I’m CSPC member Mia Smalley. This is how God has been enabling me to live deeply through a CSPC mission trip to Mozambique this past summer, which Angie Cannon also recently described in her Live Deeply story.

“At the beginning of the trip, I was definitely very nervous. Very afraid. My sort of knee jerk reaction was to kind of hide almost, not think about anything, and just do it. My mom had heard about this trip at a CSPC Global Mission meeting. She specifically asked if it would be good for teenagers, wondering if I could go. I was definitely interested in mission trips- I’d gone to St. Louis with the high school ministry the year before, and I’d wanted to go on a Costa Rica trip, but they couldn’t accept any sophomores that year because they had so many applicants. So when my mom told me about Mozambique, I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds cool.’ But I didn’t really process actually doing it. It kind of snuck up on me. Then suddenly we were having planning meetings in June and July, and we left in late July. I was 16, going into my junior year, and had never been on such a long flight before. Going from Atlanta to Johannesburg, you’re over the Atlantic Ocean for like 12 hours. I’ve been to Europe before, so that’s fine because it’s shorter, but this was so much longer. It was actually terrifying until my nerves adjusted and settled a little. Plus, being so far away from home, knowing I was going to a place where it was less safe politically… it was all getting to me. Like I said, there was a big part of me that just wanted to turn my brain off, grit my teeth, and get through it.

But my dad gave me a devotional to read a few weeks before the trip- The Purpose Driven Life. I would read it on the trip before bed every night. That was really good because a lot of what I took from it was, ‘Hey, God didn’t put me on Earth just to get through it and then be in Heaven. He put me here with a purpose, and there are things I can do for God’s glory. And not just should I do them, but it’s going to be good for me to do them. And this trip is one of those opportunities. I don’t have to count the days until I’m back in bed at home.’ It really gave me a new perspective- to see this as a chance to push into whatever God’s purpose is for my life, rather than just a duty or something I had to do. That changed everything- I was able to join our team enthusiastically as we took on service work together. We worked with Young Life Africa at one of their camps, and the kids have so much more energy than people do here! They had this competition with games, and the ultimate winners got Bibles in their own native language- Portuguese. The way they reacted to that was absolutely amazing. This was a camp for non-believers, and they were singing and dancing with their new Bibles for at least 15 minutes! Since our mission team didn’t speak Portuguese, a lot of our work was behind the scenes: serving lunch, handing out snacks, setting up chairs. It was tiring, but we got to see God at work. At one point when we were giving out snacks, it was very much like a loaves and fishes moment. I’m pretty sure when we came back, we had more snacks than we started with! This was also the point where the leaders were talking to the kids about Jesus and asking if they were going to give their life to Him. Later, we found out the numbers from Jose, the camp director: 56 out of 83 gave their lives to Jesus! Our team’s response was very hard to describe, not totally what you’d expect. We were ecstatic but also exhausted at the same time. If we had energy, we probably would have partied in celebration. But we were just so tired from everything we’d done that day- a good kind of tired. Blessed exhaustion, maybe.

We spent most of the trip, though, at Sybil Baloyi’s ministry. She runs a school with a P & P (Princes and Princesses) program providing scholarships for orphans or kids with financial hardships. People at CSPC sponsor many of the P & P students who attend Sybil’s school. Our team interviewed these kids so we could send back reports to their sponsors. One visit really stuck with me. We brought a stroller to Jeremias, a teenager with severe physical impairments. He’s very small, and his grandmother Elena raises him. She would have to carry him on her back to take him to the doctor, who works far away from their home. But a couple from CSPC paid for this special stroller Elena can now use to transport Jeremias. It was really cool to get to give her that gift- truly life-changing for this family! What also stuck with me was Sybil, just how selfless she is. She hurt her ankle pretty bad before we got there. But she was still focused on serving the kids and making sure we had transportation, that we were doing okay. We should have been serving her, but she was like, ‘No, no, let me help you.’ Always others-focused. The trip also made me see how God has blessed me. I wear glasses, but I most likely wouldn’t if I lived in Mozambique. My mom had to have a surgery a couple years ago that she could have died from, but we have excellent and accessible medical care here. There, that might not have been the case. I get to have pets that I love, not just chickens I’ll eventually eat or dogs for protection. I get to be in clubs and do sports: cross country, track, and swimming. There’s so much here that I’ve been blessed with compared to people in other parts of the world. This trip made me see the importance of stewarding those blessings- including a desire God’s given me to explore ministry as a career. I got to job shadow Lisa Tarantino in the children’s ministry recently, and that was really cool. I don’t know exactly what it’ll look like yet, but I think ministry is where God is calling me. As He’s changed my perspective, I’ve heard His call with more clarity. And I’m going to keep listening for His purposeful, powerful voice.”