6/2/2009

The Saving Grace of God: A Boyʼs Testimony

Elvis Mogunde is a 14 year old boy who has been living at the the ABC children´s home in Nairobi since May 2008. He is an intelligent boy, loves the Lord and is now ministering to other children at the home. This is his testimony

When Elvis was young he used to live with his grandparents in a rural area. He was raised up with his aunts whom he looked upon as his sisters. His grandparents had a food garden which sustained the whole family, but one year the harvest failed due to drought and his mother went to Nairobi to look for work and Elvis went to live with his stepfather. The stepfather mistreated him and beat him every day. The stepfather told Elvis' mother that Elvis had dropped out of school which was a lie, but when Elvis told his mother the truth the stepfather beat him and told him to lie to his mother. When there were again crops to harvest in the grandparents' food garden Elvis' mother returned home from Nairobi. Elvis then told his mother how his stepfather had treated him and his mother found out the truth, but still they continued to live together.

Later on, Elvis moved to Nairobi with his mother and stepfather and his two younger brothers. His stepfather continued to mistreat him and to favour his own sons. For example, he bought new school uniforms for his sons but used uniforms for Elvis. When Elvis' uniforms wore out his stepfather said that Elvis did not know how to take good care of things. When Elvis' mother bought him something that was new, e.g. new clothes, the stepfather said that the mother was misusing the family's money. So eventually, she stopped buying for him anything that was new. Every morning Elvis' mother used to cook a lot of food, for the family and her husband's brothers that were living with family. But his stepfather sent Elvis to school without food and Elvis only had a meal in the evening. His brothers, however, were always given food. When Elvis complained, he was told by his stepfather that he could go anywhere he wanted and just die there. Hunger drove Elvis to take 500 Kenyan shillings that belonged to one of his uncle. He used the money to buy himself breakfast and lunch for three weeks. His stepfather accused him of stealing more money than he actually had, and beat him at one time and threatened to kill him. Elvis realized that his life was not going so well and that his mother wanted peace. After having witnessed his stepfather beating his mother, he took some money that he had been given by his two brothers, from their own allowance, and bought some rat poison. He thought to himself that either he or his stepfather had to die. Elvis had been asked to cook lunch and his plan was to put the rat poison into the food and give to his stepfather. He was about to use it but changed his mind at the last minute and threw the rat poison into the toilet. It had occurred to him that his mother had no money for his stepfather's funeral. Then he realized that he could have used the rat poision to kill himself, and he regretted his action and cried bitterly.

Elvis then ran away from home and hoped that he would be able to get a lift somewhere or find a helping hand. Anything would be better than staying with his stepfather. Elvis met some street boys and stayed with them for 2 months and 1 week. But life on the street was hard and policemen used to come and beat the boys at the place where they used to sleep. One day a street boy told Elvis about ABC Children´s Aid, and Elvis along with five other street boys went to the ABC children's home and asked to be admitted. At the time there was not much room for more children at the home but all of the boys were eventually taken into the home.

The first evening Elvis spent at the ABC children´s home a few boys came into the house where he was staying to prepare for bible study, but Elvis did not know what they were doing and went to sleep. The next day one of the boys told him to stay awake and concentrate on bible study. Elvis heard the gospel preached. He was told that according to the bible Jesus had prepared a place for him in heaven and he accepted Jesus as his Saviour. Shortly thereafter Elvis was baptized. He started training himself on how to preach and lead bible study. He realized that his talent was singing and that he wanted to dedicate his life to preaching. Lately, Elvis and a few of his friends have been leading bible studies at the ABC children´s home. 

Elvis has had a vision where he and his friends are in a big church and one of them is preaching the word of God. From that church they go out to different countries to preach the word of God and conduct evangelistic crusades. One day when watching television Elvis heard that there is a preacher who has preached the gospel in 185 countries. Elvis' dream is to preach in more countries than that and that people get saved.

Elvis Mogunde