PERSONAL NOTES TO BRENDA
brenda@orphansunlimited.org
ALL OTHER INQUIRIES:
LINDA FERGUSON
linda@orphansunlimited.org
phone: 979–234-3422 or 713–854-9197
Brenda’s Blog is Post­ed at:
www.orphansunlimited.org/blog
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BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG, MAY 25, 2012

EMAIL DOWN AGAIN

Email in Mozam­bique is down again. If you have sent email to Bren­da in the past few days she hasn’t been able to read it. If it is some­thing you need a prompt reply to, please resend it to the Texas office, linda@orphansunlimited.org. Bren­da calls via our SAT phone each morn­ing and I can relay emer­gency mes­sages. (I pray by the time you read this blog the email ser­vice will be restored.) 

BEANS ARE IN THE BARN

Yes­ter­day the final bags of beans were processed and stored away in the barns of Orphans Unlim­it­ed in Mozam­bique. One hun­dred ten (110) tons of beans will pro­vide food for our chil­dren and fos­ter moth­ers for the com­ing year with ample sup­ply to feed those in the vil­lages who are in need.

I tried to do the math on how many serv­ings of beans is in 110 tons. Using my one pound bag of pin­to beans as a mea­sure to begin with , I esti­mat­ed eight,(8) serv­ings per each pound of beans. Bren­da says the diet of the vil­lage peo­ple is based on beans, corn, some rice and the veg­eta­bles they can grow. Some years there are more rewards from their home gar­dens and some years none. So count­ing with my “pin­to bean” sci­en­tif­ic method there are enough beans to feed 1,760,000 servings*we are assum­ing U S Tons as the mea­sure, divid­ed by 365 days, divid­ed by 3 meals a day, these beans will feed 1,607 peo­ple for a year. If beans are on the menu for 2 meals a day, these beans will sus­tain 2,411 peo­ple for one year.

We are so grate­ful for our sum­mer mis­sion­ar­ies who arrived just on time to help bring in the food harvest.Thanks to Don, Kay­lan, David and Bryce.

There will be a one week pause in food pro­cess­ing before the corn crop buy­ing begins. This week our team will have some time to work with the youth and share the Bread of Life, Jesus, with those who are spir­i­tu­al­ly hun­gry. Thanks to all the team for your labor and your vision as you adjust to life in the bush.

I am enclos­ing a pre­cious pic­ture of Bren­da and one of the new baby goats. I hope you like it,too.

Thanks again for your con­tin­u­ing sup­port. With­out your prayers and finan­cial pro­vi­sion Orphans Unlim­it­ed could nev­er pro­vide for these least of these.

Bless­ings,

Lin­da Ferguson
Orphans Unlimited

From: “Bren­da Lange” 
Sub­ject: Blog, May 17, 2012
Date: May 16, 2012 9:05:18 PM CDT

MOTHER’S DAY–DOING WHAT MOTHERS DO
“Sav­ing a life”
My new team of vis­i­tors packed up and we drove out of Pem­ba at 5:00a.m. Sun­day.  We got to the house, unloaded the pick-up, and head­ed to church at 9a.m.  Bal­bi­na, a fos­ter moth­er, asked for prayer for our newest arrival, 3 month old Orten­cia.  One look at the baby told me she had seri­ous malar­ia, so off we prayed and then rushed her to the hos­pi­tal. Kay­lan, a nurs­ing stu­dent from Con­cor­dia in Austin went with me, get­ting her first expe­ri­ence in how we treat a semi-comatose malar­ia case.
  The ER was qui­et, and one of their best nurs­es was on duty.  Ortencia’s fin­ger stick malar­ia test was pos­i­tive, and she was very dehy­drat­ed from the fever.  The nurse sent a run­ner to fetch their best pedi­atric nurse, as he couldn’t get the IV start­ed.  We prayed. The Peds nurse got the IV in on the 2nd stick. PTL!  Orten­cia is semi-comatose, only slight­ly respond­ing to pain. Qui­nine injectable is giv­en, and she is watched care­ful­ly for seizures.  Now we wait.
  Two moth­ers are need­ed to watch over a baby in the hos­pi­tal, so I rush back to the church which was just let­ting out.  Find­ing Domini­ca, our Women’s Pas­tor, we locate anoth­er wid­ow in our pro­gram will­ing to help out at the hos­pi­tal.  Fetch­ing her some food, and 10 gal­lons (40 liters) of WATER we head back to the hos­pi­tal. (The new water well we just drilled to help the hos­pi­tal isn’t ready for use as the cement must hard­en for a week before the pump can be put in). 
  Now that the baby’s needs are cov­ered, we have to find a 2nd moth­er to stay with the oth­er orphans at Balbina’s house.  She has old­er girls, so we just need­ed some­one to keep them on schedule.
By this time, it’s late after­noon and Orten­cia is now AWAKE and tak­ing a bot­tle. We PTL for His mer­cy on this pre­cious lit­tle one.
  On Tues­day at noon, she was released from the hos­pi­tal, look­ing her chip­per self again.
We praise the Lord for her fast recov­ery, and for get­ting us home that morn­ing fromPem­ba with­out delay, so that I saw the child in time to help her.
An infant under 3 months has lit­tle resis­tance to malar­ia, and things can turn crit­i­cal very quickly.
The moth­er thinks the child is just sleep­ing, not real­iz­ing they are comatose, and death fol­lows rapidly.
Few are saved once they reach the comatose stage, and we were very close to that.
We are very grate­ful for this mir­a­cle from our Lord, as we know HE is the Great Physi­cian, and the ONLY ONE who can save those that man can’t.  Such is the case with Orten­cia. THANK YOU JESUS!
 
