The Unlearning
Nobody plans to end up in a cult. I didn’t. I didn’t even know that such a thing was possible for someone like me.
What I knew was that God was real. Not distant or symbolic, but present and alive, living and existing in the year 2026. The kind of real that leaves no room for doubt. Once you have known God that way, it becomes impossible to return to a quieter faith.
I began to look for a church where people did not speak of God as history or metaphor, but as an active force who intervenes, heals, instructs and rearranges lives.
One day, deep in a holy tongue filled prayer I had seen The Lord Jesus in a vision, in a field of lilies that sang. I remember looking at the flowers swaying in this meadow wondering how these flowers could sing? Where were their mouths, their vocal chords? I did not fully understand where I was, but it felt more real than ordinary life, more real than the day-to-day world in which you are reading these words. Then there have been times where the Holy Spirit has spoken to me, giving me names of people and clear instructions.
I have been met with weeping like the time the Holy Spirit instructed me to give fifty K to a stranger. I wrestled with the instruction. I argued with the Holy Spirit in my head. Fifty bob, maybe. Aki fifty thou? To a stranger who was dressed better than I was, standing at a petrol station, with a car, when I was still taking bodas to and fro!? Lord, the math was just not mathing. But I exhaled sharply and turned around. My hands were shaking. I felt, clinically, insane. Still, I held out the money and said, “God wanted me to give this to you.”
Without skipping a beat, she began to cry. She told me she had just come from a conference and was certain her wallet had been stolen. She had no money and was about to ask the cashier for help. She had been praying silently. She wept in my arms and later, I apologised to the Holy Spirit for being difficult.
There was another time when I had travelled through time and… I will stop there, because I learned quickly not to say some things out loud or to go into too much detail.To most believers, it sounds like madness. But there are others who recognise these things and know what they know. I wanted to be among them.
That was when I found Lwanzo’s church and for the first time, I felt completely understood, no one asked me to doubt my God, or to tone down my language. No one flinched when I spoke about visions or instruction from the Holy Spirit. The things I had learned to keep quiet elsewhere were received here as evidence of depth. Lwanzo spoke similarly in his sermons. The congregation called him “Papa”. Papa as in Father or Padre, like in a catholic church. When Lwanzo prophesied to congregants they would shout “Go deeper Papa!”. Soon I was attending Papa’s church shouting the same. “Go deeper!” My heart longed for the deeper things of God.
I was tired when I became a member of Lwanzo’s church. I had grown up too early, taking on responsibility before I had the language to understand it. I helped raise my two siblings. I loved them deeply and did everything I could to care for and protect them.
My mother had left us and we did not know whether she was alive or dead. I heard a rumour that she had run away with a pastor. People said she was in Rwanda now. My father was alive, but he was distant in every way that mattered. He existed at the edges of our lives, present without presence. I learned early how to escape myself.
I escaped through promiscuity, weed, alcohol and tattoos. I marked my body permanently because nothing else in my life felt stable. I knew how an African woman with tattoos was read. I knew the assumptions, but I did it anyway. An African woman with tattoos is already guilty before she speaks. My uncle knew that and would lecture me, the church aunties prayed about it too, but that was before I found Jesus for myself.
Lwanzo, he had tattoos too, and that mattered to me more than it should have.
The church met in Mbezi Beach behind Shamo Tower, in a building that felt charged even before worship began. The lights were dim, the music was loud and melodic in a way that worked on the body first before the spirit. Here congregants cried with fervour openly, some shook with zeal while others fell, lying prostrate. Others danced, we worshiped God unabashedly with our bodies, tears and sweat. Nobody rushed to explain what was happening. Experience did not need interpretation, it only needed witnesses.
Lwanzo was Congolese, charismatic, and visibly set apart. He arrived late to services and sat on a raised chair at the front. It was not called a throne, but it felt like one. He sometimes checked his phone during worship while the rest of us sang. It did not look right, but I knew he was a busy man, probably tending to last-minute church matters online.
When he preached, he spoke about purity, obedience, and dying to self. His voice was calm and controlled. When he looked at you, it felt personal, even in a room full of people. I chose to trust him.
We were encouraged to wear white often, we were told it invited holiness. I fasted and prayed in tongues for long stretches of time. I followed instructions carefully when sacred rights were introduced. I participated in salt baths, I buried objects and spoke declarations directed at the earth. When things felt ‘off’ I found scripture to justify my deeds. I did all this with sincerity.
