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CALLED: Tawanda Masango
TAWANDA MASANGO HAD TO GROW UP FAST INTO A LIFE OF MISSION
BY TIM ALLAN
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Aged just 15, Tawanda Masango was thrust into both the frightening cultural spirituality of his Zimbabwean homeland and the overwhelming responsibility of adulthood.
The schoolboy and his five sisters had just suffered the trauma of losing their father when his uncles gathered round him.
As is traditional in his Ndau culture, the death of his father meant Tawanda would have to take his father’s name and all the responsibilities that came with that.
Tawanda, who is now serving with SIM Zimbabwe reaching out to students in Bulawayo, explained: “There is a ceremony after a father dies which makes clear the responsibility is now passed to the son. It used to be that a staff was handed over but now it is sometimes an umbrella.
“That was done to me and soon after that, I was asked to join some of the extended family members for a trip to consult a witch doctor, to find out why my father had died. They thought it must have been caused by bad spirits.
“You can imagine that I was very frightened by this, and very confused.”
Tawanda had been brought up in a Christian household. His mother, Violet, was, and still is, a devout Christian and took her children to church each week; his father, Wellington, identified as a Christian, but faced the pressure of syncretism, which saw him sometimes consult traditional healers.
Mercifully, by the time Wellington died he had come to a full understanding of who Jesus is.
By God’s grace, Tawanda’s home was only a few minutes’ walk from Rusitu Mission, the very place where some of the pioneer mission workers who first came to Zimbabwe in 1897 had established a Bible college, a school and a hospital. Tawanda was blessed to attend the Baptist boarding school as a day boy, returning home each evening to help his family with subsistence farming.
He said: “When my father died it was doubtful that I would even be able to stay at school, but my then class teacher, Mrs Warrington, was going back to the UK on home assignment.
“She took my report cards with her, together with those of some other students who were struggling. When she came back, she told us she had found some well-wishers who had committed to pay our fees.”
That was when God really stepped into Tawanda’s life, by giving him two good friends at school, Antony and Peter. They too were nominal Christians but, as they searched their hearts and heads for answers, they decided to start reading the Bible and praying together.
Tawanda recalled: “It was that July – July 2000 – that I made a commitment to follow Christ, as did Anthony and Peter. Every lunchtime, we met to read the Bible and pray. At first, we did not want others to join us but we spoke with our church pastor and he showed us how to share the gospel.
“By the time I left school in 2002, more than 40 people were joining us in the prayers and studies. Looking back, I can see God was training me even then, helping me into ministry leadership.”
Those schooldays were instrumental in Tawanda hearing God’s call to mission. He may not have called it mission back then but now, 20 years later, he can see it was.
From school, Tawanda went to university in Bulawayo, studying forestry and wildlife management, and then found a job in South Africa. While he was there, his old friend Antony, who had gone to theological college in Cape Town, encouraged him to consider a role as a ministry trainee with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES).
Tawanda said: “I always thought ministry was for people who had failed to make it in other professional careers, but my year in Australia opened my eyes. I saw people who had given up secular jobs to do ministry and realised I could do the same.”
He returned to Zimbabwe and began working with the local IFES group, reaching out to students in Harare.
By this time, he was married to Shupi and the couple were planning for long-term ministry together. They knew they needed more theological training and were blessed by a scholarship to a fouryear course at Moore College in Sydney, Australia.
It was there that their first daughter was born and Shupi has just given birth to their fourth child although, sadly, their first son was stillborn in 2018.
Tawanda said: “Everyone expected us to stay in Australia and work, which is what our families wanted. But we felt God calling us back to Zimbabwe, so we came home and started work in Bulawayo. That was where I heard about SIM’s need for a university ministry coordinator and we eventually took this role at the end of 2020.”
Tawanda and Shupi are the only full-time student workers in the SIM ministry, but they are builiding up a small team of volunteers. Their passion is to work with local churches to reach university and college students.
Tawanda, who is sent by the Presbyterian church in Bulawayo and supported by three churches and many friends in Australia, said: “The church in Zimbabwe is not rich but it can give support.
“One of the churches lets us have office space and use their internet for free, while another has found housing for two of our apprentices."
Of course, Covid-19 has cast a long shadow over their time with SIM but things are gradually opening up in Zimbabwe. Tawanda is praying for more opportunities to reach students with the good news of Jesus and so transform their lives, just as his has been transformed.
PLEASE PRAY
• For God to send more workers into ministry alongside Tawanda and Shupi so they can form a team to reach more university and college students with the gospel.
• For continuing good relationships with church pastors and that they would embrace the vision of partnership with SIM, for their good, the good of the students, the good of SIM and the glory of God.
• That Tawanda and Shupi would have wisdom about what to take on, so they can guard against the possibility of being burnt out and overwhelmed by the workload.
