The next day Charles followed the same pattern as the day before. In the morning he worked on dissolving his companies and then headed out in the afternoon to see the street children. And they were waiting for him, responding to his “Ooaye” and greeting him with smiles. Several other children joined the group as they sat around Charles’s car eating bread and drinking milk and sodas. When their stomachs were full, Charles once more invited them to follow him to the church, where he told them more Bible stories and organized a game of soccer. At first the soccer game was chaotic. The children had never been asked to follow rules before, but they caught on to the importance of the rules and were soon enjoying themselves. As Charles refereed the game, he felt an immense sense of pride, almost as if they were his own biological children playing well together.
Bit by bit Charles helped the street children improve their lives. Together they cleaned out the old shed at the church, and the boys began sleeping there at night. The church also had an acre of unused land, which Charles was given permission to use. He organized the children to dig up the weeds and start a vegetable garden. He hoped to use the garden to train street children how to productively farm small blocks of land and to learn the value of practical work.
On the second Sunday after beginning to spend time daily with the street children, Charles invited them to come to church. About twenty showed up, but things didn’t go as Charles had hoped they would. One of the elders took him aside and said, “What are these children doing here? They stink and they will contaminate the seats. You have to tell them to go now or we won’t have anyone left in the congregation. You need to think seriously about what you are trying to do, Charles. This is not the place for those children.”
Charles went back to the children who were occupying the back two rows of seats. “Come on, kids,” he told them. “The church is going to be very full today and needs some of the children to have a service outside under the trees to make room for more adults inside.”
The street children followed Charles outside, where they all sat down under a jacaranda tree, not realizing that they had been kicked out of church. Charles preached to them and taught them two new songs.
That night Charles prayed for a long time. He was deeply disappointed that the people in the church—his friends and fellow Christians—had been so rude to the street children. He knew that the children were a challenge, but he had hoped that the church would partner with him to reach the children and bring them to Christ. Now he wondered if the church members might end up being a stumbling block for the children. He certainly hoped not.
After two weeks with the street kids, Charles asked Esther if she would cook something for them, since they needed more nutritious food. Esther agreed, and the next day she accompanied Charles to the church with large pots filled with chicken stew and beans. The children ate hungrily. As Charles watched, he was sure it was the first time some of them had eaten a meal cooked just for them.
At home that night Charles asked Esther, “So what did you think of the children?”
She let out a deep sigh. “They need help. Anyone can see that. They are filthy and smelly and hungry. How does anyone live like that with no one to love them and no one to care?”
“God has called us to do that for them, Esther,” Charles replied gently. “Are you with me?”
Esther was silent for a long time. “Yes, Charles, I am with you,” she replied.
Tears filled Charles’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said. With his wife working beside him, there was nothing they could not do.
The next two months were challenging. Thirty children showed up at the church each day for food, activities, and Bible stories. As they became more comfortable with Charles and Esther, they began telling them terrible stories about the ways they had been abused on the streets and some of the things they had to do to get enough food to eat. Many of the children were scared and had joined gangs to try to protect themselves from being attacked and assaulted. But sometimes the older gang members assaulted the younger ones, who consequently were not safe anywhere.
This reality made Charles and Esther sad, and they determined to do all they could to bring God’s love into the children’s lives.
“We can’t leave Susan and David on the streets,” Esther told Charles one day. “Susan is six and David is three. Every time I say goodbye to them, they follow me like lost puppies. I can’t look back at them, and I wonder if we will see them again. I’ve asked around, and their mother has just disappeared.”
Charles nodded. He knew what his wife was feeling. “They can’t sleep in the shed with the big boys. What should we do?” he inquired.
“Bring them home?” Esther suggested.
Charles hugged her. That was exactly what he had hoped she would say.
“Can we do that?” Esther continued. “I mean, do we have to tell anyone we’re taking the kids?”
“I’ll ask around, but I don’t think there are any legal requirements,” Charles said. “That’s why it’s so dangerous for them all out there. They have no one to watch over them. And there’s Jane Washuka. She’s only four. I know her mother has died. Shall we bring her home too?”
“I suppose so. We’ll have quite a house full!” Esther said with a chuckle.
Several days later the three new children moved into Miriam and Jane’s bedroom. At the time, the two Mulli girls were away at university and boarding school.
The first night, Charles and Esther dressed the three new arrivals for bed in Mueni’s and Isaac’s pajamas. The next morning the bedroom reeked. All three children had wet their beds. “I’ll have to get plastic mattress covers,” Esther told Charles. “I thought I was over toilet training when Dickson got out of diapers.”
The new children were a challenge to train. When they ate, they would pick the meat from chicken bones and then throw the picked-over bones over their shoulders onto the kitchen floor. It appeared the street children had no idea of the purpose of a plate. Neither did they seem to understand about owning things. Toys, articles of clothing, and other items that Charles and Esther supplied the children with were soon lost. The children had laid them down and had no idea where they left them.