Soon I became an usher. I was told I carried myself well. That I was attentive and that I understood spiritual order. Ushers were positioned as protectors of the anointing. We controlled access. We were told not everyone was meant to come close and being near power felt like purpose.
Get Charlotte Makala’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Occasionally, groups of us were invited to Lwanzo’s house. I was never alone with him, always in clusters. Sometimes when we ate, he offered us food from his plate. This was described as spiritual. To eat what the prophet ate was framed as alignment.
Some of the church staff that were “chosen” to eat from his plate said their spiritual sight had increased, that they were seeing visions with clarity afterwards. I hoped the same would happen to me, but nothing did when I ate from his plate. I hid my disappointment and told myself it still meant something. Papa had offered me his plate. “Eat my daughter” he said, giving way to his charismatic congolese accent.He smiled as I ate the remnants of his rice and stew, watching with what looked like pleasure. “God loves you, Jilly,” he teased. My name is Maggie, but he said I resembled Jill Scott, so he often called me Jill or Jilly. The nickname made me feel seen. He watched me closely as the plate emptied. At the time, I understood this as the attention of a loving, spiritual father.
I went to his house again another time, looking forward to being offered his plate. The honour and privilege went to someone else that day. I hid my disappointment. This time, I noticed that some of the church staff were called aside privately, I was not. “Waiting was also obedience.” my mind echoed.
Back at church on another Sunday during service money was given freely, often, in amounts that strained people quietly. We called it sacrifice and honour. I gave because I believed giving proved my faith and proved that I could be detached from worldly things. I believed resistance meant pride. We gave especially when our “Grandfather” visited. He was Prophet Zeal Espresso, Lwanzo’s spiritual father from Zimbabwe. The name sounded odd. His accent was different, stronger even than Lwanzo’s, but I did not question it. They were MOGs. Men of God. We believed we were serving God.I can say now that we were enriching men who misused power and misrepresented God to us.
When my visa expired, I brought it to Lwanzo carefully. I explained the situation. He prayed and said God was pruning me. He said removal preceded elevation. He said I would return.
Then communication stopped. I was no longer invited to staff events. Messages went unanswered. The distance arrived without confrontation. My usefulness had expired.
I left Tanzania believing in Lwanzo, today in Kenya I believe in God.
The collapse of Lwanzo came later, through other people’s voices. Through YouTube testimonies and Instagram stories. Women and men who had served beside me and ushers who had been called into private meetings spoke up. They described Lwanzo as a spiritual groomer, who used manipulation as a tactic, and some women spoke of abortions and witchcraft. They described Lwanzo as a warlock.
At first, I defended him, surely they were mistaken, people often misunderstood spiritual authority and the enemy targets anointed men. These explanations were familiar to me. I had used them before. But the stories did not stop, they accumulated and they did not contradict one another.
I began to recognise patterns rather than isolated incidents. I noticed the same language being used over and over, the same private meetings described, and the same instructions framed as obedience. Each account ended in the same confusion, followed by the same shame.
Then I remembered something simple. I knew these men and women. I knew how they spoke, I knew how they served. I knew how careful they were with the truth, how much they truly loved God. I knew that it cost them to speak.
I realised that I did not know Prophet Lwanzo the way I thought I did.Something in me broke, the framework that had held my faith together collapsed. I could no longer separate the God I loved from the harm done in His name.
I asked questions that did not have comforting answers. How could a God I had trusted so completely allow me to be led by someone who caused this kind of damage? How could discernment coexist with deception ? Where had my certainty gone? Had I been bewitched?
I blamed myself first then my hunger for God. Next, I blamed my desire for depth and my need to belong. I hated the way I had learned to obey so quickly. I was disgusted with the part of me that equated blind thoughtless surrender with holiness.
I saw, with uncomfortable clarity, that I had chosen belief even when my body signaled unease. I had explained away discomfort because it interfered with belonging. I had learned to distrust my own hesitation.I had not been ignorant, I had been willing and that was a hard pill to swallow.
Now I was sitting in this church, back home in Nairobi, the pew smelled of polished wood and someone else’s perfume. The pastor spoke gently, his voice was calm and ordinary, almost disappointing. There was no spectacle, no prophecy, no promises of wealth or elevation. Just scripture and a sermon that asked nothing of me.
When the service ended, people talked quietly. No one rushed the altar. No one collapsed or cried out. There was no urgency to be transformed. The room emptied slowly as I remained seated for a while. I realised then that God had saved me, not through visions, voices or dreams but through a visa.
Matthew 24:24.
“For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to deceive, if possible, even the elect.”
