Southern Kenya
My name is Peter Njenga and I am a Christian, married to my wife Mercy Njenga and we are blessed with 2 daughters namely Tecla and Liz.
In the year 2009, Machakos BETHESDA BAPTIST local church sent me to the Maasailand mission field where I have been engaging in a church planting mission. On February year 2009 a small group of believers started meeting in my small room at ILBISSIL TRADING CENTER where our first church is now located. This was the foundation work of BETHESDA BAPTIST CHURCH-ILBISSIL. The church has been growing and in the year 2011 we were set apart as an independent local church. I am so grateful to my dear brother in Christ, Pastor Blake Lasslett, who supported this work right from the beginning. He also helped us to acquire a piece of land here where he also assisted us to construct a temporary church building which now is at risk of collapsing because it has been badly destroyed by termites.
In the year 2012, I engaged in my second Church planting mission work at a village which is a distance of 21kms from ILBISSIL TRADING CENTER. The founding of BETHESDA BAPTIST CHURCH-EMURUA DIKIRR, has presented many challenges as we started our worship meetings under a tree and we worshipped under the tree for 3 years. Later by the grace of God, a Maasai elder donated a 1 acre piece of land for church building. Again Pastor Blake helped us to construct a temporary church building where we are now meeting. This is a unique church unlike the one at ILbissil because the Emurua Dikirr church members are all purely Maasai. The ILbissil church membership is a mixture of Maasai and 6 other different tribes.
Maasailand is a very fertile ground for the gospel but lack of resources has been the greatest hindrance.
In the year 2018, I engaged in another church planting mission work at a place called MAPARASHA which is about 28 kms from ILBISSIL TRADING CENTER. Unfortunately it failed for lack of resources. There are so many parts of Maasailand where the Gospel of Jesus Christ has not reached and by the grace of God my vision and mission is to reach these lost souls with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It is my prayer that God will provide and enable me to reach more people into the interior and continue with church planting mission work. Support for the Ministry has been one of my greatest challenges here because the locals are unstable. Maasailand is a hardship area (semi-arid) where we receive a very minimal amount of rainfall, thus making farming impossible and the cost of living expensive. The locals are pastoral who only depend on livestock keeping and often are badly hit by drought whereby most of the livestock are lost.
Some of the challenges here in Maasailand are:
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- Poverty – making it hard for the locals to support the Ministry.
- Illiteracy – making communication a great challenge because the community had earlier resisted education but slowly this has been changing.
- Traditional practices – Maasais are one of the Kenyan communities well known for adherence to their tradition even female circumcision among others and they do not entertain non Maasai who dare to challenge their tradition.
- Poor road network – this makes it difficult to reach into the interior communities because the roads are rough and there is no public transport.
For 9 years now, I have been trekking from ILBISSIL Trading Centre to our interior church at EMURUA DIKIRR, which is time consuming and tiresome, but by the grace of God we are still preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the interior.
It is my humble request to you and other brethren there to kindly remember us here in prayers. Remember me also as I engage in preaching the Gospel to the Maasai community and my desire to continue with the church planting mission work into the interior. God has put a burden on my heart to reach the people of the interior with the good news of the cross of Calvary. These lost souls have NEVER heard the Gospel.
I have attached here some photos.
In His unfailing Love,
Peter Njenga