The children had no idea about personal hygiene, either. They had never held a toothbrush or had a shower or sat on a toilet. The bathroom soon looked like a war zone, and somehow one of the children even managed to break the toilet bowl in two.
“It’s difficult,” Esther told Charles soon after the street children moved in.
“Very difficult,” Charles agreed.
“They are so untrained. Our own children are complaining. We’re not one big happy family. They resent the new kids, and who can blame them? The street kids have no idea how to behave in a house. And I haven’t had a friend visit in a month…” Esther’s voice trailed off.
It was true. As the family had grown bigger with the addition of the street children, Charles, Esther, and their children began noticing their friends disappearing fast. It was subtle at first. The Mulli children received fewer invitations to play at their friends’ houses. When Esther volunteered to help plan a big party at church, she was told they already had enough people. The older children were moody because their friends had heard rumors that Charles wanted to give everything the family owned to the poor. Even at church, not as many people stopped to shake hands and chat, and the pastor always seemed to be busy when Charles dropped in for a talk.
Still, nothing prepared Charles for what happened one day in mid-September. That day he had gone about his new daily routine, spending time in prayer at home before going out into the streets to help the children. In the afternoon the children and Charles went as usual to the church grounds for a meeting.
Late in the afternoon, about eighty street children sang a number of Christian choruses as their time together with Charles began to wind down. Although the children were still involved in street life, Charles could detect real changes taking place in the lives of some of them. They were asking questions about what was right and wrong and how to stop being violent or stealing. Charles was heartened. He knew they had a long way to go, but these signs were encouraging.
As the final bars of the chorus the children had been singing faded away, Charles noticed two cars pull up in the church parking lot. That’s odd, he thought. I didn’t think there was anything going on at church tonight. Two elders, one a university lecturer and the other a businessman, walked toward the building. Charles waved, but they did not respond. Soon more cars pulled up, and more men in suits and ties got out. It looked like a meeting of the entire church board was about to take place, except that Charles, a member of the board, had not been invited. Charles was puzzled. How could they have forgotten to invite him?
After dismissing the street children, Charles strolled into the meeting room with a big smile on his face. His presence was met with stony silence. No one looked him in the eye. In fact, many of the board members stared down at their folded arms. What on earth has happened? Charles wondered.
“This has to stop,” he heard Joseph, a fellow elder, say.
Charles was indeed puzzled.
Chapter 10
Family
What do you mean? What has to stop?” Charles asked.
“The street kids, of course. You have to stop bringing them here. You have to stop letting them sleep in the shed at night. You have to stop bringing them to church on Sunday. All of it. It has to stop,” another elder said.
Charles felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. “Why?”
“You know why as well as we do,” Joseph said. “It’s too much. They don’t belong here. They are useless, and nothing good will ever come of them. They have lice, and they stink with infections. But that’s not the worst part. Charles, you must be practical. They are gang members and thieves. They don’t belong with our children in our church. I imagine you will want them to join the youth group soon. It’s just not going to work. Everyone has put too much into this church to watch it be destroyed by your crazy scheme.”
“No one has put more into this church than me,” Charles said quietly. “You all know that Esther and I were among the three families that founded it, and now we are nineteen hundred strong. I love this church, and I believe we are on the right track. I don’t want to go on alone. I want you to join with me in helping the street children. We can teach them the Word of God together and educate them so they can get off the streets. I know for sure that God is going to do amazing things with them. Please believe with me.”
The room was silent. Then Joseph shifted in his chair and cleared his throat. “It’s too late, Charles. We have already met without you and taken a vote. You only have one vote, so even if we let you talk, anything you say won’t make a scrap of difference. We have already decided. The street children cannot come back here. You have to get rid of them before they bring our own children down to their level. This is a holy place, and those children are certainly not holy.”
Charles looked around the room from person to person. They were friends, prayer partners, fellow Sunday school teachers, and not one of them returned his gaze. He knew that he had lost. The elders’ minds were made up. There was no point in staying. “I am sorry you all feel that way. The gospel is powerful enough to transform these street children. What does it say about the way our children are being raised that we cannot trust them to God as well? But I see you have made up your minds.” With that Charles stood and walked toward the door. No one called out to stop him.
Charles drove home, stunned at this new development. One thing he knew for sure: he was not going to give up on the street children. If the church did not want them, he would build extra rooms at his house and welcome them there.
When he arrived home, Charles told Esther what had happened. “I am not surprised,” she said flatly. “None of my church friends visit or call me anymore, and the other night when I dropped Ndondo off at youth group, the leader didn’t even say hello to me.”
