Fortunate Hove Cooper: Founder Panoramic Global Media Group

As I have sat in church pews, listening to missionaries rescuing young girls from being trafficked, workshops on Female Genital mutilation in Africa and other parts of the world, stories of rape victims turned prostitutes or murderers, and children who are hardened by criminal activity due to the environment that they were raised up in, I t to myself, “It could have been me.”

My life could have been without complications, but fate had a package of pain that worked out for my good in the end. Let me share a little with you so that you may appreciate that when we talk of the calling of God in our lives, there is a lot involved. My preparation for who I have become started before I was born.

I am a survivor of abortion. This was because one of my parents wanted me aborted. I strongly believe that it was for ritual purposes, but I survived that ordeal, and I was born. Within a few years, my parents separated, for a while, and came back together again. They planned a wedding, and everything was in place for the celebration, but something destroyed such plans. From that time, I moved to my maternal grandparent’s home. My mother, sister and I were not welcome at all.

I endured untold physical abuse when my mother had left me to go to work, until she stopped working to take care of us. My father had moved on and did not help at all until some years down the line. A relative took me in, and life was full of all the wealth that a child can desire. In that house, I was sexually abused, under very strange circumstances which I now realize were ritualistic. I regressed in behavior from that of an active five-year-old to that of a two-year-old, after that rape experience, and acted out badly in anger. The matter was hushed, and life went on. When I continued to react to the rape experience, I was shuttled to my grandmother who was an alcoholic. I was in the 2nd grade.

I realized early on that I needed to escape from that environment, and became determined to one day separate myself from the circumstances that I found myself in. I was beaten mercilessly by my mother’s sister, who would gather other children while she brutalized me because she hated my mother. My mother was in a state of depression struggling to survive and could not protect me. One thing that has always made me wonder is the drive that I had to survive, and the clear vision that I would make it in life.

Now I know that it was the power of God. No one could dampen my spirit no matter what they did to me. Some of my uncles joined in the beatings. One night my uncle used an ox hide whip to beat me for hours for no reason. I could not sit up the following day. However, my teacher who did not understand beat me for being late for school. For once, I became hopeless, and broke down, and cried hopelessly. My teacher made fun of my crying, and he made me stand before the class and cry because I seemed to enjoy crying. I became a lonely child, looking for a way of escape, but there was none.

I remember one of my uncles spent the whole night fighting with me trying to rape me. When he failed, he said I am going to get you a boyfriend. I was ten years old. He was trying to pimp me, in the village. That is when I realized that I had to stand up and fight for my mother and sisters. To this day the fight goes on.

Then during the 1970’s the war of liberation came to Zimbabwe, with even worse dangers because I was sent to represent the family at the guerilla base as an eleven-year-old. One day I was caught up in combat at one of the bases as government soldiers, and guerillas exchanged fire. I survived, but was very traumatized.

My life became different when I gave my life to Jesus Christ, at fifteen years of age. Things changed for the better, but the stigma of being targeted for verbal abuse, demeaning, and isolation did not cease. I woke up to the need to fight for survival in the natural world, as well as fighting spiritually.

I moved to live with my father, who was fairly wealthy but we disagreed sharply over my way of worshiping God because he wanted me to follow the traditional worship. I did not change from my lifestyle because his presence in my life at that stage, and his money meant very little to me. God was sufficient for me. We clashed spiritually, and God told me to distance myself from him gradually. God told me that the few years that God had allowed me to live with my father, were designed to bring healing to both of us, and after seven years, it was time for me to separate myself from my father. It was hard but I managed to move on.

Traditional worship and some cultural beliefs can be used sometimes to hide wicked practices of witchcraft, voodoo, and ritual activities involving innocent people. God has taught me over the years, how dark some of the so-called traditional practices are. There is no believer in Christ who can survive while serving the master of traditional practices and following Jesus Christ.

When I understood that God had called me, I had one question for Him, “Why did you let me go through all that without intervention?” His answer was that “I wanted to raise you Myself without the interference of your parents because of the work that I want you to do” He began to heal me from so many things that I have read about in Psychology books. God is a healer. Then He promised me that whoever will rise up against me will fall for my sake, and no weapon formed against me would prosper.

There have been countless attempts to take me out of this world but those words in Isaiah 54: 15-17 have stood as the unshakeable promise to me from God. Then God said to me “There are many women who are going through what you experienced, now go and cause them to be set free too” This is the main mandate of this web page. You can ask, “Does it take all that to prepare a person for ministry?” In my case, it has been that way.

I understand the power of change that comes through the preaching of the gospel. I now know that it was Satan who was determined to take me out before I could cause one or two people to be delivered and find hope. I know that God’s hand was stronger than what I was going through, because I never lost my joy. I saw a future that was so bright, but I kept everything to myself. A vision that has God in it cannot be dampened by any struggle. It is possible to make it through the worst adversity because Christ conquered the world.

After my graduation from university, God instructed me to work as a journalist. I was not particularly keen at the time, because I had wanted to be a diplomat. Nevertheless, I obeyed. I worked for the only broadcasting station in Zimbabwe for eleven years. My spiritual assignment was to pray that the airwaves should open up for the spreading of the gospel. It happened, and I was given a new assignment.

I was sent to the only Iron and Steel Company in the country to work as a Public Relations Manager. At the same time, God told me that my marriage had not been ordained by Him, and as such it had failed to make the cut for continuity. I was to just leave everything and move on with the children, which I did begrudgingly because I had worked hard for all the resources. I moved on to the new assignment in the midst of so much pain. My assignment at the Iron and Steel Company was to pray that “The Company should not close down because the people in Torwood had nowhere to go” God said that He had compassion for the workers. Torwood neighborhood, is where most of the lower ranking employees of the Iron and Steel Works reside. I survived the three years at the company.

Through, a connection made with Andrae Crouch when he toured Zimbabwe in 2001, a door to do missionary work in the United States was opened up for me.

The missionary work in the United States had a lot of adversity that included a lot of spiritual warfare. To the extent that one night I had an encounter with Satan/Lucifer. He came into my room in the early hours of the morning to discourage me from moving to America. It was during that encounter that I understood the terms of my mission to the United States. For the first time I saw the Holy Spirit, which appeared as a turbulent wind that was stationary. The Holy Spirit stood on my right side and was the one telling me what to say in response to Lucifer.

The mission, according to the Holy Spirit, was to intercede that that the leader of Christ Memorial Church would not die before his time because Satan had a mandate to kill him before his time. The leader was not supposed to die before he had completed his mandate to connect generations. I worked under the leadership of Christ Memorial Church for eleven years through a lot of adversity. I was also ordained as an Elder. The leader of the church said “I cannot hold you back anymore, because you have proved that God called you over the years, Come let me ordain you so that people will know that you came from my hands.”

While still working at Christ Memorial Church, I was instructed to ask a member of our church to give me a job as a counselor for adolescents. I worked with youths with alcohol and drug abuse problems for about seven years. Then I was called back to full time ministry in order to focus on intercession again.

I got married in 2014. Again, the relationship had a clear mandate, and time span. Today, our ministry is an outreach to the homeless and low-income families. In the process, we have been able to spread our humanitarian wings abroad to help pastors in India, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and families in crisis in South Africa. We have been able to send clothes and money to buy food for pastors affected by the pandemic.

In 2020, there was a shift of focus again. This time it was to focus on interceding for Zimbabwe, because the country had completed its forty years of wilderness, and change was coming but it needed to be prayed through.