Sub­ject: Blog, Aug. 28, 2011

A TYPICAL SUNDAY? Well….???
Min­istry is much more than most imagine. 
When you pio­neer church­es in lit­tle vil­lages where no one has been before, you nev­er know what will greet you on each visit.
 
Here’s what hap­pen today.
Arriv­ing at the lit­tle grass roofed mud hut that hosts the Pequar­ia church about 6 miles (12 km) from our base, I was met by the pas­tor and 3 very upset church members.
The woman they trust­ed to safe­guard the offer­ing had stolen it, includ­ing the offer­ing bas­ket! (All $4 was lost, a lot of mon­ey to these people).
The church mem­bers vot­ed to safe­guard their future offer­ings at our mis­sion sta­tion in Balama.
 
A few min­utes before church start­ed, a man dressed in rags comes up to me and lays at my feet a small Mozam­bi­can coin worth 20 Cents U.S.  (We taught on tithing last week so great to see he had under­stood it.)
He says: “I can’t stay for church, because I have to sell Nipa (corn whisky) so I can buy grass to roof my mud hut.”  We explained that this is not the way of Jesus.  He ducked his head and said, “ I know, but I’m an old man, and I have no oth­er way to make any mon­ey.”  I told him if he would dump his Nipa and hon­or God by com­ing to church, I would per­son­al­ly give him the U.S. $5 he need­ed to roof his house.  He was so hap­py he briskly walked to his hut (we could see his hut from the church), dumped his corn whisky, and returned in his clean­est cloths!  So now he’s part of the brick mak­ing team for the church.
 
The church ser­vice con­sist­ed of 5 adults and 20 kids.  We were thrilled to final­ly gain the trust of the chil­dren as they had refused to step inside the church the last 3 Sun­days.   Some­one had told them we would cap­ture and sell them.  Might sound far­fetched to you, but it is com­mon prac­tice in many parts of Africa.
 
Got home and was doing e‑mails.  Two of my pas­tors from our Bala­ma ser­vice drove up on a motor­bike.  I went over to open the door for Pas­tor Fred but he ran right past me!
I thought the man had lost his marbles!
While I was typ­ing in the office, a 3 foot snake has parked him­self on the step right out­side my office door.  The snake saw Pas­tor Fred run­ning towards it and took off like greased light­ning!  Noth­ing like God’s tim­ing to save your life!
 
Then Pas­tor Alber­to dri­ves in on his motor­bike to report that the 3 church mem­bers who were sup­posed to build the Kwe Kwe church are in jail for the next 4 months.  The church mem­bers made the bricks, and now the church has no brick lay­ers.  “Why are they in jail,” I asked?  They poached an ele­phant so the church could have a feast to cel­e­brate the new building!
I almost fell off my chair!  ONLY in Africa would some­thing like this happen.
A mas­ter brick lay­er from Kwe Kwe has offered to build it for a fee of $226 which includes the ser­vices of 3 of his friends. 
We have a roof donat­ed for this church.  Would any­one like to help them build the walls?
 
As you can see, a nor­mal day doesn’t exist around here.
My days are not always this crazy, but I do have to resolve some pret­ty crazy prob­lems at times.
 
FYI:  Our orphan­age reg­is­tra­tion doc­u­ments will be  in Pem­ba tomor­row to be “checked for accept­abil­i­ty” by the State Lev­el Social Ser­vices group.
This will hope­ful­ly catch any mis­takes before we sub­mit them to the Maputo office for our nation­al cre­den­tials.   Cape­na, our office man­ag­er, did a great job of get­ting it all writ­ten up in 7 long days of work.  Thanks to C.A.R.E, Int. he was trained to do just this kind of work.  It’s won­der­ful to see how God gives each of us the right kind of prepa­ra­tion to meet the unseen chal­lenges.  Eric and I did our part by get­ting all the blue prints togeth­er for all our buildings.
It may be months before we hear the out­come, so I’ll let you know when we hear something.
 