ERIC AND TEAM RETURN MONDAY NIGHT WITH NEW 7 TON TRUCK
  Ful­ly loaded with cement, truck tires, and 2 huge “rear” trac­tor tires, Manuel drove the new truck into our mis­sion sta­tion just after dark on Mon­day.  Eric drove in just ahead of him with a ful­ly loaded pick-up and trail­er.  The nation­al cap­i­tal is full of the sup­plies that aren’t avail­able in our area.   Eric took the team to a new shop­ping mall in Maputo that has a glass ele­va­tor and an esca­la­tor. The guys were shocked and wide eyed at the “stairs that moved” and the “box that went up and down”.  The most they knew about was 4 sto­ry build­ings with stairs.  I’m sure they were called liars by their fam­i­ly that night when they told them the sto­ries of what they say.
 
Tues­day was unload­ing day, and Eric imme­di­ate­ly put the truck to work, bring­ing in 2, 7 ton loads of beans from the Man­go Tree Warehouse.
(The new truck has a great spring loaded seat, very com­fy, even on bad roads, and you know how men can be with their new toys!)
So he put it to the test, and it got many “wows” as he drove through the village.
It is one sharp look­ing truck with a tur­bo engine, not even strain­ing under a max­i­mum load.
 
Jesus gave us this truck through a very gen­er­ous fam­i­ly in Dal­las, TX.
Say­ing Thank You to them hard­ly seems ade­quate, but we are MOST GRATEFUL for their sin­cere hearts for serv­ing Jesus.
   Their crowns are stored in heav­en, as I know they gave sac­ri­fi­cial­ly to make this happen.
We PRAISE THE LORD for ALL HE gives us through many gen­er­ous donors, so that oth­ers may live and know the truth about HIM, the Alpha and the Omega!
 
FOOD BUYING TEAM FLYING IN
Don Hits­man and Kay­lan Vollmer­ing arrived last Sat­ur­day, and have worked hard all week to get the ware­hous­es and equip­ment ready for the mas­sive pro­cess­ing and sack­ing of over 500 TONS of corn and beans.  Our bean buy­ing is almost fin­ished.  Our barn con­tains 90 TONS already!  Anoth­er 20 TONS will flow in by the 19th to com­plete what is needed.
 
This Sat­ur­day, May 19th, I will pick up David Abel, Kansas State Un., and Bryce Vaughn, Nebras­ka State Un., (both Agri­cul­ture majors)  who are also part of the food buy­ing team.
 
A dear friend of mine, Dave Van­der­Griend, who is in the area on busi­ness, will meet us in Pem­ba on Sat­ur­day for a quick 3 day vis­it to observe our Bala­ma program.
 
It is an hon­or to have ALL these won­der­ful peo­ple give up their per­son­al time to bring the Love of Jesus to the orphans and wid­ows in our area.
 
Bless­ings to all of you and thank you for help­ing us to help those in need.
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Team
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

From: “Bren­da Lange” 
Sub­ject: Blog May 10, 2012
Date: May 10, 2012 9:02:25 PM CDT

BBB PICKING UP VISITORS IN PEMBA NEXT 2 WEEKENDS
So my blogs will be sent dur­ing the week till after May 20th.
 
This week, I’ll be pick­ing up Don Hits­man, MI, and Kay­lan Vollmer­ing, TX.  Both are com­ing to help with the food buy­ing and pro­cess­ing so we can feed the 1,700 orphans in our care.
 
