While children his age sat in classrooms learning their letters, Julius was on the streets of Bulindo, a small suburb outside of bustling Kampala. By then, he had already lost both of his parents.
His mother had developed complications after giving birth, and her family was too poor to pay for the doctor she needed. She died when he was only four months old. When he was two, his father was attacked by armed robbers and killed. After that, Julius lived with his aunt in the slums of Bulindo. She had no job and was expecting a baby of her own. And in fact, they had no house to live in. Eventually, they found a temporary place to live, in a home that was lent to them, but the house was in poor condition and the roof leaked whenever it rained. A proper meal, medical care, a change of clothes: none of it was within reach. They depended on the kindness of the people around them.
Then one day, a well-wisher who had watched how hard his aunt was struggling pressed 15,000 Ugandan shillings into her hands, about $5, so she could buy a tray of eggs to sell. It was not much. But it was the only door that had opened, and it became everything they had: their small business, their daily bread, their one thin thread of hope.
And someone had to carry it into the street. At six years old, that someone was Julius.
A six-year-old, a tray of eggs in his hands, walked out the door each day with the weight of a whole household on his shoulders. His aunt had no job. A baby was on the way. There was no one else. When the eggs sold, they could eat. When they didn’t, they went without.
Some evenings he walked home with the money not adding up, and stood in front of his aunt, and had to look her in the eye and tell her it was not enough. Not enough for tonight. Not enough for the baby soon to come. No six-year-old should ever have to say those words, or carry the heaviness that comes with them.
And the street was no place for a child. Cars and bota botas, the motorcycle taxis, fly down roads with no lanes, swerving around one another and whatever else is in their way. Julius stood at the edge of all of it, a very small boy holding his family’s only income in a tray of eggs. One careless moment, one stumble, one passing car, and he could lose a day’s work, a day’s meals, or even his life. Anyone who wanted to steal from him or cheat him could see exactly what he was: small, and carrying everything his family had to live on. He was not the only one out there.
All around him were other children, and groups of them, doing the same work and chasing whatever it took to bring home money. Hunger can pull children toward hard choices, and it is easy to see how a boy in that crowd, with a household counting on him, could be pulled toward stealing, or worse.
Even on his best days, it was never enough to live on, and it came nowhere close to paying school fees or buying books. Day by day, the one thing a boy that age should have been given, a seat in a classroom, slipped further out of reach. His hope of going to school faded.
But God had not forgotten Julius. He had seen the tray of eggs, the long walks home, and every worry a small boy should never have had to carry. And He was already at work.
At nine, through God’s grace, Julius was found by IChooseYou, and for the first time in his life, he went to school. For the first time, his only job would be to learn, and to be a child.
Our staff still remember his first day. Julius was so excited. He received a school bag, shoes, books, pens and a uniform, and at lunchtime, a hot meal. He also got a bed, a mattress, sheets and a mosquito net. Every one of those things was new to him. It was the first time he had owned any of it.
Two years later, Julius is a different boy. He studies in Primary Two at Covenant Primary School, where he lives in boarding, so his evenings belong to his homework and not to the street. He has learned to read, write and speak good English, and his report cards improve steadily, term after term. Julius says math and English are his favorites.
Ask Julius what he wants to be, and he will tell you: a doctor, a gynecologist, so he can help women when they are giving birth. The dream took root when he learned what had caused his mother’s death.
Julius knows what it costs when a mother is given no help, and he has decided to spend his life being the help she never had.
God is at work in his heart at an age when most boys are still playing games. He’s using Julius to show that His heart to redeem and to save is the same still today; that He’s the God who gives “beauty from ashes” (Isaiah 61:3).
Sponsorship has changed more than his classroom. His aunt, who once had no means to give him a proper meal, now goes to church. Julius sings in the Smile Choir, our children’s ministry, where kids gain confidence worshiping God on stage, and he is learning to read the Scriptures and memorize them.
To Julius's sponsor we want to say thank you. Because of you, a boy who once sold eggs just to get by now spends his days learning and his nights in safety at boarding school. And his future is bright with the desire to help mothers who need it most.
It all began when a sponsor said yes.