BUSH BUNNY TIDBITS:

Return­ing to Mozam­bique is always a slight cul­ture shock with the sud­den changes to 3rd world “sights, sounds & HOT, humid tem­per­a­tures”.  I usu­al­ly arrive home to a “hor­nets nest” full of prob­lems that need resolv­ing.  How­ev­er, this time, the Lord had sev­er­al sur­pris­es for me.
I can tell you that in my 19 years in Moz., I have NEVER seen prob­lems resolved as fast as things hap­pened this week!
In no way was I expect­ing God to give us the answers to mul­ti­ple prayers in the first 5 days I was in Moz.
We can now go forth with the bean buy­ing & water wells with­out delays.

Here’s the sto­ry in a nut shell.

1.  NEED for a water well license has been a  GREAT prayer request for over a year!
 Mon­day, April 20th,  I met with 4 water well drilling com­pa­nies in Pem­ba,  but none would allow us to drill under their license.  (Licens­ing is SO com­plex in this coun­try that even com­mer­cial com­pa­nies find it hard to com­ply with all the regulations.)
 Ali, my office man­ag­er, hears of a Chris­t­ian broth­er who has a drilling license, & locates him on Mon­day afternoon.
Ali phones Mon­day night say­ing that “Sal­vador” (mean­ing Sav­ior in Por­tuguese), is will­ing to meet with me on Tues­day if I pro­vide him with 20 liters of diesel to make the trip to Bala­ma.  With­in 30 min­utes of his arrival the agree­ment was a “done deal”, & Sal­vador has taught us the “gov­ern­ment process” for request­ing to drill.
 He’s com­ing out this week to help us file the prop­er doc­u­ments after we locate areas that are good prospects for water wells.
ONE BIG MOUNTAIN–GONE!

2.  Water Well Pumps are in!  It usu­al­ly takes at least a month to get water well pumps sent the 1,000 miles from Maputo in south­ern Moz. to Pem­ba in the north.
The five pumps arrived with­in 1 week!  Eric picked them up yes­ter­day, & we off loaded them into our ware­house online pre­scrip­tion drugs this morn­ing.  All mate­ri­als are now on site so that water well drilling can begin as soon as the doc­u­ments are approved.

3.  BEAN BUYING to go full steam ahead (a month early).
 Due to ille­gal buy­ers in the area, we have been grant­ed per­mis­sion to begin buy­ing beans on Mon­day, April 27th.
Funds are still need­ed to com­plete the task, as we need 50 tons of beans to feed our kids for the next year.  Oth­er busi­ness­men are already buy­ing them at 20 cents/lb for resale in oth­er coun­tries, so we can­not delay. Still need fund­ing for at least 750 kids.

Beans for 1 child COST ONLY $30 FOR THE YEAR!

If you want to help, then please send your love gift to:
ORPHANS UNLIMITED, INC.
PMB #391
11152 Wes­t­heimer Road
Hous­ton, TX 77042

God’s Bless­ings to you all.
I’ll try to update this blog each week­end.  Stay tuned for the “rest of God’s sto­ry in Balama”.
Bush Bun­ny Brenda

For those who don’t know my back­ground, my heart’s desire as a child was to be an old west pio­neer. I even told God I was mad at Him because I was born too late. God gives us our hearts desires if we just ask Him. I just nev­er expect­ed my desire to land me in a remote part of Africa, res­cu­ing & evan­ge­liz­ing orphans where “no one else wants to go”.

On our home page, you will notice that I’ve writ­ten a book called AFRICAN ADVENTURES. In the 18 years I’ve been res­cue­ing kids in Africa, I’ve faced death more than 17 times. Many of these mir­a­cle sto­ries as well as the first 11 attempts on my life are in this book. Many tales of the dead­ly mam­ba snake, lions, or a machete throw­ing native are told in AFRICAN ADVENTURES. Since I haven’t the time to write a sequel at this time, the “REST OF THE STORY” will have to be told in this blog for now. Two of my most recent adven­tures are writ­ten below.

MAMBA IN THE PICK-UP TRUCK!

