Testimony of Zandra Christopher

                I am walking through a dark cloud. I hear the cries of people in pain all around me. My eyes are closed and I feel the small body on my hip nestle her face in my shoulder. A light pours down through a hole in the sky, and I slowly open my eyes to look towards it. The smoke is slowly lifted away, and I walk out of the cloud, leading hundreds of people away from the darkness with my head lifted high. Africa, in all of her simple beauty and grace, calls me to save her people and lead them to the Lord.

            This was the vision that the Lord gave to me in a dream my senior year of High school. I had never felt anything more real in my life. My name is Zandra Eileen Christopher. I was born into a family that raised me in a Catholic Church and eventually divorced by the time I was 5 years old. The idea of God was just a figment of my imagination. I only knew of Him what I learned in Sunday school every week. But even still, I knew there was something, someone, bigger and mightier who was watching over me. After my parents divorced, there was a huge custody battle for my sister and I that lasted for years

           Although I didn’t understand why, my father was granted custody against our will and we were taken from our mother. For the first time in my life, I wondered if there really was a God. I remember opening the letter from the court and hearing my Mom read the words aloud that sent so much pain through me. It was the first time that I literally ran to my Bible and dropped to my knees holding it and praying out loud, “Where are you? If you’re there, please, don’t do this to us.”  At 9 years old, despite the pain of everything that followed after that, I now rest easy in knowing that this was a blessing in disguise. Just as Paul went through hardships for His glory, the Lord said he was a chosen instrument to spread the word to His people because of who he had been and what he was ready to do. I was bitter for years and turned away from God.  When I truly found Him at the age of 16 and was reborn a Christian, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw more and more beauty every single day. I was and am, His chosen instrument.It was the end of my sophomore year of high school and I was already ready to be on my own and out of the house. I never got reunited with my mother, and although I loved my father dearly, I needed my mother more than anything. But I kept myself extremely busy with a job, my grades, and extracurricular activities to make sure I was in control and would be secure for life after high school on my own. I was closer to Christ than was when I was younger, but I still did not know Him personally. By chance, I was invited to Student Life summer camp with First Baptist Church of Groveland for a week that ended up being the best week of my entire life. I had never been to this church before, and only started to attend in the weeks leading up to the summer camp. During the day we would go to a poverty stricken community and run a free VBS for the kids, and at night we would drive back to the camp facilities and dive into the word and worship service. The first day seemed like nothing out of the ordinary; introductions, scripture, a song or two, break. But in those next few days, my life would be forever changed.

It was the most beautiful experience in the world, being broken down into feeling like everything I was didn’t have purpose or meaning if it wasn’t for Him. We played with the children from Deland every day, and poured our hearts into them. I remember the little girl who never left my side, Savannah, asked me endless questions about God. It broke my heart to find out that she and her brother lived with a mom who was an alcoholic and paid little attention to them. But seeing her smile when we talked about the Father who would never leave her, made me really think that if a child can feel Him and be in awe of Him He has to be real. I got to know the other kids on the trip, and every night we’d have devotion and cry together that we were alive and had made it through our life struggles from the past. It was the last night of the camp, and the speaker, Ed Newton, did the alter call before worship. Raising my hand with my eyes closed and my heart wide open when He asked who was willing to give up who they were to be with Christ, was the most humbling thing I have ever done. I was mesmerized, walking down the stairs up to the stage, and to this day I believe that it wasn’t me who walked up there, but the wings of the Angels that the Lord sent to guide me down there. It’s a feeling I can’t describe, all that I know is that I wasn’t in my body. I was on the clouds of heaven. I felt a presence that was unfamiliar to me, yet I felt like it was the closest thing I had ever known to Home. As the band played and we all cried together and held each other in awestruck wonder of what He had done in our lives, I smiled and felt the weight of the world lift off of my shoulders. I was even led to sponsor a little girl from Africa that night. I knew it was the first step in my reborn life that the Lord had laid on my heart as a vow that I would serve Him and His people for all the days of my life. After tears of joy, it was the last devotion we would have before going home, and I was chosen to do it. I had never opened myself up so bravely, and I ended my testimony with a song I wrote called Red Rose. It was a song the Lord used me to write that told the story of how He sings to us, His red rose, and reminds us that the storms will pass, “No matter the seasons, please stay strong. The winters and lightening lasts so long. But I see your courage, you’ll find it in you to carry on.” It seems like so long ago that this happened, and it’s crazy to think that Christ IS my whole life now. But I’m learning more every day, and He is the center of it all.

Every day is a new experience. Things fall through, things look up, and the Lord is ALWAYS right there walking with me. I hit dry spells every now and then and I am forced to seek Him harder and deeper. And there has never been a time that I didn’t find Him in the end. I am a full time college student on track to be a Nurse, I meet with 7 beautiful girls for a wonderful bible study, and I am enrolled in the NROTC program on campus. I have never been busier. But I have also never been surer of my faith and who I am in Christ. My identity is in Him. And I want to spend the rest of my life learning from Him and being awakened by His love. I take great joy in knowing that when people see me or hear me speak, they know that God is and always will be who I live for. 

The vision I was given runs through my mind almost every day. I will be a missionary nurse in Africa, where I am called to be. I knew I was called to be there when I was called to sponsor my little girl in Rwanda, Africa; Nduwamungu Anuarite. When I chose her to sponsor, I had never learned about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The more I learned about it, and the more I prayed about it, the more I knew I wanted to be there with these people and teach them about an unending Love that never fails. Not long after committing to my little princess, I was given the vision in a dream and woke up in a sweat. The Lord knows what He was doing. This is the path I am on. To whoever reads this, I hope my testimony is an encouragement to you that He lives in all of us and is just waiting so anxiously for us to run home to Him. I pray that He teaches you the way back when you stray, and that He blesses your heart with peace and beauty for all of the days of your life.