Biography of Reverend Teresia Wairimu, Marriage, Ministry & Children

In the landscape of African Pentecostalism, few names command attention across denominations, nations, and public opinion. Reverend Teresia Wairimū Kinyanjui stands among them. She has built a ministry that grew from a simple living-room fellowship into large open-air crusades that reached thousands. She also became the first female preacher in Kenya’s history to host regular revival meetings at Uhuru Park. Through these gatherings, she preached boldly and drew people from many walks of life.

Her voice carries a strong prophetic edge. Many who have followed her ministry recall moments when her declarations aligned with later events. These experiences strengthened her reputation as a prophetic voice within modern Kenyan Christianity. She continues to speak with clarity, conviction, and courage, even when her messages challenge popular opinion.

Many people across the world call her “Mum.” They see her as a spiritual mother who guides, corrects, and nurtures them in their faith. Her ministry has produced thousands of spiritual sons and daughters who look to her for teaching and direction. Through decades of service, she has remained one of the most influential and outspoken leaders in Kenyan Pentecostalism.

Birth and Family Heritage

Teresia Wairimū Kìnyanjui was born on 15 November 1957.  She was the second born of Njeri Kinuthia and Kinuthia Kinyanjui.  Her family lineage carried significant weight in Kenya’s colonial-era history: her grandfather was Paramount Chief Kinyanjui, a Kikuyu colonial chief.  She was raised with both the privilege of that heritage and, later in life, the deep personal trials that would shape the ministry she eventually built. She attended Ngiriambu Girls High School  for her secondary education.

Conversion and the Years Before the Call

She gave her life to Christ in 1977 , the same eventful year that would, by her own account, also bring her into contact with the man she would marry. She married in November 1978,  and in the years that followed, she worked as a kindergarten teacher while actively participating in outreach ministry, including school evangelism and community gatherings.  The marriage was blessed with two children, Robert and Catherine.

On the surface, this was the picture of a settled, faithful young Christian woman building an ordinary family life. Underneath, both a divine calling and a devastating personal crisis were quietly converging.

July 21, 1985: The Encounter That Changed Everything

Wairimū recalls having a spiritual vision on 21 July 1985 , an encounter she has described in vivid, specific detail in her autobiography and in countless retellings since.

It was early morning at 3:00 a.m. when God gave Reverend Teresia Wairimu a life-changing encounter.A room filled with smoke, and a loud voice called her name: “Wairimu!” She experienced the glory of God filling the room, and although she felt fear, she recognized the voice as the Lord God speaking.

She sat up, and the Lord spoke to her about her calling, her service to God, and what He was going to do in the church through her ministry.

One week later, at a Sunday service, God manifested His power through Reverend Wairimu in the areas of the gift of prophecy and word of knowledge.  She later described this event as marking the start of her religious calling.

It is a striking historical detail that this defining encounter happened in the very same year, 1985, that her marriage collapsed. The call and the crisis arrived almost simultaneously, a convergence that would forever shape both her theology of suffering and her ministry to broken and abandoned women.

Searching for a Mentor in a Land Without One

What makes Wairimu’s early calling particularly remarkable is the spiritual isolation in which she received it. At the time in Kenya, there were no great manifestations of miracles, and thus no mentors to look up to.

Her transformative journey into ministry found its anchor in 1988 at a Reinhard Bonnke crusade, a pivotal moment that ignited her passion for evangelism.

She experienced a deep impact when she witnessed the manifestation of God through Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke during a crusade he conducted in Kenya in June 1988. Bonnke’s ministry gave the young, isolated, and gifted woman in Kenya something she had long lacked: a living example of what her own calling could look like in practice.

Her spiritual formation connects directly to the global Christ for All Nations (CfaN) ministry of Reinhard Bonnke and his wife Anni Bonnke. This evangelistic movement later recorded over 79 million decisions for Christ across Africa through Bonnke’s preaching.

