Bermuda will host the first female African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Bishop later this month when she makes her inaugural visit.

Bishop Vashti McKenzie will be the guest preacher for the Bethel AME Church Women's Day service.

Bishop McKenzie was elected and consecrated as a bishop on July 11, 2000, becoming the first female bishop in 214 years of church history. On September 28, 2000 Bishop McKenzie flew to South Africa from Baltimore to take up her post in the 18th Episcopal District. The post covers Maseru, Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique and Swaziland.

Bishop McKenzie attended Howard University's School of Divinity. Her first ministry was a tiny church in Chesapeake City and she was later assigned to Baltimore's Payne Memorial AME Church where she became the first woman to pastor such a large, well-established congregation.

Over the next ten years membership at that church went from 300 to 1,700. At that post, she led a drive that enabled nearly 600 men and women to be educated, trained and placed into jobs and helping them to leave welfare.

Bishop McKenzie is also the author of four Christian literature books and she appears on the Honour Roll of Great African-American Preachers. She received a letter of commendation from the United Nations High Commission as a result of work in an outreach ministry with Liberian women and children residing in the refugee camps of Ghana.

She is a former journalist and electronic broadcaster and is the wife of former NBA player, Stan McKenzie.

Bishop McKenzie, a mother of three, is humbled and grateful to God for the many opportunities he has presented for her to be of service to his kingdom.

She will speak at Bethel AME Church Women's Day Vesper Service on Saturday November 23 at 6.30 p.m. and again on Sunday, November 24, at 11 a.m.

All services and workshops will be held at the Bethel AME Church, 60 North Shore Road, near Shelly Bay in Hamilton Parish.