Meet our first years! In the first few weeks of 2013, our first year students had a class assignment in Computer Skills to type a personal introduction and tell “Why am I at African Christian College?” In this series, you get to meet the students in their own words…
My name is McDonald Chongo Chanda, I am married to Chanda Mulenga and we have a son named Divine Mukuka Chanda.
I am from Zambia where I was serving as an assistant pastor for 7 years, though I entered in full time ministry 3 years earlier making my all time in ministry to 10 years now.
I have a diploma in theology majoring in discipleship and I have a technician certificate in Accounts.
In 2011, I made a resolution of furthering my theological studies by 2013 even though I didn’t know which theological school I should attend. Towards the end of the year we were praying for countries in our prayer meeting and one of the countries that we were praying for was Swaziland and something stuck in my heart about Swaziland and that’s how I continued to pray for Swaziland in my own prayer time.
It is then when I felt in my spirit that I have to do my studies in Swaziland but the question was at which school because I didn’t know any theological schools in Swaziland.
So I started researching about theological colleges that are in Swaziland; and that’s how I found three theological colleges; Swaziland Theological College and Nazarene. But still I had questions about which one I should consider going to.
I told God that I will send inquiry emails to all 3 colleges and the first one to reply then that’s where I will go. That’s how I sent the inquiry emails to the colleges and ACC was the first one to reply.
But I still received the replies from the other colleges and when I read through them all, the reply from ACC gave me peace because of how welcoming Mrs. Platt replied to me.
One thing led to another and in every conversation that I had with Mrs. Platt she always was calm to answer my questions according to my expectation, and I could feel the peace whenever I communicated with her even though I never met her.
Sometimes I could feel that maybe I am disturbing her too much, but it was like she enjoyed answering the questions and that’s how I settled on coming to ACC.
Because the greatest response I received from ACC through Mrs. Platt was love, joy, and peace which made me have that sense of belonging.
After several months awaiting acceptance, I finally received word I had been accepted.
In the letter was a clause that said all married students should come with their spouses. This made everything difficult for me because I realised that whatever I planned of going alone will not work. I have to go with my wife who was supposed to be my sponsor. My budget was now tripled because my wife and son didn’t have passports, yellow book, and police clearance certificates.
I went into prayers that maybe a miracle will happen because I had nothing on me until when God told me though his word that “what do you have in your hands?”
I saw I had good phones, laptops, and other things I can convert into money to cater for all paper works and transport.
I put all that I had on sale and the money I got from every sale was going directly to getting the paper works we needed.
After I finished all the paper work, I had one challenge. All the goods that I was selling were finished except one which I was not even sure anyone can buy in a short notice. That’s what was supposed to raise money for transport.
God is good. Just the day before departure someone came and bought it and that’s how I managed to have transport.
In conclusion, I would say I came to ACC because I believe this is where God wants me to be prepared further for the ministry that he has prepared for me. If God didn’t want me to be here he would not have made it possible for me to be here.
It’s a great privilege to be here at ACC.
