CRM BEGINNING
I was born in an extremely poor family and my parents never got the privilege of getting any form of formal
Education. Before my Dad became a Christian, he was addicted to alcohol and he wasted every little resource he could earn to get drunk. However, some missionaries came to our community and preached the gospel then, my Dad and Mom became Christian. These became a turning point into our family because my dad stopped wasting on alcohol and started concentrating on sending us to school and serving God until he became a local Church pastor in my village.
My schooling was a miracle because I can’t believe it even happened. My parents loved education but they never had means of giving to all the 9 children. We had to work double hard in our small land to plant crops like cotton, cassava and maize . upon harvest, we had to walk for about 8 hours on foot to sell the items while carrying it on our heads to the market especially together with our mother. I hardly reported to school on time because we had to work extra days to raise school tuition and it became normal to report to school one or two months late after other students had been at school. There were years where I had to drop out of school because being the last born, my parents had to prioritize on the older children who were closer to completing their education. I persisted to stay at school regardless of the hardship and today, I have a Master’s degree in development studies from a Uganda University and also pursuing MA in Religion from Southern Evangelical seminary in North Carolina just remaining with about three modules to graduate but I dropped out currently because of tuition challenges .
Due to my struggles in my childhood with limited or no help, I developed passion to help struggling children. From the time I graduated from university, I kept working for child care organizations and the first one was compassion international where I worked as child development offer for 6 years, later I went to West Africa where I work with persons with disabilities for one year, I came back Uganda and worked at Bethany orphanage of Africa renewal ministries for 6 years.
While working for Africa Renewal ministries, I could support another ministry called Equipping with truth as a board member and as we could go back into local community , I met a critically mal nourished child with a helpless mom waiting for the child to die after his twin brother had died a month earlier. The father of this child was a pastor who died during the 20 years civil war in Northern Uganda by Joseph Kony. This Mom narrated for me her ordeal and tears started following in my eyes. I came back home that day and I told my wife and she show how restless I was that evening and she told me to do something about it. I mobilized after a day with a friend called Richard and Felix using my little car and picked the child, brought him to the hospital, mobilized support from friends and the boy’s health was restored. Another scenario where another boy was neglected by parents, we went and picked the boy cleaned him up and helped him with necessary support and he was well. At that point, I talked with Martin about the need for us to formally start helping children from Northern Uganda where we all came from because they’re more disadvantaged than other places where we were even working. We started child rescue ministry and started reaching out to many mal nourished children up to date.
So my passion is to see disadvantaged children like I was, being given a chance to live a decent life that brings glory to the name of God I serve.
My call as person also is to preach the word of God and I’m passionate about discipleship as the only tool to prepare the Church of Christ to know the word of God.
Currently, am the team leader for CRM operation in Lira but because we don’t have much operational/ activities support, I partially provide administrative support to a family business of running schools founded by one of my elder brothers.
Moses Okello is the director of Growth Care Uganda in Lira, Uganda. He and his wife Harriet have three children.