement on bicycles waiting to apprehend the desperate for the crimes of the government. It is a vegetable galaxy where grown men and women fight poverty with their tongues. 
"Matomatisi! Matomatisi! Matomatisi!" 
Women’s untiring voices chant to seduce the weary traveler to their wares.

"Mutare! Mutare! Mutare!" 
The bus conductor’s voice chants to seduce the impatient traveler to his destination. 
The afternoon heat is the enemy, reducing once swollen ripe tomatoes to wrinkled impostors. A dust road-tainted bus pulls into its terminal and its wrinkled travelers
disembark. With the agility of city monkeys, two young men scramble to the roof of the bus and begin unloading the precariously-tied luggage and dropping it on the waiting passengers. In the next terminal a high-pitched voice announces the departure of the green and yellow bus for Gweru. An army of boiled egg-selling vendors assault the moving bus. Greedy brown hands grasp at questionably hygienic foods through half-closed, dirty windows. A woman sits down on the brown bags of sugar and mealie-meal that she has purchased in the bustling city to take to some obscure village. A round cheeked youngster is bounced on her knee impatiently; sweat swimming down her young face. Without hesitation a mother shoves her child to her and to greedy, waiting lips. 
"Stop thief! Stop thief! Mbavha! Mbavha!" 
A dirty bolt of crime tears across a crowded pavement and another handbag
disappears into the relentless Harare day. 
"Are you certain that you will be safe?" the man of God without a white collar asks me. 
"Oh, I will be perfectly safe! Thank-you so much! Someday I’ll repay you. I promise!"

The oath is made with the innocent fervor of youth but lacks sincerity. Pastor Bell’s response is a forgiving smile. I stand at the Kumusika, hands at my side, conspicuously without luggage and my growing secret concealed by belly and flesh. Tears plague my eyes with things I must not say and with truths that I am not yet ready to tell. 
"Thank-you." 
Pastor Bell places a single hand on my defiant shoulder. I am defying life and I am defying pain. I am defying God. 
"There is only one way that you may truly thank me…get accepted to that college in the States and become a writer." 
I know that his next words will be encouraging. 
"Be of good faith. Be of good courage." 
And then he breaks my already broken
heart. 
"I believe in you." 
Solitude is standing in a crowded bus terminal watching your faith and courage walk away. "Godspeed!" 
I raise both my hands and frantically wave. It is until the light blue car is vanished from sight that my hands finally surrender to the inevitable and reluctantly return to my side. This is the last time that I would think of a man as Godly. 
"Muri kueyenda Kupi Sisi?" 
The curious man asks the now abandoned black girl who had stood moments before with the white Pastor. 
"KuBulawayo."
Solitude is sitting in a hectic city bus with chickens tied to its roof and old women chewing on things they never swallow.

A Revelation from the Purpose Drive Life by Rick Warren.

DAY ONE

Upon finishing my first reading of this life changing book I flashed back on my life and was given a healing revelation. I understood why it was my experience for my Father to take his life due to mental illness. The same disease that tormented my younger brother and led him to live on the streets while we frantically searched for him. My afflictions are the ministries which God has assigned to me in this life in preparation for the next. I will no longer break. I will stand up tall and proud with my head held up high. People with mental illness and sexually exploited women are the social leprosy of this present era. These undesirables and unlovable have being cast out of our cities and villages. They have being condemned to the borders of our minds and forgotten. We must invite them back into our communities with empathy, love and support. We must care for them. This is my bold declaration of faith over the next 40 days as I read “The Purpose Drive Life” by Pastor Rick Warren. Pastor Warren is indeed the Spiritual Teacher who has appeared now that the student is ready. I call upon all the Faith Ambassadors of this Global Community to join me. Stand with me for this greater cause. Together we can make a difference in this ministry. I am the custodian of the problems which God has blessed me with and these are my ministries. Join me on this blessed 40 day journey of Faith as I share my story and that of many of the women of faith whom I have encountered on my travels from Bulawayo Zimbabwe to Orange County USA. I pray that you will find the courage to surrender to him. Over the next 40 days you will see a life that was a lump of clay be transformed and shaped into the Master’s sculpture and a masterpiece of his great design for his great purpose. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I finally accept my mission on this earth. I declare myself a bold Faith Ambassador and an Advocate for this greater cause before God & before men.

Amen.

Humbly

Chiedza Mavangira

9/Feb/2015

My Baptism
7/Dec/2014