I came to the UK as a visitor in August 2005, but I decided to stay until my visa expired and when it did I couldn't go back home to have it renewed because I had already overstayed and didn't have enough money to pay for my flight back home. I therefore kept on staying as an ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, which is the toughest thing I have ever done as you don't know what may happen to you the next minute.
In 2007 I had a baby boy, with a Zimbabwean man I had met here but he too didn't have PAPERS to stay in the UK. Life became very hard because we were living in hiding and we couldn't live in one area for 6 months, fearing that the neighbors might know about it and report us. He tried to apply for assylum (refugee) because of the situation in Zimbabwe then, but it was rejected 3 times.
In 2008 when my father came here, he advised us to apply for permission to stay as a family but we knew that it would be turned down because we didn't have proof that we were a married couple. Nonetheless we just gave it a try, and we got a lawyer who charged us 500 pounds (about MK123,000) for him to represent us at HOME OFFICE. We paid the money but we were not sure of the outcome. We kept on asking him until we just gave up and forgot about the whole thing. Life was real hard. I was crying day and night for all these years, and decided to start questioning God. I even thought that perhaps God was punishing me while here on earth.
Then in 2009 my mother started telling me of what God was doing in Malawi, but I just took it simple. Every time I called her she kept on telling me about Bro Makuta. One day I just asked her to present my request to church but she told me that if I was serious then I had to call Bro Makuta myself. She gave me his number but I just stored it in my phone for about a month.
One Sunday morning I woke up and started preparing to go to church in Glasgow (Scotland). Then all of a sudden I told my husband that I was not going until I talked to Bro Makuta. I then called him and, to my surprise, he said he knew I was going to call him that morning. Amid shock at hearing this I presented to him my request.
"Why are you so worried?" he asked me in a very simple tone as if this was not a big issue. "Your papers are already out".
Our papers are already out? I didn't understand him. But anyway some things are better believed than understood and this was one of those things. That was the morning of Sunday, 4th October 2009. He told us to call him again in the evening which we did. After praying for us he said "inutu mundiimbila fon mmawa mukudumphadumpha chifukwa zinthu zanu zinatheka kale, kwangotsala kuti akuuzeni, komanso akubwenzeleni ma passport anu". (You will call me again tomorrow morning with joy because your application was already approved. It's just a matter of the officials informing you about it and returning your passports to you).
The next morning, Monday 5 October, while my husband was on his way to work he got a missed call with a private number and that was the first call since we had last talked to Bro Makuta. He didn't know who it was until he got to work and got a private call again. When he answered it he heard. "HELLO THIS IS UK BORDER AGENCY,WE JUST WANT TO TELL YOU THAT WE CONSIDERED YOUR CASE AND YOU WERE GRANTED PERMANENT RESIDENCY IN BRITAIN FROM 30 SEPTEMBER 2009. YOU ARE THEREFORE FREE TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT IN THIS COUNTRY AND TRAVEL TO ANY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, AND YOUR SON IS ENTITLED TO A BRITISH CITIZENSHIP".
He thought it was a dream, who couldn't?. When he told me about it I remembered the words of Bro Makuta "Your papers are already out". We had been granted the permit on 30 September and were informed on 5 October after prayers by Bro Makuta in Malawi. I had waited for 4 years to get these papers.
From that moment my faith got stronger and stronger and I always tell people that I am a living testimony. It's now a year and 2 months since we got our papers and God keeps blessing us. We now live in a beautiful house and don't pay rent, and our son is now getting child benefits weekly and is going to a good school.
Always remember us in your prayers because when God does something good , Satan wants to get in too, but we don't let him do that. Right now my husband is going to get baptised and we are planning to have our marriage blessed in church. It's a looooooong story.
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