GOAT BARN CORRALS COMPLETED AND ROOF GOING UP
Due to a con­struc­tion delay in com­plet­ing the dorm kitchen, and a sur­prise deliv­ery of 4x4 roof­ing beams, my car­pen­ters were freed up to roof the goat barn this week. The cor­rals were com­plet­ed last Sat­ur­day.  On Mon­day, the car­pen­ters loaded the 6 ton truck with roof­ing mate­ri­als and de Bun­ny drove them to Rovu­ma vil­lage, 4 miles away.  A women dri­ving a big truck is unheard of in this coun­try, so many heads turned, as Mama Bren­da hasn’t been in the big rig for some months.
With Manuel, our truck dri­ver, on the road with Eric to fetch the new rig, there was no one left but me.  The car­pen­ters hope to have the barn com­plet­ed by this Sat­ur­day.  Once fin­ished, we can begin buy­ing the remain­der of the 70+ goats that were donat­ed ear­li­er this year.
We added 6 young females last week, when a teacher was trans­ferred to anoth­er coun­ty, and need­ed to sell his herd quickly.
Present herd num­bers 37.
 
BEAN BUYING IN FULL SWING
With Cape­na and his team buy­ing in remote loca­tions, and Leona super­vis­ing the Bala­ma buy­ing at our barn, we have brought in 58 TONS in 10 days.  110 tons is need­ed to com­plete the job.
 
ERIC’S TEAM ON THE WAY HOME
Eric reports that all is well on his 2nd day of their return.  A mis­sion­ary friend who helps us “net­work” in Maputo gave him a load to take to Chi­moio, at their halfway point in return for pay­ing the FUEL for the first 500 miles of our jour­ney. THAT is a big bless­ing as big trucks get very thirsty. They deliv­ered the load last night and will be cross­ing the mighty Zam­bezi Riv­er Bridge today (over 1 mile wide).   I am very hap­py the bridge is fin­ished as the fer­ry that use to be the ONLY cross­ing has been known to sink. Not nice.
 
Water Well Drilling Team is back in action and hopes to drill our Nacac­ca well this Monday.
 
I’m on my way to Pem­ba in an hour, so have to close.
Bless­ings from Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and all the Bala­ma Team!
 

From: “Bren­da Lange” 
Sub­ject: Blog, May 6, 2012
Date: May 6, 2012 1:33:40 AM CDT

ERIC AND 3 MAN TEAM FETCHING NEW NISSAN UD70 TRUCK
Eric’s team drove out Thurs­day, fac­ing a 4 day dri­ve to Mozambique’s cap­i­tal of Maputo, about 1000 miles south of us, on not such nice roads.
He will arrive this after­noon, May 6th, to pick up the new truck tomor­row, then load it with cement, truck tires, gro­ceries, and oth­er sup­plies that are not avail­able here.
He hopes to be back around May 14th if all goes as planned. This big 7 ton truck will need 6 days to tra­verse the roads back to Balama.
  Our 11 year old trac­tor bad­ly needs 2 huge rear tires replaced, but a phone call revealed that Maputo had none in stock.
PTL because on Thurs­day after­noon, Eric was able to find them in Nam­pu­la, the city 7 hours south of us.
 MAF in Nam­pu­la is stor­ing them till his team returns with the big truck, as these huge 4.5 foot tall tires over­whelm a pick-up.
Most mis­sion­ary groups net­work here, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for God’s peo­ple to achieve the objec­tives He has giv­en to all of us.
We PRAISE THE LORD for MAF and oth­er mis­sion­ar­ies who link arms with us.
 
19 BAPTIZED IN LOCAL COW POND MAY 5TH
These new believ­ers in Christ, from the remote church­es of Pequar­ia and Nama­ra, will observe their first Holy Com­mu­nion this morning.
 
3 YEAR OLD FERNANDO IN BICYCLE ACCIDENT
  Fernando’s old­er broth­er bor­rowed a bicy­cle on Wed. and took his lit­tle broth­er for a ride.
They live with their grand­moth­er in one of our orphan homes here in Balama.
Fer­nan­do got his foot caught in the rear wheel spokes caus­ing a bad sprain, as well as tear­ing off a large part of the skin and tis­sue of his right ankle, expos­ing his Achilles tendon.
The hos­pi­tal treat­ment was not up to “par” as the Dr. is out of town, so I prayed and asked God how to treat such a seri­ous wound.
His answer sur­prised me: “Treat it like a BURN with Sil­vadene”, which is a cream that helps skin regen­er­ate and seals burns from infection.
 
