In 2007 in the slums of Kabale were overrun by the poverty that resulted inevitably from child labor, and starvation wages.  Walking through these slums, John Bosco came face to face with his mission.  As he visited the prisons, the conviction of his vocation seemed to shout within him: “These boys are not bad.  Take care of them before they fall into crime–that is your task!”

With his heart full of trust in his pockets empty, John Bosco courageously took up the work.  From then on, it was only “Give me souls–the souls of young people.”

John Bosco called his weekly band of ragged young people “the Little Angels,” a term which to his mind suggested prayer and organized recreation with the young children.  In the beginning it was a floating thing, its membership growing daily in large proportions.  There was no one place to meet because in those troublesome times people were afraid of a large group of working boys and besides, who relishes the uproar of some 280 children enjoying a day’s freedom from the imprisonment.

Every Saturday they would meet in a different place, John Bosco would hear their confessions and pray with them.  An hour of religious instruction would follow, plain, simple talks coming from the heart and embodying the solid truths of the faith.  Then John Bosco would take his band of ragged orphans into the country for an all-day outing of games.  A final talk would close the “Little Angels day,” and the tired bunch would trail into Kabale Municipality, scattering to their homes along the way.

During the week, John Bosco used to tour the city shops, checking on his boys, making sure they had not forgotten his instructions to work hard and work well.

Those were heroic times, “those pioneer days,” John Bosco used to call them.  “Days of strenuous work they were, a shiftless existence that threatened to collapse any Saturday, a bankrupt enterprise with no capital, and very little funds.”  Besides this, the city leaders, worried by the new cries of “freedom for the working classes,” eyed John Bosco’s children as a dangerous, half-baked army of the children of the people, headed by an ambitious John Bosco.  Actually this tired, penniless John Bosco sought only a chance to bring God’s peace and order to the hearts of restless youth.

In 2007 the first group of two ladies from Slovenia UK met John Bosco talked about the ministry and they promised to visit it. The day after, the two ladies called John Bosco, told him to take them to the ministry. It was a rainy season and children were in coldness, ragged clothes, with no shoes and food. The two ladies: Simona sivec and Evatomic bought jumpers and shoes to every child in the ministry visited some homes of the orphans. These became the first donors of the ministry. John Bosco suggested constructing a grass thatched hut from where his orphans could pray from.

The grass thatched hut later converted into a chapel, with a tiny anteroom, and every Saturday all orphans managed quite miraculously to squeeze into it for prayers.  “The Little Angels Heart,” he called it, because he admired the gentle holiness of this great John Bosco.

The location of the thatched hut-chapel can still be seen today–the tiny nucleus of a worldwide organization that began in poverty with blessing.