When we reached out to Esther for an interview, she was perplexed as she didn’t see the big deal in what she had done. She didn’t think of it as a big deal.

It’s not every day that a young person is so on fire for Christ that everything around them gets affected. That is what Esther did, she gathered the youth in her church in Nyeri and for a whole year, they met in Esther’s home to fellowship, pray and encourage each other.

Thankfully, her parents were kind enough to allow her to use their garage for the meetings. The meetings started in the year 2022 and are still ongoing.

“We would put our seats around the garage and pray together through the night, encourage each other and share God’s word,” she says.

But why did she do it?

In 2022, Esther was prompted by seeing that there was a lack of youth fellowship in her church. She had given her life to Christ towards the end of 2018. Lacking intention discipleship, she lived a lukewarm life until 2021 when she began to really understand and walk in the things of God.

What changed is that in 2021, Esther’s friend invited and paid for her to attend a 10-day retreat organized by Circuit Riders where, for the first time, she deeply understood the message of the gospel for herself.

“At that conference, I saw young people who were truly on fire for Christ. Before I was saved, I had a bad attitude towards Christianity, I thought it was boring. Being around young people who were on fire really changed my perspective. I also had a lot of fun,” she recalls.

Clearly and precisely, the gospel message was shared and Esther got to understand who Jesus is, his purpose and intention for her life and how to walk with him.

“Jesus was presented to me in a way that I said: I want a personal relationship with me. It triggered me to be among people who truly understood their place in God, something I had never seen in my life.”

That event imparted in Esther a new way of looking at Christianity and ignited her passion for seeing young people walk in their calling.

She embarked on a season of going through scripture and she saw how God calls people at a young age to serve. Growing up in a traditional church where adults did most of the things, it had not occurred to Esther that her attitude towards serving was inadequate. That was changed at the conference.

In 2022, her eyes were opened to see the need that she was not looking for.

She recalls, “We were just meeting as youth leaders in church, a meeting that guys rarely showed up for. As I sat there it just hit me that we didn’t have any fellowship whatsoever. I gathered the leaders and we decided to do something about it.”

The fellowships went on through 2022. They met on Wednesdays and Saturdays for prayers and held overnight meetings at home once a month. Esther did all these while living and working in Nairobi. She would travel to Nyeri many times for the fellowships.

In the beginning of 2023, Esther and her parents moved to Kitale.  It didn’t take Esther long to do something in her new church.

“In our first week in Kitale, I gathered the young people from our church and invited them home. I told them that I have a passion for young people. We had fellowship and prayer. I told them we can be having monthly meetings but they said we do it twice a month.”

The fellowship is now happening in Kitale. Unfortunately, Kitale is far and Esther cannot commute every two weeks from Nairobi but the fellowship is vibrant and ongoing.

“They have not missed a single one. The purpose was for them to meet for prayer and they do,” she says.

Moses is one of the youth leaders of the fellowship in Nyeri. He reports that the Wednesday and Saturday fellowships are ongoing. About 20 young people meet. The number grows to 50 during the holidays. Through the prayers, God blessed Moses with a university scholarship and other members with jobs.

But most importantly, the youth are growing in faith and are serving the Lord.

“The platform has given courage to the youth to show their abilities and serve. They know that God can also use them as young people. Gifts like ministering through music and preaching have been identified and they have courage to come out and use them,” Moses reports.