Huge Growth
Since 2012, both the Mara Vision Kenyan team and the spectrum of people they reach have grown exponentially through an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and donor support. Because of these champions’ trust in God's grace, Mara Vision has become a leader in evangelism in five of Kenya’s counties: Kajiado and Narok (Maasai live in both of these counties), Pokot, Samburu, and Turkana.
By 2014, the Kenyan government had noticed that MVO was affecting the lives of the Maasai people positively. Incidence of alcoholism had diminished greatly in the regions touched by MVO’s leadership. Clean, healthy lives energized these people when they embraced the biblical teachings.
Near the close of the 2014 Maasai camp meeting, representatives from the Narok County Council met with MVO leadership to ask MVO to provide pastors and teachers to teach Bible in the government (public) schools on the Maasai Mara. With the Bible is their textbook, truth leaps from the pages of Scripture into the young minds. Two of MVO’s teachers have more than 900 students in one school, and 400 attend Sabbath services, including the principal’s daughter.
Over the years, MVO workers have led thousands to welcome the watery grave of baptism. Several churches have been built. Many of them fill to overflowing before the building projects are completed.
Mara Vision’s most significant work to date has caught the attention of the president of Kenya himself. In 2019, MVO launched literacy schools for the Moran warriors on the Maasai Mara, who are illiterate young men. They learn to read, using the Bible as their textbook. To date, we have literacy schools in all five counties.
This component of MVO flourishes to this day. For the first time in their lives, warriors can learn to read and write. Again, their textbook is the Bible. These young men have become so enamored with God that many of them want to become pastors.
Little more than a year ago when we opened a literacy school for the Samburu warriors, they were worshipping their pagan gods of rocks and mountains. The Bible literacy schools are exploding. The Moran warrior literacy schools in Kajiado, Pokot, and Turkana commenced just this year (2024).
For many years, the Samburu-Pokot war has been daily news in Kenya. They endeavor to protect grazing and water rights in an often drought-ridden land. God is using Mara Vision to end this war. The hearts of many Samburu Morans have been won through God’s leadership of Mara Vision.
Recent contact with the Pokot people indicates that they too have hearts that want this war to end. The warriors in this county have guaranteed the safety of Mara Vision’s workers, so a literacy class has opened for the fiercest of tribes.
In November 2023, the Samburu warriors received some of the first Godpods. After listening one Friday night to these solar-powered audio Bibles, generously donated by Adventist World Radio, the Samburu warriors arrived for church the next morning, saying, “Now we know you are telling us the truth. We must learn more about this Creator God who saves souls.”
Today, Mara Vision Outreach employs roughly 100 pastors and teachers who labor in these five counties. All workers, pastors and teachers alike, receive evangelism training, using the principles taught by the Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism (AFCOE).
MVO provides pastors for many Seventh-day Adventist churches and Sabbath Schools that dot the landscape in these five counties. MVO’s Bible teachers educate approximately 15,000 students each week in the government/public schools.
Kenya is largely a Christian nation, but more than 90% of the Maasai, Pokot, Samburu, and Turkana people are pagan and unreached by the gospel message of their Savior’s saving grace. They have never heard the name of Jesus. By God's grace, Mara Vision’s small team of mighty workers strives to change that statistic. This team labors to fulfill God’s purpose as He continues to grow the ministry and the entire mission through faithfulness in the little things.
