Serving Others as Christ Did

Sabbath Sibanda Maturure was born in 1952 in Shurugwi with a debilitating disease that made him unable to walk. Three of his sisters also inherited the condition. Their mother, who had had 11 children, would carry Sabbath and his sisters on her back one by one to the green fields so they could be part of the family’s activities.

When he was eight years old, Sabbath was taken to a residential center in Bulawayo, called Jairos Jiri, that provided education and employment for people with disabilities. He discovered his talent for painting. The center sold artwork and crafts produced by residents at fairs and in a shop.

As a teenager, he met a young Christian missionary named Wendy at one such fair. Wendy told him, “God loves you.” He pointed out such things were easy for her to say: “Look, you are smart, you are smartly dressed. You can walk.” To this, she responded, “But, Sabbath, you can paint. I can’t.”

Thereafter Sabbath investigated Christianity. At a church he heard the preacher speak of Christ, the Good Shepherd. Sabbath asked himself whether he, too, was one of Christ’s flock. “The answer came to me that I was one of the Lord’s sheep, and I should hear God’s voice.”

Eventually Sabbath met his sister’s friend Susan Ndaizivei Mubvumbi, a fellow center resident. They decided to marry in 1975. To pay for the marriage, Sabbath sold many of his paintings. His sisters also crocheted and knitted to help raise the funds.

In 1986, Susan was working at the Jairos Jiri shop in town, where she talked to Elder Boyd Lake, a Latter-day Saint missionary. She invited him and Sister Helen Lake to teach her family. Soon Susan and Sabbath decided to be baptized. They became pillars of the Nguboyenja Branch, established in 1988.

The branch met in the main hall at Jairos Jiri. Most of its members were center residents. From 1989 until his death in 1998, Sabbath served as branch president. The branch’s many deaf members bore their testimonies with sign language, performed expressive signed renditions of hymns such as “I Am a Child of God,” and staged plays dramatizing the Nativity and the Joseph Smith story. To fund branch activities, seminary materials, and travel, enterprising members sold oranges and “cutoffs” (scraps of fabric from factories).

“When I look at my life,” Sabbath reflected, “I realize that the most painful thing that a human being can come across is to think that he can do everything on his own. But I’ve since surrendered everything to Christ. If I’ve got problems, I just give them to him.”

Sabbath and Susan Maturure and their children.

Sabbath, Susan, and their three daughters—Blessings, Sukoluhle, and Helen—were sealed in the Johannesburg South Africa Temple in 1992. At the end of each day, Susan and Sabbath gathered their family for prayer to give thanks and ask for direction. “If we’ve got any abilities, and it doesn’t matter how small they seem, to God they are important,” said Sabbath. “Give them to him by using them to serve others, as Christ did.”