Blessings,
Bush Bun­ny Brenda
 
 
 

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog Aug. 20, 2011

EXTREME MAKEOVER HAS NOTHING ON US!
 
Mon­day, Aug. 15th, Social Ser­vices noti­fied us of a nation­wide inspec­tion of all orphan­ages.  Fri­day, Aug. 19th was our inspec­tion date.
A “friend­ly bird” told us about the new reg­u­la­tions that had not been pub­lished.  My brick lay­ers and car­pen­ters kicked it into high gear and we made the nec­es­sary bath­room and kitchen improve­ments in 4 days!
With 20 men work­ing all out for 10 hours a day, we just made it with a few hours to spare on Friday!
With prayers fly­ing heav­en­ward, we wait­ed for the inspec­tion team yes­ter­day (state lawyer of crim­i­nal jus­tice, as well as 2 Social Ser­vice inspectors).
Word was they had closed 3 orphan­ages in our state for lack of compliance.
WE PASSED the inspec­tion, and this team were very hap­py that we were in com­pli­ance with the new regulations!
 
BUT, ALL ORPHANAGES now have to re-reg­is­ter by sub­mit­ting 12 dif­fer­ent com­plex doc­u­ments. (no one is in com­pli­ance with this at the moment as it’s a new thing.)
I’m dri­ving to Pem­ba tomor­row with my State Pas­tor and Office Admin­is­tra­tor to obtain copies of the doc­u­ments we must fill out.
We are only being giv­en a few weeks to com­ply, so you know what this Bun­ny will be doing for the next fortnight.
 
Hope you enjoyed the pho­tos in the lat­est Bush Beat.
The 3 new church­es we just start­ed are small on mem­ber­ship, but have hun­gry hearts for learn­ing about our Lord Jesus.
It is fun to watch their eyes light up as they receive new rev­e­la­tion from the Word of God.
The 30 Kwe Kwe mem­bers showed up at 4a.m. last Sun­day morn­ing to clear the land for their new church.
They want­ed to fin­ish in time to bathe before the 9a.m. ser­vice.  Now THAT is what I call enthusiasm!
 
ELEPHANT VILLAGE WATER WELL COMPLETED!
An auto acci­dent pre­vent­ed the water well “pump team” from com­plet­ing the well this week.  No one was seri­ous­ly hurt, but it did put the truck out of commission.
Their boss was in Maputo yes­ter­day to buy a new truck.
He hopes to have the team com­plete the Melu­co wells next week, and fol­low imme­di­ate­ly with the Bala­ma wells the fol­low­ing week.
 
OUR FOOD TEAM made its 3rd food drop to the Ele­phant Vil­lage yesterday. 
 
So that’s the lat­est news from our side of the planet.
While the USA suf­fers extreme heat, we are suf­fer­ing extreme COLD here in north­ern Moz.
Eric says that Johan­nes­burg had snow and hail last week. 
Nor­mal­ly by Aug. 15th, the tem­per­a­tures are quite warm in Balama.
It seems to me that the Lord Jesus is shak­ing and mov­ing the plan­et so that nor­mal weath­er no longer exists.
 
Blessings,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma team
 
 
 
 
 

From: “Bren­da Lange” 

Sub­ject: Blog, Aug. 6, 2011

MICHIGAN TEAM LEAVES MORE THAN FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND
The 6 mem­ber Michi­gan team did a mar­vel­lous job of reach­ing out to the locals using teach­ings that were cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive.  Team lead­ers Dale and Sal­ly brought many object lessons to illus­trate Bible lessons, leav­ing the peo­ple with a clear image of why Jesus came to earth. While Dale taught 2 days in our Bush Bible Schools; Sal­ly, Bev­er­ly, Tanya, Judy, and Jen­na worked at paint­ing our office and children’s ware­house, held a game day for our 112 orphans, and assist­ing in 2 food distributions.
The entire team assist­ed Eric in show­ing the Jesus film in a vil­lage where we just plant­ed our 6th bush church (Pequar­ia).  Dale’s Michi­gan church, Coop­ersville Reformed, is spon­sor­ing the pas­tor for Pequar­ia, and donat­ing the tin roof for the church that is being built there.
THANK YOU to this “GO TEAM”, as they are called, for going to one of the “ends of the earth” to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
 