Oslo, Norway: The Day the Dream Came to Pass

For four years, Wairimu carried the calling without the full impartation she sought. She continued to minister in high schools, universities, small social gatherings, and Bible studies, but her dream came to pass on 17 May 1992 in Oslo, Norway, when she met Evangelist Bonnke, who laid hands on her.

Upon her return to Kenya, she knew she had received an impartation from God that money could not buy. She had been birthed into ministry on that day, and there was an evident explosion in her ministry thereafter.  Reverend Teresia also took up the role of teacher alongside Bonnke at the Christ for All Nations (CFAN) School of Evangelism Worldwide, a formal recognition of her calling by one of the towering figures of twentieth-century global evangelism.

Founding Faith Evangelistic Ministry (FEM)

Wairimū founded Faith Evangelistic Ministry (FEM) in 1989, when charismatic churches emerged as an alternative to the worship in mainstream denominations.  What began modestly grew with extraordinary speed.

FEM started from small house gatherings and transitioned to large gatherings at venues like Nairobi’s City Hall and the Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC), and eventually regular Sunday crusades at Uhuru Park, where she preached on the second Sunday of each month for fourteen consecutive years.

In doing so, Wairimū became the first female preacher to hold regular revival crusades at Uhuru Park grounds, a historic milestone in a religious landscape that had, until then, rarely afforded women that level of platform and public authority.

Her ministry focuses on evangelism and incorporates elements such as healing, the doctrine of seed planting, charitable outreach, and public preaching, depicting true Pentecostalism. She emphasizes the practical application of Christian teachings, particularly in contexts of poverty and social need – for instance, the establishment of Kikambala, an orphanage.  She is also cited as an early proponent of the Doctrine of Seed Planting (DSP) in Kenyan Evangelical history.

Today, FEM has over 20,000 ministry partners, with offices in Kenya, the United States, and the United Kingdom.  She is based in Kenya as Head of FEM Family Church, a state-of-the-art, ten-million-dollar church constructed debt-free.

The Heartbreak Behind the Ministry

What sets Wairimu’s testimony apart from many public ministry narratives is her uncommon candour about her own suffering. “It was the year that saw my most valued and treasured dream shattered. My heart was broken. Deep down in my heart, I was bleeding,” she says  of 1985, the very year of her divine encounter.

Eight years before, she had met a man and fallen in love, and “like every little girl … I grew nurturing beautiful wishes and a strong desire for a happy and successful life,” she writes in her autobiography, A Cactus in the Desert.  The marriage, to a man she describes as a “handsome white man of medium height and build,”  ended in devastating fashion.

Wairimu lost access to her matrimonial home and received nothing in return. She had no clothes to change into, no money, no documents, and even the name by which many people identified her. She says she also lost her son Robert, who left her custody, and she describes this as her most painful loss.

“Had it not been by the grace of God and my solid faith in Him, I would not have survived through the 80s,” she writes in the first chapter of the book.  In the book, she explores the plight of single mothers through her own lens: “What chance did a divorced woman, a single mother to one and an estranged mother of another one have?”

Author and Teacher

The book, A Cactus in the Desert (Kinyanjui, T.W., 2011) chronicles that journey in full, including her early childhood, her darkest moments, and the turnaround that helped her rebuild her life, work at her ministry, and raise her daughter, culminating in the tearful reunion with her son, once painfully torn away to the custody of his father.

She has also endured rumours she candidly acknowledges had been spun and turned until they would produce “believable accounts of malicious untruths.”  The contrast between that painful private history and the public figure her congregation calls Mum, the epitome of faith and strength  to those who follow her is, in many ways, the entire testimony of her ministry.

Beyond A Cactus in the Desert, Reverend Wairimu has authored several other influential works. She is the author of four remarkable books: “Cactus in the Desert,” “Live by Faith,” “Pray Without Ceasing,” and “Arise and Shine.”

A Prophetic Voice for the Nation

Rev. Teresia Wairimu serves as a prophet to the Kenyan nation, and leaders frequently seek her counsel and prayers. Her prophetic ministry has produced several documented predictions that many describe as remarkably specific. At the beginning of 2019, she warned of an imminent terror attack, and the attack occurred a few days later, which drew widespread attention.
Great healings have also taken place in her meetings, including the healing of stage 4 cancer.

