Home News Ultra-marathoner quits job for Kenyan street kids

Ultra-marathoner quits job for Kenyan street kids

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Since Kenya’s civil unrest early this year, inflation has risen to 19 percent, making the purchase of basic goods a nightmare for residents and over-crowded refugee camps. In response, a Canadian businessman is quitting his job to raise funds for an orphanage based in Nairobi.

Winnipeg’s Arvid Loewen from North Kildonan MB Church will enter Race Across America (RAAM) in June, one of North America’s toughest cycling ultra-marathons, stretching more than 3,000 miles from California to Maryland.

In 2005, Loewen cycled from B.C. to Halifax on a tandem bicycle, specially constructed with a non-pedaling seat in the back for three orphans from the Mully Children’s Foundation (MCF), an organization that rescues street kids in Nairobi.

“I have always had a heart for children. A few years ago God pointed me in the direction of MCF. Everything I have seen and heard about MCF motivates me to be personally involved and give others the same opportunity.”

MCF’s director, Charles Mulli (sic), was abused and abandoned as a child in Kenya and barely managed to survive. He gave his life to Christ as a teenager, started businesses as an adult, and became a multi-millionaire. Then God called him to sell all he had to rescue street children. Mulli was obedient to that call, and today MCF cares for more than 600 children.

Loewen’s fundraising efforts have come at a well-a ointed time. “There has been dis lacement of hundreds of thousands of families,” says Mulli, “including relatives of children at MCF. Some have been killed, leading the children to suffer post-traumatic stress.”

Loewen says he’s willing to enter the race for these children, a race that fewer than 200 people have ever finished in its 26-year history. “RAAM is a completely different category. There is nothing that I have done in the past that is even close to the physical and mental demands of RAAM.”

Both Mulli and Loewen have given everything to reach street children in Kenya with the love of Jesus Christ. They are examples of what it means to give the way Jesus wants us to give. To give without limit.

Donations can be made at www.sokeimact.com or www.mullychildrensfamily.org.

—Paul Boge is the author of Father to the Fatherless: The Charles Mulli Story

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