TRADITIONAL WATER WELLS GONE DRY IN BALAMA
The new Nation­al High­way that destroyed sev­er­al of our orphan homes last year, has tak­en anoth­er toll on our area.
Rocks are an essen­tial part of the road base, so the com­pa­ny has been BLASTING the rock from a small moun­tain just 1 mile from our mis­sion sta­tion.  They work 24 hours a day with a loud rock crush­er, load­ing huge boul­ders into dump trucks, mak­ing it hard for any­one in our area to sleep.  Thir­ty days ago, my work­ers told me our church well wasn’t putting out as much water as usu­al.   I start­ed check­ing the tra­di­tion­al hand dug wells all over our area (we have 12 on our 40 acres used for irri­ga­tion of our Jat­ropha plants).  Our 12 foot WELLS WERE ALL DRY!  These wells nev­er went dry last year, pro­vid­ing ade­quate water for our Jat­ropha irri­ga­tion project even through Novem­ber, the end of the dry season.
  I have no proof, but it looks like the intense blast­ing, which shakes our brick homes, and has cracked some of the walls of the brick build­ings on our base, HAS CAUSED THE UNDERGROUND WATER TO RECEED!
 
I con­tact­ed the Drilling com­pa­ny to see if they would be drilling in Bala­ma coun­ty this year.  The CEO of the com­pa­ny said they were booked for the next 3 months, with NO drilling sched­uled for Bala­ma coun­ty this year, but they had ONE WEEK open, July 25 to 30th.  They need­ed an imme­di­ate answer as their trucks were only 30 miles away.  Using emer­gency funds togeth­er with July’s water well drilling funds, we made the deci­sion to drill imme­di­ate­ly to avert a pos­si­ble dis­as­ter if we lost our present wells.
Our church well is only 26 meters (85 ft.) deep and pro­vides ALL THE WATER for our 112 Vil­lage of HOPE kids as well as many oth­er homes.   The deci­sion was made to sink 2 deep wells imme­di­ate­ly to pro­vide addi­tion­al water for our kids and emer­gency back-up for our base well which is only 60 feet deep.
Last week the Baba­jil com­pa­ny drilled on prop­er­ty I bought last year for the Vil­lage of Hope.  The geol­o­gist dis­cov­ered ABUNDANT water on this land. (God always sup­plies even before we know of the need.)
  The sec­ond well was drilled in Rovu­ma vil­lage where over 5,000 peo­ple are depend­ing on 2 wells that went dry last year. Both wells are already show­ing signs of dry­ing up very soon.  We have a large church of 200 mem­bers in Rovu­ma and it is the home of our new goat project for the orphans.
 
BOTH NEW WELLS have abun­dant water and are each 37 meters deep. (120 ft.)
The geol­o­gists says the rock for­ma­tion hold­ing the water for each of these 2 wells is like a huge fun­nel and should not go dry.
PRAISE THE LORD FOR PROVIDING THE FUNDS AND SHOWING US THE PROBLEM IN HIS PERFECT TIMING when He knew the solu­tion was just down the road. J
 
Bless­ings and MUCH THANKS to all of you who pro­vid­ed the funds for these 2 wells.
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Team
 
P.S.  Eric is in South Africa for a 6 week break and mas­sive shop­ping trip to bring back sup­plies we can’t get in Mozambique.
Don, Rebec­ca, and Mic­ki, the last of my 90 day won­ders will be leav­ing this Fri­day for the USA leav­ing Lin­da Stan­ley and me to “hold down the fort”.
Keep us all in your prayers as we trav­el this week.
 
Bush Beat newslet­ter with lots of pho­tos com­ing out mid­dle of August. J