Thanks to Bless­ings Inter­na­tion­al in Tul­sa, I have 3 tubes of Sil­vadene cream in my med­ical sup­ply.  We prayed that God would accel­er­ate Fernando’s healing.
We were AMAZED to see that with­in 24 hours the wound had closed by 20 %.  I’m doing twice dai­ly ban­dage changes, and each 12 hours a remark­able improve­ment is noted.
What was a 3 inch X 2 inch wound is down to a 1 inch cir­cle by yes­ter­day with NO signs of infec­tion (4 days after the accident).
There is no way Sil­vadene alone is doing this mir­a­cle healing. 
I PRAISE THE LORD FOR HIS MERCY AND PROVISION that allows us to help those who oth­er­wise would suf­fer severe con­se­quences or even death from prob­lems like this.
My THANKS to Harold Hard­er, founder of Bless­ings Inter­na­tion­al, for pro­vid­ing ALL our med­i­cines, so that the mul­ti­tudes can live to know who Christ is.
 
FIRST DAY OF BEAN BUYING
Many ask me what my “nor­mal” work day looks like.  My response is “there isn’t one”.
  So I thought I’d share a bit of what went on last Thurs­day so you can bet­ter under­stand why we need more mis­sion­ary help, and have to work 12 to 14 hour days from May to November.
 
Thurs­day, May 3rd was the first day of bean buying.
Bun­ny gets up at 3:30a.m.
4a.m.
Our BEAN BUYING TEAM loads the trac­tor with sup­plies, and heads out to the Mpaca vil­lage, the “bean grow­ing cap­i­tal of Balama”. 
5a.m. (sun is rising)
Cape­na, dri­ving a Land Cruis­er, leaves 30 min­utes lat­er with his 4 man team and the huge scales for weigh­ing feed bags.
(Cape­na is our Pro­gram Man­ag­er who orga­nizes the vil­lage coops, dis­trib­utes the feed bags, then weighs, inspects, and buys the 500+ TONS of corn and beans every year).
Eric and his truck fetch­ing team leave at 5a.m.also.
 
5:45a.m. team devo­tions with the con­struc­tion crews.
6a.m. Leona Philips, from S. Africa, and the newest mem­ber of our mis­sion­ary staff, opens 3 ware­hous­es where our food is processed and stored.  Mul­ti-task­ing, she shows us her man­age­ment skills as she simul­ta­ne­ous­ly supervises:
1. Barn repairs (ter­mite dam­age to 3 roof­ing sup­port posts)
2. Maize mill grind­ing for our nor­mal Bala­ma food give out
3. Clean­ing out and reor­ga­niz­ing of the con­struc­tion sup­ply warehouses
 
As the ONLY dri­ver left in camp, I’m busy haul­ing the food to our Dis­tri­b­u­tion Cen­ter for the week­ly hand­out to 300+ orphans and wid­ows (along with Lin­da and my Moz. staff) when I receive a Police Sum­mons for 6a.m. (now what?)
I quick­ly orga­nize all the con­struc­tion sup­plies, haul­ing them to the dorm kitchen site, then race down to the police sta­tion (10 min­utes late).
A drunk, who had stolen a door from one of our orphan hous­es the day before, had filed charges against me, say­ing I stole mon­ey and his cell phone from his house while the vil­lage chief was search­ing his home for the miss­ing door on Wed.
We answer the charges with wit­ness­es, and the case is thrown out, but it’s now put me 30 min­utes behind in my work.
 
9a.m. Water well drilling team has com­plet­ed the first water well for the hos­pi­tal, but their drilling super­vi­sor is very ill with malar­ia.  He received treat­ment at the hos­pi­tal, but needs a bed, as these guys sleep in their trucks.  So we put him to bed in our men’s guest house, parked all 3 of their huge drilling trucks, and gave his 6 man team a shady spot to set up camp.
 
10a.m. Fer­nan­do (sto­ry above) shows up with his food injury need­ing a ban­dage change along with sev­er­al oth­er sick orphans. (clin­ic time)
11a.m. Helped Leona com­plete the ware­house clean up by haul­ing off the trash, then had lunch.
2–4pm, busy with con­struc­tion and orga­niz­ing sup­plies for the next day’s work.
4pm, Bean Buy­ing Team returns—Leona gets the men to unload into the barn.
The Water Well Dri­ver is worse, so I called his boss in Nam­pu­la, and Cape­na loads him into his truck and rush­es him to the Mon­tepuez Region­al Hos­pi­tal where they save his life with Qui­nine.  Cape­na gets back at 7pm and we all final­ly get to set­tle down for the night.
 
WATER WELL DRILLING should resume lat­er this week with the Nacac­ca church well, once their driller is strong enough to work.
 
THAT is a “typ­i­cal” day in the life of de Bun­ny and her staff.
 
Bless­ings and thanks for your prayers.  Remem­ber, Eric is on the road till May 14th, so help us keep him covered.
Also, our food buy­ing helpers arrive this Sat­ur­day, so I’ll be off to Pem­ba to fetch them.
(Don Hits­man, MI, and Kay­lan Vollmer­ing, TX fly out Thurs­day from the USA).
 
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Moz. staff