“Just as well. God is bigger than the church,” Charles replied. “If they don’t want the poor and the needy, we will make room for them here.”
“How?” Esther asked. “We already have three new children, and that’s been wild. Today Susan flushed her blouse down the toilet. I don’t know why. David and Dickson got into a fistfight. And our kids are miserable. They don’t dare complain to you, but they constantly complain and cry to me. The new kids steal their school supplies and their clothes. We’re going to have our own wars right here in this house if something doesn’t happen. It’s just not possible for everyone to get along. They are all too different. We haven’t brought our children up that way.”
“We certainly need a lot of grace, don’t we? But it will work out. I know this is what we’re called to do,” Charles said. “I’ll draw up plans to add another wing onto the house and expand the kitchen. We’ll need another oven, don’t you think? And I’ll work with the bigger kids and teach them how to construct their own sleeping huts in the backyard.”
Esther’s shoulders slumped. “If that’s how it has to be. We’ve already lost all of our friends, and our children are getting teased at school. I suppose we should keep going and see what happens.”
“God is with us!” Charles said. He felt invigorated despite the meeting at church. “God is humbling us, and that’s fine. He’s not going to humiliate us though. Just wait and see. This morning I read the verse ‘Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and in due time He will exalt you.’ We have to press on, Esther. Too much is at stake.”
The following day, Charles invited the children who normally gathered at the church into his yard for food and Bible stories. They hung all over his children’s swing set and trampled the flower beds. Charles fixed up the garden hose so that they could take makeshift showers, and Esther fed them beans and rice. In the late afternoon they all sat around and planned where the sleeping huts for the boys were going to be erected. Charles was sure it was the first time most of the children had ever been asked to participate in a decision that affected them. Their eyes shone with anticipation.
Over the next few months, the Mullis’ home turned into a haven for street kids, but it came at a price. Nearly all of the china was broken, and many items were pilfered from the house. Esther set up a lice-picking station under a banana tree, and Charles paid for a doctor to visit the children and prescribe medicines for the various skin diseases and infections they had.
The street children soon took all of Charles and Esther’s time, and what to do with their own biological children became a serious issue. Charles did not want them falling behind in school, and it was almost impossible for them to study at night with all of the distractions around them. But worse still, his own children were constantly complaining about the street kids. It was never-ending. Charles asked them to be kind and share, but they weren’t in the mood for it. The house had divided into two camps—his biological children versus the street kids—and it soon turned into war.
“This isn’t good for anyone,” Esther told Charles. “Our children—our biological children—are suffering. They can’t adjust, and the street kids aren’t doing as well as they could be, either. It’s just not a good fit to bring them here to share with our children. They need so much teaching and attention. I just don’t have the time for everyone, and you are always out finding more children to bring home.”
“I understand,” Charles replied. “I had hoped that our own children would have behaved better and that we could have pulled together as a family. Now I see that that is not going to happen, at least not yet. We need another answer. We need to pray about it.”
A week later Charles was sure that God had given him a solution, which he told Esther about.
“Boarding school?” she asked. “Charles, you really want to send Kaleli and Mueni off to boarding school? They are only eleven and eight years old. How could you even think that’s a good idea? They are not big enough.”
“I think it’s God’s solution at this time,” Charles replied calmly, “and I want you to pray about it.”
“All right,” Esther agreed.
It was a very difficult decision, but Esther and Charles decided to put Kaleli and Mueni in boarding school. Ndondo and Grace were already away at boarding school, and by now Miriam and Jane were attending university. This would leave six-year-old Isaac and four-year-old Dickson at home with the street children.
Esther wept as they made the decision. “It is such a sacrifice,” she said. “How are you sure it will be worth it, Charles?”
Charles felt tears rolling down his own cheeks. All he had ever wanted was to raise his children and to have them near him, and now he was sending them away. “I know this is what God wants us to do. Jesus said, ‘Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’” He looked Esther in the eye. “We have to believe that. It is a sacrifice. It does feel like dying, but we have to believe that many, many wonderful things will come of this. Do you believe with me, Esther?”
Esther slowly nodded. “This certainly is a different life from the one we used to lead,” she said quietly, “but I’m with you.”
Over the next year, many alterations were made to the Mullis’ home. The children worked hard and built an extension to the main house. They went on to construct simple huts in the Mullis’ yard for classrooms, a kitchen, and an outdoor dining pavilion. The sewage lines were enlarged and connected to the city council’s main sewer. Bit by bit, the clipped lawns and colorful flower beds were replaced by paving stones and concrete-block buildings.
By the end of the first year, Charles and Esther had worked out a system for getting legal custody of children. They wrote in a log book the details of where each child was found and any information the children knew about themselves. Charles would then go to the police station to register the children living with him and to make sure that no one was looking for a particular child. No one ever was.
