Darren Sweeney admits that just two years ago he didn’t know much about Mozambique, the African nation to which he’s about to move his family of five.
“I had to Google it,” he says.
On a trip there with his wife Sherilyn, fellow attendees of Dungeness Community Church in 2014, the Sequim native says he was more interested in seeing the wildlife.
“Once we were there we really saw the need,” he says. “By the end, none of us wanted to leave.”
For the past two years, the Sweeneys have been raising funds to move their family — including daughters Kaitlyn (12), Emma (10) and Makenna (8) — to join the ministry of One Mission Society (ONE) in Maputo, Mozambique.
One Mission Society has been ministering in Mozambique since 1996. It has has four primary outreaches in Maputo: the Christian Academy of Mozambique, Helping Hands disability ministry, community Bible clubs and soccer ministry, and a theological seminary. The mission’s purpose is to share the Gospel and equip and disciple national believers to lead their own people to Christ.
The Sweeneys mostly will be involved with the school. With a background in working with middle school and high school-aged youth groups, Darren primarily will counsel the school’s older students, teach Bible studies and discipleship groups, organize monthly youth events and outreaches, and teach youths in the local church. A former bank employee, he also will assist with the school’s financial needs as a bookkeeper.
About 150 youths show up for after-school activities at the school, Darren says. He notes that nearly 50 percent of the country’s population is under the age of 18.
Sherilyn, who worked as children’s ministry director at Dungeness Community Church, will be ministering to the children at the academy and serving as director of community outreach. She will lead Bible clubs, organize Vacation Bible School and weekend outreach programs, teach Sunday school and Bible classes, focusing on equipping and training others to love Jesus and share the Gospel.
They’ll be working with Larry and Susan Weil, who have served with One Mission Society in Mozambique since October 1996, about two weeks after the academy opened. (Larry has been the field director since 2012 and the mission treasurer and administrator since 2000, while Susan has been the academy director since 2006 and teaches various subjects including music.)
Originally from Port Angeles, the Sweeneys worked in Seattle, Portland, Ore., and Olympia before returning to the Olympic Peninsula about eight years ago.
“It was our plan to settle here, into Sequim, and never leave,” Darren says.
A trip with fellow Christians in October 2014 to Africa changed those plans, however. In the first day, a simple trip from the airport to the academy campus, Darren says he already could see the need in Mozambique, a country with mighty struggles in employment and education.
Despite one of the world’s fastest growing Gross Domestic Product rates, “there is growing evidence that macroeconomic success has not delivered unambiguous socio-economic benefits at the household level,” and that “Mozambique remains one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked on the United Nations Development Programme’s 2011 Human Development Index at 184 out of 187 countries, below so-called failed states such as Haiti (158), Afghanistan (172) and the Central African Republic.” (World Development Report, 2013)
On the second day, Darren and Sherilyn met with academy students and learned firsthand about an 18-year-old named Isidro. In the process of converting to Christianity, he refused to be part of the tribal religious ceremonies and was disowned by his own family, cutting himself off from not only those close to him but putting into jeopardy where his next meal will come from.
“The joy that he had was what got to me,” Darren says. “If they can pay these costs, I can be inconvenienced.”
Still, the Sweeneys’ call to be missionaries came with “some trepidation,” Darren recalls.
“As we prepared for this trip, we felt the importance, but that it was always someone else (to go),” Darren says. “I thought, ‘Lord, I think you’ve forgotten I have three girls.’”
In the end it came down to this, he says: “We just felt like God was calling us. The same God who raised people from the dead and parted the seas knows what’s best for us; that gives us comfort.”
Since that trip two years ago, the Sweeneys have been raising funds from local and out-of-area Washington churches and out-of-state churches to support their mission.
“Through this process we’ve really learned that not everyone can go to Africa, but (others) can be a part of that,” Darren says. “We can’t do this without them and they can do this without us.”
“We’ve seen why; it takes time to process all of this,” Darren says. That includes selling most of their possessions and moving in with a family from Dungeness Community Church until their target departure date in January.
The mission isn’t a temporary one, Darren notes: It’s a three-year stint, then back to the United States for nine months, then returning to Mozambique.
Darren says he plans to learn Portuguese, the common language that connects the country even after its independence from Portugal in the late 1970s, and then the common Maputo tribal language.
The Sweeneys’ daughters — one middle-schooler, a fifth-grader and a third-grader — will attend the academy, a school that started out as a school for children of missionaries, but became a draw for local youths of a mix of religions as well, Darren says.
“We’re going to miss our family and friends and our church. It’s going to be hard to leave that,” Darren says. “We both had stable jobs (but) that’s not something we’re going to miss.”
The Sweeneys have an online donation page at onemissionsociety.org/give (mission no. 802576).
For more information, contact the Sweeneys at darrensweeneycc@hotmail.com or sherilynsweeney@ hotmail.com, or call 912-2300.
