Kenya: Millionaire gives up fortune to care for street children
Charles Mully has lived a real-life rags-to-riches story. But at the height of his success, he sold it all to become a father to children living on the streets of Kenya.
His children call him ‘Daddy Mully’. Like many of those children, Mully once lived on the streets. His parents abandoned him when he was just six years old. Recalling that time, Mully says: “As a young child I woke up one day to find that I was alone, at the age of five or six years, and that was my life. No food, nothing that I could lean on… I became a street boy, a beggar.”
His amazing climb from Kenya’s slums is the focus of the new feature film ‘Mully’. Mully began his business career by using his personal car as a taxi cab. From there, he purchased a fleet of cars and then buses. He added oil and real estate to his portfolio and quickly became a celebrated millionaire.
“Sometimes it is so hard for me to measure at the level, but I can acknowledge and say, yes the Lord really lifted me so high through his favor, through the small business that I started.” Mully says. “When I look back, I see God’s grace and a plan – a good plan. He was planning for me to become an instrument for the future. When God really wants to make use of you, there is no way you can escape, even when you try to run away.”
‘God wanted me to become an instrument for the future.’
Happily married with eight children, Mully felt God calling them to sell everything. That call came in 1986 after a face-to-face encounter with children begging on the street. “God was speaking to me this way. I saw myself in their faces because I was trying to hide myself. I had never shared it with anybody. I don’t remember even one day sharing a testimony about my past. I wanted people to see me as a great man, with money, with everything.” |