Marvellous M. Mhloyi

Walking the Walk Marvellous M. Mhloyi

Marvellous M. Mhloyi is a success by any standards. A woman who, when education for women in Africa was not a priority, rose above all these obstacles to become the first Zimbabwean woman to graduate with a PhD in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. She also founded the Center For Population Studies at the University of Zimbabwe where she is a professor and consultant to numerous non-profit organizations nationally and internationally. Born of Christian parents, she grew up as a Christian in the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe. Between 1977 and 1984 she was in the United States of America as a student at West Chester University and University of Pennsylvania, respectively. As she tried to go to church, she was discouraged as she noted fellow Christians discriminating against her and her husband. She stopped going to church until she was born again in 1993. She remarks, "I did not understand it when people asked me if I was born again." In 1993 when the Lord visited her, she then realized that she had been socialized to be a Christian; she notes: "now I am born again, I have a personal relationship with God, and this is the sweetest relationship one can ever have". In 1999 the Lord created a deep sense of ignorance about Christianity, a religion she believed in. The level of ignorance was so intense that she only felt relieved when she enrolled in a Bible school. As an intellectual it was not easy for her to give her whole being to a God she could not see or articulate logically; but glory be to the Almighty who had prepared her to be receptive and to heed to the call to Ministry. She became a pastor in 2001. She is currently a pastor, a mother of one daughter and a son-in- law, a grandmother of three and a mother to many. She had been married for 37 years before her husband Gilford passed on in November of 2008 and she often remarks, "I am grateful to God that my husband knew and loved God; I pray nothing will dissuade me from walking the walk till I meet up with him at home".