Our Story
It began with two men.
A young Maasai pastor with a vision to reach his own people, and an American who could bring the resources to do it. Everything since has come out of that.
In 1996 Mike Nevil traveled to Kenya on a short-term construction trip, to help put up a church building in a village called Empukani. A young Maasai pastor and evangelist named Timothy Moilo had been leading a small group of believers there for several years. They met under an acacia tree, and they had been praying for a building.
On that trip Timothy told Mike what he was praying toward, and it went a good deal further than one village: to reach all of the Maasai people of Kenya.
What he did not have were the resources to do it. What Mike had was a network of people in the United States who could help. So Mike went home and gathered a group of American donors to resource Timothy's vision, not to replace it, and not to redirect it.
God gave Timothy the vision and the abilities. He gave Mike the resources and the relationships. Both of them were obedient. The bond between those two men is what started this work, and the shape of that first partnership is still the shape of everything we do.
Thirty years on, that one congregation has multiplied into more than fifty across the Maasai lands, with another building going up almost every month. Empukani has a well, a clinic, a school, a model farm and a seminary. Every one of those things was asked for by someone who lives there, which is the only way we have ever worked.
Our mission is unchanged: to reach, gather, and empower Maasai people with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Where it started
The original church at Empukani.
This is the building Mike came to help build in 1996, and the answer to several years of praying under an acacia tree.
Every church in our network traces back to the congregation that met here, and to the pastor who gathered it before anyone in America had heard of the place.
It is worth looking at for a moment when the numbers on the rest of this site start to sound like an organization rather than a village.
Vision from one man. Resources from another. Neither would have been enough alone.
The founding partnership, still the modelHis last charge
From the littlest kid to the oldest person, we need to do everything we can to make meeting Jesus in Maasai lands unavoidable. If they didn't learn about Him in school, get them a nearby church. If they won't come to church, they will come to the farm for food. If they avoid those places, they still need clean water and medical treatment.
Just make the meeting happen. Make sure Pastor Timothy has everything he needs.
Mike NevilFounder · Spoken to Andrew Gwynn in 2024, the week he died
Everything on this website is an attempt to carry out those five sentences. The church, the school, the farm, the well and the clinic are not five programs that happen to share an organization. They are five ways of making the same meeting unavoidable.
Plainly
What our money actually does.
The Gospel would spread through the Maasai lands without us. It has been spreading for a long time, carried by Maasai believers, on foot, with no budget.
What Mission Maasai changes is the speed. And speed is the whole point. Out in the bush, over the next hill, there are people God loves who have never heard the name of Jesus. We do not want another one of them to die without knowing Him.
There is no way for a Maasai family to earn the surplus it takes to drill a well or put up a building. Survival takes what there is. That is a fact about capital, not about capability. A people who have lived in this country for thousands of years are not short on resourcefulness.
So we say it accurately. Maasai pastors plant the churches. Maasai believers build them. We pay for materials and shorten the wait. That is worth funding. The real work for Mission Maasai is just gathering the resources to make it possible.
How we work
Four commitments
Mission Maasai does not run programs in Kenya. Maasai leaders run them, and we resource what they build, the same arrangement Mike and Timothy started with.
Restore
Meet the fundamental needs: food, water, healthcare, safety. Little else lands without these.
Resource
Equip Maasai churches and pastors with the funds and buildings to serve their own communities.
Develop
Train Maasai leaders for pastoral ministry and for economic independence.
Multiply
Expand what works, and measure it honestly, spiritually and materially.
Timeline
Thirty years, in order
Compounding growth from long term partnership under God's blessing.
The spread of the Gospel accelerates with time.
One church became 50 in 30 years. Multiplication starts slowly and accelerates over time. This is how person to person evangelism works.
Mike Nevil travels to Kenya on a short-term construction trip to help build a church at Empukani, where Pastor Timothy Moilo's congregation has been meeting under an acacia tree. Mike goes home and begins quietly supporting Pastor Timothy's work, alone at first, then asking his friends to join him.
Mike returns to Kenya to reconnect with Pastor Timothy in person after years apart. Annual trips begin soon after, mostly church construction, and a feeding initiative starts.
The feeding program formalizes and the first Vacation Bible School is held.
The Empukani well is completed. The place with no water has water.
The health clinic opens, founded by Dr. Moses.
Mission Maasai is incorporated and granted 501(c)(3) status, and church construction passes to Maasai contractors. Severe drought: more than 600 families are fed monthly, and 150 children are baptized.
Student sponsorship launches. A larger church opens at Empukani, seating 400.
Staff expands as the clinic and church outgrow their capacity.
Drought coincides with the COVID shutdowns. The school's population swells past 300, and food relief runs alongside.
Empukani Seminary opens as a recognized extension campus of Kenya Baptist Theological College. Hope Shamba Model Farm and its well are completed.
The seminary's first class graduates, 22 pastors. The Kenyan leadership team and the U.S. team both expand to keep up with the pace of the work.
More than fifty congregations, more than forty of them in a building. A new building goes up almost every month at $8,500 apiece. Twenty more pastors are due to graduate in 2026. The wells still run.
The people
On the ground
The work is theirs. We resource it.
Leadership
Board of Directors
Thirty years in, and still the same partnership.
Help us carry the next decade of it.
Give to the work