Now that they lived at the Mullis’ home, all of the children five and older started school. Since the older children had never been to school before, they all started in first grade. Because the children came from many different tribes, they were taught in Swahili, the official language of Kenya. Many of their birth mothers had moved to Eldoret from other parts of the country to eke out a living.
Each month more children were added to the group living with Charles and Esther. The family was now officially being called Mully Children’s Family. When he named it this, Charles had thought of the Bible verse “God puts the solitary in families,” and that was exactly what he wanted to do. It was not a giant orphanage or a reform school. It was a family, and Charles and Esther were Daddy Mulli and Mama Esther. Charles trusted that in time God would soften his biological children’s hearts and they would embrace the enlarged family.
Two years later, by the beginning of 1993, all of Charles’s personal money had long since been spent, but week by week there was enough money to buy food and clothing for the children and to pay the staff. By now there were sixty-two staff members, including teachers, social workers, nursery workers, administrators, and a guard at the gate.
The children were learning to read and write and were acquiring other practical skills. On top of that, as they watched how Charles, Esther, and the other staff lived out their faith, many of them gave their lives to Christ. They told Charles they desired a fresh start on the inside as well. More than anything else, their decision to become Christians and live their lives for God made Charles feel that the sacrifice he had made for the children was absolutely worthwhile.
Late most afternoons or in the early evening, Charles, accompanied by a small team he had trained, visited the slums of Eldoret. They talked with street children and searched out the most desperate to bring home with them. One evening in May, as Charles walked down a narrow alley in the Huruma slum, he saw six young girls sitting with their backs against a flimsy cardboard wall. The girls sat in silence, the kind of silence that Charles knew came from despair. He motioned to the two social workers with him, and they slowed down.
“Ooaye,” Charles called as he got closer. The girls hardly looked up. He squatted down beside them. “I am Charles Mulli,” he said, holding out his hand to the girl closest to him. “What is your name?”
The girl lowered her eyes and said, “Rael.”
“Well, Rael, it’s good to meet you and your friends. How are you?”
Rael shrugged her shoulders.
“Can you tell me why you’re here so late at night?” Charles pressed, praying under his breath. He knew from experience that now was the moment when a child either trusted and opened up or pulled away.
Rael looked him in the eye. Charles smiled at her. She opened her mouth. “I… my mother lives near here, but I can’t go home… I ran away. Every night my mother would get drunk on chang’aa and beat me and my brothers and sisters. In the end I thought it would be safer on the streets, but it’s not. Instead of my mother beating me, now men abuse me,” Rael said matter-of-factly.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Charles said. “It is very much like my story, except it was my father who beat me, not my mother. I too left home looking for something better, but I didn’t find it until I heard about Jesus Christ. Do you know about Jesus?”
“Who is he?” Rael asked.
“He is the Son of God, and He loves you very much. He totally changed my life and gave me hope.” Charles talked on for a while, learning that all of the girls were in basically the same position. They had either left their parents or been abandoned and were now living on the streets. Then he asked Rael, “Have you heard of Mully Children’s Family?”
Rael nodded. “Yes. Some of the other girls talk about it. They know someone who went there, I think. They say she’s okay and has food to eat.”
“Well,” Charles said, “I’m the father of the Mully family. How would you all like to join us? We can take you now if you want to go. There is food and school and so many things to do, and I will teach you about Jesus. What do you say?”
The girls looked at each other for support. Will they come or not? Charles asked himself.
“All right,” Rael said. “It can’t be worse than this. I’ll come.”
“Us too,” the others said.
“Wonderful,” Charles replied. “I’ll take you home and you can meet Mama Esther. You will be able to talk with her about your life and how to make it better.”
The six girls piled into Charles’s car, and he drove them to his home.
At dinner the next night, Charles spotted Rael. By now she had on clean clothes, after taking the first shower of her life. Clinging to her were two of Charles’s smaller children. “Look, Daddy,” Rael laughed. “I have found my younger brother and sister. You have already adopted them!”
Charles laughed along with her. It felt good to know that Rael was now part of a loving family and that she had been reunited with two biological siblings.
Like many of the other street children, Rael found it difficult to break free of life on the streets. Charles guessed that she was probably addicted to drugs, and although the social workers tried to help her, one day Rael ran away, back to her old life. The lure of drugs and the freedom to go where she pleased were too much for her to resist. This had happened with other children before, and when it did, Charles always responded the same way—he set out to find the child and bring him or her back to the family.
It was pouring rain when Charles spotted Rael in the Huruma slum. She was walking quickly. He yelled to her, but the steady drumbeat of the rain drowned out his voice. Charles stopped his car and walked over to her. “Rael, stop! It’s me, your daddy!”
Rael turned to face him, slumping as she did so. Charles noticed a large bruise on her arm. “It’s me, Daddy,” he said again. “I’ve come to take you home.”
