Prisoner to prophetess: Part 2 – Great harvest

In Part 1 you can read how Jesus intervened radically in Sebita’s life one day in a Malawi prison where she was serving a 6-year sentence for illegal business activities. God continued to use her mightily in prison until she was released after serving four years.

After her release from prison in 2017 Sebita returned to the family farm in central Malawi where she had grown up. Four years previously, after she was sentenced, she had received a Facebook message from her husband who was studying in Australia, saying she was a disgrace and the marriage was over. Now, back on the farm she found her father was struggling to make a living. Nevertheless, he had bought her a car and built her a house, saying: “I don’t want you to walk in shame.” The local community, however, rejected her and called her names. At first she “just focused on Jesus and ignored the noise”. 

But over the next two years the worsening family financial situation and her father’s failing health got to her and she started to grasp for solutions without consulting God. In 2019 she told her parents she was going to South Africa to look for a job in order to support the family.

Her time in SA was a financial disaster but God once again intervened in her life by connecting her with a group of caring, godly women in The Strand and with a church where she completed a discipling course. After nine months in SA she returned to Malawi after one of the women discerned that was God’s will for her.

Back in Malawi she found both of her parents were sick and she took on the burden of looking after the household of 13 people. “So each and every day, I was overwhelmed with the responsibilities, but I was praying.”

Her mother died in 2020 and her father died in 2022. She and her siblings from her polygamous father’s first wife, were “chased off” the farm by the family from the first wife, who said the property was their inheritance. They moved to northern Malawi where they lived hand to mouth selling vegetables grown on a small garden she had started. She constantly sought God’s help in prayer and in late 2022 her prayer was answered when she met a man online and they got married soon afterwards.

Sebita and her husband, John, who works for the Central Bank of Malawi, and her daughter, moved into a house in Blantyre and she began to think again about things God had said to her while she was in prison, including that she would care for widows and orphans. She was not spiritually at peace in their home and she asked God for a new place that would be a house of prayer and worship, where she would see “those widows” coming to her.

They moved to another house in Blantyre later that year and at the same time she connected briefly online with Rev Edward Mikwamba, the leader of National Repentance Malawi. They had interacted only a few times since connecting on social media several years previously. Soon afterwards, Edward, who had learned that they both lived in Blantyre arranged a meeting with her where he asked her to coordinate an upcoming National Repentance Conference. Sebita declined initially but Edward insisted. From that point Sebita found herself on a fast track to a life of ministry. The day after her meeting with Edward she addressed the media at a press conference that was hosted at her new house with the blessing of her very supportive husband.

During the repentance conference she got to travel to different districts. At one of the districts she had a dream in which God told her that He was giving her a great commission and that within a year she would reach a million people. She was also ordained as an apostle at this time.

And then, in a pivotal development, she was funded to visit the town of Balaka to establish a women’s ministry under National Repentance Malawi. She met with three women, sharing her vision to establish women’s ministry groups in all 27 districts of Malawi. The women responded positively and she promised to return to hold a Gospel crusade. A successful crusade, that included women evangelists from SA, was held in October and the women’s ministry in Balaka was officially launched in February this year.

The women’s ministry group in Balaka currently has 385 women, including desperately poor widows, divorced women and elderly women, many of whom are caring for orphans. Despite great financial constraints Sebita is pursuing a vision to support the women spiritually and practically through skills training, job creation and business mentoring. The women, who come from scattered villages, have been divided into groups who meet twice a week in different centres.

Sebita has also started a thriving women’s group in Blantyre that meets twice a week for services and twice a week for prayer. She is also involved in prison ministry in Blantyre and has invitations to minister in prisons in other centres.

Despite the financial challenges she is trusting God for the women’s ministry movement to spread across Malawi and beyond. The formal launch of the women’s ministry in Balaka was noticed by some women leaders from South Africa which led to the launch of African Women of Repentance.

And a women’s trip to Cape Maclear, a scenic town on the shore of Lake Malawi, for a surprise birthday party for a lady surprise, resulted in a surprise from God. The women had to spend longer than anticipated in the predominantly-Muslim area after their car broke down and so they decided to go for a walk along the lake shore. Sebita said they joked that they would use the extra time there to be “fishers of men”. When they came across a group of local women washing kitchen utensils in the lake they began to preach to them [see video below]. Twenty of the women, including Muslims, gave their lives to Jesus. The local women, who had heard Sebita and her group speaking about establishing women’s groups, told them: “You have just started a women’s group here.”

The next week, Sebita heard from the Cape Maclear women that their group had grown to 75 women. Realising that the women needed discipling and that the group even includes Muslim women who need to hear the Gospel, they are planning to hold a crusade there in May.

Sebita said she will be visiting the area shortly to meet with chiefs and local pastors to start planning the crusade logistics.

Anybody who would like to partner with the women’s ministry is welcome to contact Sebita at +265 993 63 38 78.

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