Imagine growing up in poverty, becoming very wealthy, and then giving it all away to liberate children from the same streets where you spent your childhood. This is the rags to riches to rescuer story of Dr. Charles Mully whose life changing encounter with God in 1986 empowered him to forgive the abusive parents who abandoned him and establish the Mully Children’s Family with the money he had gained from his fleet of public service vehicles and real estate holdings. Since then, 7,000 street children have been taken into homes and given an education in his two primary schools and high school. Currently, 2,000 children and young adults between the ages of 1 week and 24 years are part of the Mully family. With the help of donations and volunteers from around the world, MCF also runs farms, operates greenhouses, offers a medical clinic and hopes to develop a University. For his humanitarian work, Dr. Mully and his wife, Esther, have been given prestigious awards by World Vision, the government of Kenya and others.
One of Charles Mully’s biggest supporters is Arvid, 54, the remarkable ultra-cyclist and grandfather of three from Winnipeg who arrived at Halifax’s City Hall thirteen days, nine hours and six minutes after leaving Vancouver’s City Hall on July 1. That’s 6055 kilometres in thirteen days! On a bicycle! A new world record by three hours, despite taking an eighteen hour break on the ninth day to give his swollen legs a chance to recover! To accomplish this amazing feat, Arvid cycled almost 500 kilometres a day, slept only two hours each night, ate 7000 calories worth of omelettes, KFC and pizza every twenty four hours, and finished with a closing push of forty hours of straight cycling.
Why would someone do this? And how?
Arvid did it to raise money for the Mully Children’s Family, his primary fundraising passion since he visited Kenya and met some of the orphaned and vulnerable children that have been rescued from the streets of Nairobi. His endeavour has raised at least $350,000 that will be used to build a greenhouse and provide food for children like Lillian who weighed only 16 pounds when she was first found and is now a healthy teenager.
As for the “how”, you could point to a support crew in an RV, the prayers of thousands who followed him, the appearance of Charles Mully himself along the route and a God-given tolerance for pain that allows him to keep going despite severe sleep deprivation. But Arvid would point to God as the source of his strength and the One who gave him three motivational words. Saving. Children’s. Lives.
This record setting ride is not his first long distance cycling effort. Arvid, who regularly cycles 20,000 kilometres a year, has cycled from Vancouver to Winnipeg in four days and four hours, raced across the U.S. in eleven days and three hours coming in 10th overall in the Race Across America, and, in 2005, cycled across Canada in thirty days on a modified tandem bike carrying a rotating group of three MCF orphans.
As I reflect on Dr. Mully’s work in Kenya and Arvid’s achievement in Canada, I marvel about what people can do when ability (Mully’s entrepreneurship; Loewen’s athletic endurance), a cause (rescuing street kids in Kenya) and faith (both men are devoted Christians) are combined into a focused mission.
Inspired by these two men, I find myself wondering what the combination of ability, a cause and faith looks like in my life. And in yours.
Arvid would probably say, “Grandpas can make a difference. You can, too.”
- Pastor Peter
For more, visit mullychildrensfamily.org and grandpascan.com or read Dr. Mully’s biography, Father of the Fatherless.
One of Charles Mully’s biggest supporters is Arvid, 54, the remarkable ultra-cyclist and grandfather of three from Winnipeg who arrived at Halifax’s City Hall thirteen days, nine hours and six minutes after leaving Vancouver’s City Hall on July 1. That’s 6055 kilometres in thirteen days! On a bicycle! A new world record by three hours, despite taking an eighteen hour break on the ninth day to give his swollen legs a chance to recover! To accomplish this amazing feat, Arvid cycled almost 500 kilometres a day, slept only two hours each night, ate 7000 calories worth of omelettes, KFC and pizza every twenty four hours, and finished with a closing push of forty hours of straight cycling.
Why would someone do this? And how?
Arvid did it to raise money for the Mully Children’s Family, his primary fundraising passion since he visited Kenya and met some of the orphaned and vulnerable children that have been rescued from the streets of Nairobi. His endeavour has raised at least $350,000 that will be used to build a greenhouse and provide food for children like Lillian who weighed only 16 pounds when she was first found and is now a healthy teenager.
As for the “how”, you could point to a support crew in an RV, the prayers of thousands who followed him, the appearance of Charles Mully himself along the route and a God-given tolerance for pain that allows him to keep going despite severe sleep deprivation. But Arvid would point to God as the source of his strength and the One who gave him three motivational words. Saving. Children’s. Lives.
This record setting ride is not his first long distance cycling effort. Arvid, who regularly cycles 20,000 kilometres a year, has cycled from Vancouver to Winnipeg in four days and four hours, raced across the U.S. in eleven days and three hours coming in 10th overall in the Race Across America, and, in 2005, cycled across Canada in thirty days on a modified tandem bike carrying a rotating group of three MCF orphans.
As I reflect on Dr. Mully’s work in Kenya and Arvid’s achievement in Canada, I marvel about what people can do when ability (Mully’s entrepreneurship; Loewen’s athletic endurance), a cause (rescuing street kids in Kenya) and faith (both men are devoted Christians) are combined into a focused mission.
Inspired by these two men, I find myself wondering what the combination of ability, a cause and faith looks like in my life. And in yours.
Arvid would probably say, “Grandpas can make a difference. You can, too.”
- Pastor Peter
For more, visit mullychildrensfamily.org and grandpascan.com or read Dr. Mully’s biography, Father of the Fatherless.
Love this story! Thanks for sharing it! Very inspirational!
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