My name is Patience Mutie Muthenya and I live in Nairobi, Kenya, with my husband and our two daughters.

I have been involved with the Healing Hearts Transforming Nations (HHTN) ministry for about 10 years now. It started on a sunny morning in early 2015 when I received an email inviting me to attend the International School of Reconciliation later that year.

At the time, I was volunteering with a student ministry organisation here in Kenya called Fellowship of Christian Unions of Kenya (FOCUS Kenya), which is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). Most of my work was with university students. I helped student leaders plan Bible studies and prayer meetings, but a lot of the work was simply spending time with them. We would cook and eat together, play cards, talk about life and just get to know each other. I really enjoyed that part of the work because it gave me the opportunity to open up my own life to them as well.

My time with FOCUS was coming to an end and I knew I wanted to continue serving God, but I was not sure what that would look like. I was in a season where I was asking God to show me what was next. My prayer at the time was, “Show me your glory, reveal to me your ways, guarantee me your presence.” I was excited about what was ahead, but I was also quite anxious because I did not know what the future held.

That was when the email about the International School of Reconciliation came. I attended the school later that year and, through that experience, God opened the door for me to join the Kenyan team that was doing HHTN ministry at the time, Way of Peace Kenya (WAPE).

Interestingly, around that same time, I heard God say to me that He was preparing me to work with ‘The international team’. I honestly had no idea what that meant. There wasn't an international HHTN team at that point, so I just kept going with what God had already put in front of me.

Then, in 2023, I was invited to serve with HHTN Global. It was only then that I realised that three years earlier, an international team had been formed to connect and support the different ministries, organisations and individuals around the world who use the HHTN approach. Looking back, I could see what God had been preparing me for, even though I had not understood it at the time.

Since then, I have been serving HHTN at the global level. I am very grateful for the opportunity because I get to see and be involved in the work of helping people find healing through Jesus in different parts of the world.

A lot of my work is behind the scenes. I coordinate with people and teams in different countries, communicate with leaders and facilitators, help organise trainings and gatherings, prepare materials, follow up with people and support the leadership. I also help keep the wider HHTN community connected. So there are many emails, WhatsApp messages, Zoom meetings, documents, planning and administration. It may not always look like ministry from the outside, but it is a big part of what makes the work possible.

I also get opportunities to be involved in what is happening on the ground. Recently, for example, I was part of a workshop in Kibera, the largest urban slum in Africa, located here in Nairobi. We had been invited by a ministry working in the community. I have lived in Nairobi for seven years, but I had never been to Kibera. I had always heard stories about how dangerous it was and how you could easily be robbed, so I had my own fears about going there. But as we started preparing for the workshop, I had to go and meet the people we would be working with.

That is where I met Pastor Eric, who grew up in Kibera. What struck me about his story was that, like many people who grow up there, his desire had been to get out of Kibera and hopefully help his family get out too. But after completing his studies, he came back because he felt God was calling him to serve his own community. As I listened to him, I began to understand why HHTN could be useful in that community.

We eventually held the workshop and he had brought together about 30 people. His ministry also includes feeding people in the community, so in the evenings we helped provide food as well. He sees his work as caring for people both physically and spiritually, and it was encouraging to see the way he is serving his community.

One of the participants was a Congolese woman who is now married and living in Kenya. She had come to Kenya as a child because of the war in Congo and had carried that experience with her for many years. During the workshop, she had an opportunity to talk about some of what she had experienced and to bring that pain to Jesus. At one point she was crying and I hugged her. As we stood there, I could feel her body slowly relax. It was a very simple moment, but it reminded me again why this work is important. There are many people who have carried difficult things for years and have never really had a safe place to talk about them or bring them to God.

That experience in Kibera encouraged me a lot. It also reminded me that sometimes the work we do behind the scenes — the planning, the communication, the organising and all the administration — eventually creates an opportunity for healing to happen.

I have had similar experiences in other places, and one thing that continues to encourage me is seeing how much the need for healing is the same, even though the places and people are very different. People carry wounds from conflict, prejudice, loss and difficult experiences, and many of them do not know what to do with those wounds. It is a privilege to see people begin to understand that Jesus cares about what they have been through and that healing and reconciliation are possible.

Of course, the work also has its challenges. We do not always have enough resources, and sometimes people don't understand or accept the message of HHTN. But every time we see someone begin to experience healing or see people take steps towards reconciliation, it encourages us to keep going.

Alongside HHTN, I also volunteer with the Peace and Reconciliation Network (PRN) of the World Evangelical Alliance as part of its Africa Implementation Team. Some of this work looks at the connection between peace and reconciliation, migration and mission. We are helping the Church think about how we respond to refugees and migrants and to people who are often treated as outsiders, and how we can respond in ways that bring welcome and reconciliation.

I have also had opportunities to work with Africa International University here in Nairobi and with other churches and partners. I value these relationships because I don't think this is work that one person or one organisation can do alone. There are many people in different countries and churches who are also trying to find ways of bringing healing and reconciliation to their communities, and it is encouraging to be able to learn and work together.

More recently, I have been coordinating our first ever online HHTN course. This has been a learning experience for all of us, but it has also shown us what is possible. We have people from different countries and continents joining the course. It has made us think about how HHTN can reach more people without always needing the money for everyone to travel to one place. The whole team has had to be creative, and I am grateful for the way God has helped us through it.

I am grateful to God for the opportunity to do this work and for the people He has allowed me to work with. I do not know exactly what the next few years will look like, but I am trusting Him with that, just as I did when I received that email back in April 2015.