Spiritual Mother to a Generation: The Allan Kiuna Connection

Wairimu’s spiritual influence extends well beyond her own pulpit and into the lives of other prominent Kenyan ministers she has personally mentored. In the eulogy of the late Bishop Allan Kiuna, his family shared that he wholly surrendered his life to Jesus Christ at the age of 19 under the mentorship of Reverend Teresia Wairimu of Faith Evangelistic Ministry.  Bishop Kiuna would go on to co-found Jubilee Christian Church (JCC), one of Kenya’s largest and most prominent Pentecostal congregations, a legacy traced directly back to his discipleship under Wairimu.

Reverend Wairimu has built her national profile through both her relationship with Kenya’s political leadership and her pulpit ministry, and she has also strengthened it by speaking independently of that relationship when conviction demands it.

Wairimu’s church, Faith Evangelistic Ministries, is a congregation where President William Ruto and First Lady Rachel Ruto have frequently worshipped.

She has been close to President Ruto’s family since 2012. She also maintains a long-standing relationship with Pastor Dorcas Gachagua, and they have evangelised together for many years.

During the State House dedication service after Kenya Kwanza’s 2022 election victory, Wairimu compared President Ruto’s humble beginnings to David in the Bible. She said, “We have our David right here in our midst… when God handpicked you to be a leader of this nation at a time like this, I want us to understand that God qualifies the disqualified and raises the nobodies.”

But that closeness has never translated into uncritical political loyalty.

Politics, Power, and Prophetic Independence

In October 2024, Wairimu openly criticised the Kenya Kwanza government.

She reflected on the church’s initial support for President Ruto and said their confidence had waned, adding, “I know most of us were watching the television.”

“We were so embarrassed, extremely embarrassed,” she said, criticising Members of Parliament for prioritising the impeachment of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua over economic growth.

From the altar, she declared, “Until now, I have always thought that this government is a government of God because it is the one we voted for, but to our embarrassment, it is a government of fights…”

We are also going to arm ourselves in prayer. In the next election, you’ll have to convince me. Somebody must go home. People must start going home.”

The remarks generated national controversy and, predictably, misinformation.

A widely circulated graphic falsely claimed that authorities removed Wairimu from the State House intercessors’ WhatsApp prayer group after she criticized Ruto’s policies. The graphic, which used a fabricated Tuko.co.ke logo, misrepresented the situation. Africa Check verified the claim as false, and Tuko.co.ke itself explicitly flagged it as fake.

Wairimu later addressed the issue while speaking from an altar in London. She clarified that she has no conflict with the First Family, adding that she has prayed for the President and supported his journey since 2010. “I am not in dispute with my president, and I want that to be heard,” she said.

Global Reach and Family Today

“Mum,” as people affectionately call her, has served in ministry for over 35 years and continues to devote herself to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ in Kenya and around the world.

She has carried out missions in Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa, India, Singapore, Canada, the United Kingdom, the USA, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, the Faroe Islands, and Jamaica, among other countries.

Her ministry operates branches outside Kenya as well. Teresia Wairimu Evangelistic Ministry (TWEM) represents the USA branch of the parent ministry, Faith Evangelistic Ministry (FEM), which is based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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On the family front, the reunion with her once-estranged son has flourished into a full, multi-generational family legacy. “Mum” is blessed with two children, Catherine and Robert, and a daughter-in-love, Ilona. She is also a doting grandmother to five grandchildren: Joey, Kui, Nimu, Victoria, and Nathan. They all love the Lord and are making positive contributions to God’s kingdom.  The very son once torn from her custody during the darkest season of her life is now an integral part of a thriving, faith-filled family she nearly lost everything to protect.

Reverend Teresia Wairimu is active on social media. You can connect with her via her official handles on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X.Website: http://www.evangelistwairimu.org/)