MAKINDU, Kenya – Imagine a secluded place away from the noise of the city, with none of the distractions of daily life. It’s a quiet, peaceful getaway, perfect for a day of prayer, meditation, and communing with the Lord. Guests would come away from their visit feeling spiritually refreshed and strengthened.
This is the vision of Pastor Nicholas Mutisya in Makindu, Kenya. He has a desire to open up an area for people who live in the city to be able to go and visit when they want to earnestly seek God.
Jeff Everard, associate pastor at Saline Baptist Church in St. Mary, Mo., described how prayer gardens would help Christians in Kenya.
“What he [Mutisya] has here in the prayer garden are called prayer cells, which is just a little room where they can go and pray, get away from the distractions of the world, and just really try to connect with the Lord,” he said. “It would be a place where, if they want to come out and pray for a couple days, it would be a place where they could stay. They would have water that would be accessible to them, and they’d have certain amenities that they normally don’t have in their own homes.”
This place would even have a library where guests could access many different books, including the Bible. “A lot of pastors,” Everard said, “don’t even have a Bible in their churches that they’re able to preach from.”
Everard shared that Mutisya is currently focused on building a wall around his land. A border around the prayer garden is necessary due to the complications of property and land ownership in Kenya. “If you have a piece of property, you’ve got to have something on there that you’ve built or something like a wall that’s starting to go up,” he explained. “That’s what he’s working on right now, a wall to go around the perimeter. If you don’t have a wall, and that space you own is unoccupied, somebody else could come over and put a building on there. Then when you go back and notice that there’s a building that you never put there, they could by rights claim that land, because nobody was occupying the land.”
If Mutisya puts a wall around the prayer garden site, that means it’s being occupied and no one else can try to take it from him.
Mutisya has had a couple volunteers from his church help him plant trees or build the wall, but he’s been doing most of the work. Over in the United States, there are other churches supporting his project. “As of right now, there are three churches over here in America that have helped get behind this,” Everard said. Right now, the financial support comes from Lebanon Baptist Church, Pine Log Baptist Church, and New Offenburg First Baptist Church.
Regarding how long the project will take, Everard said, “It depends on how many people will volunteer to help, because as of right now, [Mutisya] doesn’t have the money to hire anybody. He was given this vision quite some years ago, not knowing how the Lord was going to provide for it.”
But God used the three American churches to raise money to send over to Makindu. Everard traveled to Kenya to see the work on the prayer garden for himself, and he shared what he saw with the three churches. “In 2023, when I came back and shared it with a few churches that helped support me going over there the first time, I had a lot of people who said they would be praying for it or they would like to help donate,” he said. “Some anonymous donors have donated over the last three years…. In three years, we were able to raise over $12,000 to help purchase the land and get things going over there…. We’d love to see it finished relatively soon, but it all depends on how many people in Kenya can get behind it and help build it and get it going.”
Mutisya needs all the help he can get. Everard has been raising awareness and support for the prayer garden project. “We were hoping that other churches would see the vision and the need and also help donate to it,” he said. “Since we came back in 2023, me and my wife have felt led by the Lord to open up a ministry called Wells of Living Water Ministry, and right now, that’s how we’ve been using the funds from the church to funnel it through that organization. In this way, they get sent over, and [Mutisya] can start on it.”
The prayer garden will take much time and resources to complete, but the end result will benefit hundreds of people. Everard believes in the importance of doing big things for the glory of God. “There’s a lot to do, but this is going to be a place for lots of people to go. I think when you put God first in something like this, it can grow into something great and really touch a culture, which is definitely needed over there. This is something bigger than anybody could have ever dreamed, and I see this really impacting and touching that community over there for years to come.”
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