In Jan­u­ary, 2009, I went into our Moz. office to write a few e‑mails. A mis­isonary woman from MAF was with me. Nor­mal­ly, I go out the back door of the office when it’s time to lock up the out­door kitchen at night, but that day I felt a strong urg­ing in my spir­it man to lock up & go out the pas­sage way door instead. As we walked through the car­port towards the kitchen, my friend saw move­ment to her left & screamed “look at that!” Turn­ing to my left, I froze in amaze­ment because a 5 foot black mam­ba was stretched out on the top of the truck­’s bed, RIGHT WHERE THE BACK DOOR OPENS!
Yelling, “COBRA, COBRA”, brought the guards run­ning with their 12 foot bam­boo poles. They sur­round­ed the truck as I yelled “Don’t ruin the paint job!” (That was our newest truck!) Four men appeared instead of 2 as the guards were chang­ing shifts. Sur­round­ing the truck scared the snake, which fell off the top of the truck bed into the bed itself.
His head appeared on the oppo­site side of the truck bed look­ing like a 4 inch periscope from a sub­ma­rine. See­ing no exit from that direc­tion, the mam­ba did a retreat, climb­ing behind the spare tire that was mount­ed on the back of the truck­’s cab. It then slid down & wedged him­self into that lit­tle 1 inch spot between the cab & the bed of the truck. I told the men to hold him there while I went into the house to retreive my machete. The safest thing was to tie that machete to a bam­boo pole & stick that snake in the side to make him come out. My guard, Ameri­co, took the machete from me & say­ing, “that’s too much trou­ble”. He looked at the posi­tion of the snake & changed to the oth­er side of the truck for a cer­tain hit. His posi­tion put him in the 3 foot space between the office wall & the truck. Swing­ing that machete at light­en­ing speed, Ameri­co cut that snake’s body. Known for their aggres­sive behav­iour when pro­voked, that mam­ba dropped to the ground, rac­ing straight for Ameri­co. It was all out war as the 4 men swung their bam­boos like flash­ing swords, break­ing his back & bash­ing in his head. Not one spot of paint was lost off that truck. 🙂
In these last days, TROUBLE WILL COME. But those who believe in the MASTER, Jesus Christ, & HEAD HIS VOICE will be saved from many a peril.

TAKING DOMINION. GOD GAVE US THE AUTHORITY!

It’s 1pm on the last Sat­ur­day in Decem­ber, 2008. I’m work­ing in the office when I hear a hor­ri­ble sound like some­one rip­ping open a huge tin can. I’d heard it before, & knew a pow­er­ful Dust Dev­il whirl­wind had just ripped off a tin room near­by. Fear­ing for the worst, I raced out the door to check our food barns in the far cor­ner of our 40 acre mis­sion sta­tion. The barn with our entire bean sup­ply for the orphans had only half a roof. The entire front side of the roof, wood truss­es & all, had been snapped in half & flipped over onto the back side of the barn. The tin sheets were wav­ing in the wind.
A quick look told me that imme­di­ate action was all that would save our ONLY pro­tein sources for the orphans, for a glance at the hori­zon told me a large thun­der storm would be upon us with­in 3 hours. This barn con­tained 40 TONS of dried beans, 2 tons of peanuts, & 10 tons of rice.
Rac­ing into town in my pick-up truck, I grabbed 14 of our work­ers. As fast as human­ly pos­si­ble, they grabbed the 40 lb. bags of peanuts & RAN with them to anoth­er near­by barn. Our trac­tor dri­ver had heard of our dis­as­ter & came to help even though he was sick with malar­ia. With the trac­tor, the 110 lb bags of rice were moved into the large corn barn about 75 yards away. The last 4 bags of rice were lit­er­al­ly thrown into the barn doors as the first large rain drops hit the ground.
While they moved the rice, I picked up every truck tarp we had in the com­pound. The men quick­ly cov­er­ing the beans just as a wall of rain hit the area, pour­ing tons of water through the torn sheets of tin onto the tarps which now cov­ered the beans.
We had done all we could for the moment, as the sun was set­ting & every­one was exhaust­ed. I asked the men to agree with me that God would some­how pro­tect these beans dur­ing this storm. Even though most were not believ­ers in Jesus Christ, they bowed their heads as I asked the Lord to pro­tect our orphan’s food. As we left, I asked all the men to return & bring a friend at sunup the next day to help move the 40 tons of beans. ( FYI: Sunup is 4:30 a.m. in December.)
That rain storm poured buck­ets till 9p.m. that night, as I con­tin­ued to thank the Lord for pro­tect­ing our beans. For you see, those tin barn walls were sealed by the con­crete floor to pro­tect the food from rats. That meant the water flow­ing into the barn could only escape through the small crack under the barn doors. I envi­sioned a swim­ming pool gush when I opened the doors the next morning.
The next morn­ing 25 men showed up to help move the beans, one 110 lb bag at a time on their head. But the entire group froze in total dis­may when I opened those barn doors. Instead of a gush of water, we were amazed to see a room divid­ed down the mid­dle. The front half which had no roof was damp, but no water was stand­ing. The back half of the room was DUST DRY! I could blow the dust off the floor where all the beans were stacked. It looked like some­one, a BIG SOMEONE, had put a giant show­er cur­tain down the mid­dle of the room. NOT ONE BAG OF BEANS WAS EVEN DAMP! So all was saved!
We wast­ed no time in mov­ing those beans, as we all knew it would take a few hours to get them stacked into the corn ware­house about 70 yards away. I was­n’t aware of it, but the men had talked among them­selves & planned to do it real­ly fast as they did­n’t want me to be late for church (9a.m. start time). We closed the doors to both ware­hous­es at 9 a.m. sharp!
In 6 days, our car­pen­ters had the roof replaced & dou­ble reinforced.
The cheap Prope­cia food in that ware­house is to last us till June, 2009.
Looks like the Lord’s mighty hand will keep our kids well fed once again.

I hope these sto­ries bless & encour­age you. Being able to “blog” makes me feel clos­er to all of you. It’s like I can real­ly TALK to you from my heart. Hap­py Trails, until we meet again!