Judy Kupsik, part of the leadership team at Faith Church Highland (Ind.), a multi-site Christian Reformed congregation in five Indiana cities, had an experience while ministering with Hope Mobility in Kijabe, Kenya, that bubbles out of her in the retelling to her church family and in a video testimony on YouTube. As she prepared for the trip, which included a fundraising marathon and several distribution clinics to dispense needed mobility aids, Kupsik said she heard from God that he was sending her for one person in particular. About three months later, after many improbable details lined up that assured her she met the young man God intended to bless, she's grateful to be used by God to bring hope.
Kupsik said God placed Daniel 3 on her heart before the trip, and in Kijabe she met men named Shadrach and Abednego. In her eyes it was beyond coincidence when a young man named Meshach showed up at a distribution clinic with his nephew Morgan. Meshach had traveled from Nairobi because his nephew needed a wheelchair. Kupsik learned that Meshach is taking care of his nephew and niece because their mother, Meshach’s sister, was killed in a flood that swept through Nairobi in April 2024.
Since their encounter—where Kupsik shared both the gospel and the Daniel 3 story of the Babylonian-era Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving being thrown in a fire—she communicates with Meshach daily via an online app to help him grow in Christ. “Because I know that when we put Jesus first, everything else falls into place,” Kupsik said. Morgan continues to complain about leg pain, but they are waiting to follow up at the African Inland Church hospital in Kijabe.
Kupsik’s experience is one example of how Hope Mobility and its volunteers bless and minister to people whose needs go beyond the physical. Since its beginning in 2018, Hope Mobility has helped close to 13,000 people with mobility aids, living its mission of “sharing God’s hope and love; restoring dignity through mobility.”
Kupsik started volunteering with Hope Mobility in that first year, when the organization’s founder Michael Panther, who is from South Sudan and is a wheelchair user, invited Faith Church Highland to participate in the ministry. Panther reached out because he’d heard about Faith Highland’s strong disability ministry, Reflectors, and he encouraged the church to share their gifts with people with physical disabilities in Africa.
Currently, Hope Mobility has a center, warehouse, and pediatric wheelchair production shop in Kenya. The staff of over 30 also serves Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and is planning on adding Malawi next year.
Kupsik, a long-distance runner, combines marathon running with fundraising for ministry support. She said she hopes to get back to Kenya to run the Nairobi marathon in late October 2026. The rest of the year she’s the team captain for Faith Church Highland’s running team, which runs the Chicago Marathon with Team World Vision.
“My current active role with Hope Mobility is fundraising for their running team that participates in the Fox Valley (Ill.) marathon in September. ... I know that by our fundraising here, we make a huge impact there. So sometimes the best work is done by staying right here in the USA and sharing what God is doing over there.”
About the Author
Callie Feyen is a writer living in Ann Arbor, Mich. She attends First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor. Callie writes news for The Banner and contributes to Coffee+Crumbs, and T.S. Poetry Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and is the author of The Teacher Diaries: Romeo and Juliet, and Twirl: My Life in Stories, Writing, & Clothes.