I’m CSPC member Angie Cannon. This is how I’m living deeply. 

“When Sybil Baloyi started her Christian school in Mozambique, she had 11 preschoolers enrolled, a room in a church, and a crazy idea: What if half the students paid tuition while the other half were at-risk children who got everything free? What if the poorest kids in the village could sit right beside the children of government officials and get the exact same world-class education? For 17 years now, I’ve been watching her ‘What if?’ turn into ‘What IS’ as I’ve helped lead CSPC mission trips to Mozambique. It started because my daughter attended a ministry school in northern Mozambique and said, ‘Mom, next summer, I want you to go back with me.’ That was 2007. I took my first team of high school and college students from CSPC, and I loved taking that age group. It’s slowly morphed into mostly adults now (very often parent/teenager teams), but I still love having the young folks, too, when they can join. Each trip, we work with Sybil and her school, Hlauleka Mumpswa. When we first met Sybil 17 years ago, she worked part-time for World Relief as a translator (She knows seven languages!). She had just moved her preschool into its own building, and she wanted us to come paint murals on the inside of these very plain concrete walls so they would be pretty for the students. We did that. We also worked with her kids’ clubs, which are kind of like backyard Bible clubs. Today her school has 700-800 students, three-year-olds through 12th grade. They graduated their first senior class last December. It’s one of the top-ranked schools in the province. And here’s the beauty of it- all these government officials send their kids there because no place else can give their kids that advantage. Sybil’s students come out fluent in multiple languages, including English and Portuguese. Plus, these kids are getting Bible every day, memorizing verses, and praying. So, yes, many of the government officials send their kids to the school- but they’re sitting right beside orphaned and vulnerable children. God’s heart for all is on clear display every day.

Members of CSPC sponsor about 100 of Sybil’s P & Ps: princes and princesses. These are orphaned or vulnerable children who get to go to her school free. It’s $65 a month to sponsor one of them, and that takes care of their food, school supplies, uniforms- everything. When we go on these trips, our team members interview each child and their caregiver. The caregiver might be an aunt, it might be a great-grandmother. We try to get them together and check in on what’s going on, how the child is doing, then report back to their CSPC sponsor family. With 100 kids, it’s impossible for one team to do it all in one trip now. That’s why we had two teams go this year. You’re only on the ground for six or seven days, and Sunday is consumed with church, so you’re really only getting four to five days to see all these kids. But it’s important to capture all of their stories, because they’re all amazing in some way. This past trip, we delivered a wheelchair to Jeremias, a teenage boy whose body is about the size of a typical six-year-old. His is very aware of the world around him and often responds with a beautiful smile, but because he has a physical impairment, his arms and legs are bent atypically and very stiff. He lives with his elderly grandmother Elena, who’s very poor. Anywhere she went, she either had to figure out how to strap him on her back or push him in umbrella strollers that just don’t last in Mozambique’s conditions- all dirt roads with major potholes. Well, CSPC sprang into action: Donna Ellenberg found a business that made specialty wheelchairs and got all Jeremias’s measurements, and another church member paid for the wheelchair anonymously. The company didn’t think they’d get it to us in time for this past summer’s trip. But two days before we left, this huge box shows up and there it is! So we were able to take it as checked luggage and deliver it to this family. Elena was singing praises! She’s finally got something she can move this young man in. Jeremias was excited, too- making all kinds of joyful noises. God hasn’t yet healed this young man, but because of CSPC’s generosity, he felt the Lord’s touch in a new, powerful way.

This past trip was also bittersweet, though. I’m thinking of one high school boy named Quino. My heart just breaks for him. I interviewed his teachers first, and they just sang his praises. ‘Quino’s got a really hard situation at home,’ they explained to me. ‘His mother Maria is very ill and he’s pretty much taking care of her. But he always comes in clean, always with his homework done.’ Sometimes Quino would show up late or miss school entirely, and they’d check on him. Every time, they learned it was because Maria was ill or he had to take her to the hospital. So much of education these days is computer-based. But a lot of these kids don’t have Internet or access to Wi-Fi, so if they’ve got homework that requires them to look something up, they have no way of doing it. The teachers understand that. But this teacher was like, ‘Quino always does his homework unless it’s something for which he can’t access Wi-Fi.’ We decided we ought to go visit him at home. We arrived to find Maria very, very thin- apparently near death. Quino was doing most everything to provide for his mother’s needs and maintain their home. They had a little mud hut- clean as a whistle, totally tidy. He did all the cooking, all the cleaning besides the laundry (which a neighbor helps with), all the shopping. So much on his plate, yet he was also making great grades in school. His teacher said he’s the most respectful child, always eager to learn. When we went to interview Quino, he actually wasn’t there at first. So we talked to Maria, and then he got home from school. He went in, changed his clothes, came down and sat beside her, brought her some water. Quino had the sweetest, most gentle spirit. You just don’t see that: a 16-year-old boy who gives up everything in his life -friends, playing soccer, anything else- to take care of his ailing mom. That has to be the hope of Jesus -which he knows from school- at work. Maria has since died. Sybil thinks it was probably cancer. I’ve just continued to pray and pray for Quino. Many of Sybil’s students have hard stories like his. But there’s also sweetness in all of them- a really sweet part where God is just doing incredible things.

What I say about Sybil is that she is somebody who has taught me what God can do if you never tell Him no. She never says no. Whatever it is that He tells her -‘Go start a school’- she’s like, ‘I don’t know how to start a school. But okay, we’ll figure it out.’ If he tells her, ‘Go get another degree so you can be a secondary school principal’- okay, she does it. Every time I’m there, she’s studying while we’re in the van going places because she’s got some kind of test she has to do while we’ve got a team there on the ground. I’ve never met anybody like her in my life- someone who just never says no to God. And that’s changed my life. My husband Harold and I owned an engineering company for 25 years. We had 50 plus employees- the livelihood of 50 families on our shoulders. That’s a blessing and an honor, but also a heaviness. Occasionally payroll would come around and we’d have huge receivables but nothing in the bank. I would say to Harold, ‘We’ve been doing this for 20 years now. This happens about once a year. Our receivables are too big and our bank account is too little. But God has provided every single time.’ And He did. There was never a time we could not make payroll. That outlook came from what Sybil taught me: trusting that if God’s asked you to do something, He’s going to provide. It might not be easy. There are going to be some hard times. But if we know it’s from Him and continue to trust in His plan, He’s going to take care of all those details that we get anxious about. When things get bumpy, we want to pull back and worry. But no- He’s still in control. He’s leading you to a good place. And very rarely does spiritual growth come from times of ease. It pretty much always comes from the hard times. So I’ll close with a modestly challenging invitation: If you haven’t been on a mission trip yet, I’d encourage you to go. It changes your life, and you realize the rest of the world doesn’t live like us. You won’t come home the same. So how about reaching out to our mission ministry and asking about joining one of these trips? God’s always looking for new folks to say yes.”