AE team leaders can tell many amazing stories of redemption, and it’s not often that we have an opportunity to hear about their own journey, and what underpins their life-long commitment to evangelism. In this article, we cover the early life of African Enterprise’s Bishop Guide Makore and his pathway to evangelist and team leader of African Enterprise Zimbabwe.
Guide Makore was born on the 14 Nov 1967, in the city of Gweru in Zimbabwe. Born third of five children, Guide’s earliest memories are of the care of his maternal grandmother, who raised both him and his siblings while his mother was a resident house carer on a nearby homestead. His father lived apart in a distant village, and rarely came to see his children and did not provide financial support.
To help earn money for his family, which was largely living in poverty, Guide’s grandmother would brew traditional beer to sell at the markets. Not wanting to waste any of the bi-products of the brew, she’d mix in the left over fermented home brewed traditional beer with his lunch, served in a disposable plastic container, “I remember that cup so well,” Guide reflects. “I didn’t realise that at a young age I was basically intoxicated as a result of these fermented herbs and I was constantly sleepy.”
At the time, people in his village were also under threat from guerillas and national forces fighting the Rhodesian War. For his own protection, his mother’s employer, who served in the airforce, invited her family to live at the homestead with his wife and children.
The location of the homestead also happened to be the home town of his father, and as a result of the new close proximity with his dad, he started to form a relationship with him and miss him greatly when he was away. To satisfy his yearning, he pleaded to be able to travel to be with his dad, and after a couple of years of this, his dad decided that Guide could come with him.
However the idyllic perception of being close to dad did not come close to reality. On his first trip away, he was left to live with his paternal grandmother and did not see his father again for almost a year. Also, as a result of inter-village family issues, he did not see his mother or maternal grandmother again for the next 6 years.
Understandably, the situation came as a complete surprise to Guide, being abandoned for the second time by his father, but this time it was a far worse situation, now being raised by a new family and without contact of his mother and grandmother. “I thought my father was hiding somewhere in the house at first,” Guide said. “But as the weeks went by I asked my grandmother if he was coming back, and she said that he wasn’t.”
As months went by, his new grandmother enrolled him in the local school and life started afresh as an eight year old. In his new home he had access to more food, and a slightly better quality of life, however the situation eventually took its toll on the young Guide, and he found eventually that he was crying day and night over his situation. It was his constant distress that eventually came to the attention of villagers, and through their intervention, his father eventually visited on occasion, but did not reconnect him with his mother.
Around 6 years later, Guide into an apartment his father owned in the capital city Harare and he finally made contact again with his mother during school holiday periods. Aged 14 at this stage, Guide started to become influenced by drinking and escaping the daily grind with his friends. However God soon intervened in his life to prevent further escalation of his issues.
Coming across a tent crusade in the city he finally heard about the loving fatherly nature of God, who’d come to save him through His son Jesus Christ. The words affected him powerfully, and at that meeting Guide accepted Christ into his life! Following the meeting, all the new converts met weekly at the tent church, and they were provided with a minister.
Next time we will reveal what occurred.
More details about AE evangelists and their countries of operation are found here: https://africanenterprise.com.au/our-locations/