FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: JULY 26, 2014

BUNNY NOTES:

Run­ning to the USA and return­ing after only 8 days made it a wild trip and exhaust­ing trip for sure. But it was good to be able to max out my time with my parent’s, and help them as much as I could while there. My Mom was admit­ted to the Eagle Lake Hos­pi­tal in the mid­dle of the night last Wed. with a 790 blood sug­ar (120 is nor­mal) caused by 2 dif­fer­ent infec­tions in her lungs and blad­der. She is bet­ter after 2 days of intense treat­ments. I want to thank all of you for your prayers, emails, and phone calls for emo­tion­al support.

BALAMA BLAZERS

(my 3 woman mis­sions team) HARD AT WORK BRINGING IN THE FINAL 100 TONS OF CORN My team of Bala­ma Blaz­ers includes : Katie Pol­cyn of Seguin, TX Han­nah Gilman of Vaughn, WA Ash­lynn Gra­bill of Pueblo, CO It is excit­ing to get to know these 3 young ladies, and to watch them work. Noth­ing but the bugs and snakes seems to slow them down. Tee Hee.

This pho­to from our files shows the corn being processed.

Katie and Han­nah are old hands at corn pro­cess­ing after help­ing with the June corn. Ash­lynn was AMAZED to say the least at how mas­sive an oper­a­tion it is to orga­nize a 72 man crew. By the 2nd day, she was flow­ing well with the group, and enjoy­ing our spe­cial break­fast of FRIED BEAN PATTIES made by our cook. These bean pat­ties are a treat we only get dur­ing food buy­ing, and they are delicious.

These young girls share the cron grind­ing chore.

Last week our 2 trucks hauled in 50 tons of corn and the oth­er 50 will roll by July 30th for the grand finale! Then the fun begins as one of our trucks will leave for Melu­co on Wednes­day with sup­plies to dis­trib­ute to our orphans in Melu­co. Busy is our mid­dle name around here.

Hap­py chil­dren enjoy a din­ner of fresh­ly ground cornmeal.

FRIDAY WAS BALAMA DAY A Coun­ty wide hol­i­day only, so the girls and I had a girl’s day out by dri­ving to the town of Mon­tepuez, 30 miles away, to fetch sup­plies for the kids and have lunch at the local café in the park. No ham­burg­ers were pos­si­ble, (we were all great­ly dis­ap­point­ed), so we all set­tled for omelettes with french fries and sal­ad. The local hon­ey bee pop­u­la­tion kept us all enter­tained, as 6 bees con­stant­ly buzzed our heads, and final­ly 1 fell into Katie’s glass of Fan­ta orange. Those bees love any­thing sug­ary for sure! Besides the shop­ping, we had hoped to find HIGH SPEED INTERNET in Mon­tepuez, but were great­ly dis­ap­point­ed since even the cap­i­tal city, Pem­ba, is hav­ing mas­sive inter­net prob­lems. So know that none of us can open FACE BOOK or send/receive pho­tos at this time. I’m using the old slow inter­net from the local Moz. serv­er but it can only send/receive text mes­sages. So feel free to write me a note, as I love get­ting mail from all of you. No one knows how long it will be before the high speed is back. Such is life in the bush.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da And the Bala­ma Blazers

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: JULY 5, 2014

BLIND WIDOW MEETS JESUS BUT HER 4 ORPHANS ARE TAKEN IN BY SISTER WITH 7 OF HER OWN!

God made some women to thrive on car­ing for chil­dren. Juliana is one such woman and I take my hat off to her.

Ali is the tall boy to the far right in the pic­ture above. The three lit­tle girls in front of him are his orphaned sisters.

When her sis­ter died July 1st, leav­ing Ali 15, and his 3 sis­ters (Romin­da 10, Nulu­mile 8, and Toma­sia 5) orphaned, Juliana did “what Jesus would do”, and took them into her fold. Hav­ing lit­tle her­self didn’t’ mat­ter. But JESUS KNEW and we were noti­fied, as they are mem­bers of the Rovu­ma church. Pas­tor Joaguim called me ear­ly last Sun­day a.m., set­ting Katie and Han­na into motion help­ing me gath­er food, blan­kets, grass mats, and larg­er cook­ing pans, which we deliv­ered to her Sun­day Noon. Her mud hut is lit­tle more than a store room with a bed in it, and I was told that her 7 chil­dren sleep hud­dled togeth­er on the dirt floor as they had no grass mats, beds, or blan­kets. At the moment, there is no place for beds in her small mud hut, so a 2nd mud hut is des­per­ate­ly need­ed. Cost $500. That will give them enough room to have beds, and get them off the cold, hard packed dirt floors. I’ve stepped out in faith and have 2 men mak­ing the 1000 mud bricks which are need­ed to build a house. They will be ready in 3 weeks. If God leads you to spon­sor a house or one of these orphans, please drop me a line, as these chil­dren tru­ly need a bet­ter place to sleep. At the moment, they are all crammed into 2 small rooms, sleep­ing on the floor like sar­dines in a can.

WICHITA COMPANY PROVIDES NEW BLANKETS FOR 88 ORPHANS LIVING AT OUR MISSION STATION

THANKS to a VERY gen­er­ous gift, we were able to pur­chase the best blan­kets avail­able in our area.

BALAMA is suf­fer­ing the cold­est “win­ter” in the his­to­ry of it’s being, accord­ing to the “old timers” in this area. Since we have no heat in our homes, my house is a brisk 51 degrees F. (13 C.) INSIDE EACH MORNING with a 10 mph wind blow­ing through the screened win­dows! The peo­ple of this area have only thin cot­ton cloth­ing, and are used to 90 degree F. (31 C.) or high­er temps. Res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es and burns (from being too close to a fire try­ing to get warm) are the most com­mon med­ical prob­lems we see in June and July. The blan­kets allow our chil­dren to sleep warm, which helps to keep them healthy.

GOATS ON GRAIN KEEPS OUR KIDS WELL FED

Goats rel­ish sup­pli­men­tal feed­ing of grain from “split tire” troughs.
Goats are at a pre­mi­um since we now have 1 of only 2 herds in this dis­trict. Since our graz­ing land is hav­ing to sup­port more goats (since last year’s babies now eat), I researched how to SAFELY give then ground corn in the dry months when for­age is lim­it­ed. Our men did a great job of cut­ting up some old nylon tires (with an 8 inch hand held knife and water to help the knife slide bet­ter). The goats each get only a small amount of grain sprin­kled with salt. Ben­e­fits, are health­i­er goats that gain weight quick­ly, and pro­duce a more ten­der meat.

ROCKS IN BUNNY’S FOOD, BREAKS A FILING I’ll be head­ing to South Africa for a quick den­tist appoint­ment on Mon­day, July 7th. Will return with a suit­case full of essen­tial good­ies and YES, I will do my best to eat all the ice cream I can man­age. Tee Hee. It is peak win­ter in the mile high city of Johan­nes­burg where I will be, so this bun­ny is scram­bling to bor­row warm clothes since Bush Bun­nies don’t come with thick fur coats!

God’s Many Bless­ings to all of you, and MUCH THANKS for your FAITHFUL LOVE GIFTS that are so essen­tial to the con­tin­u­a­tion of our child res­cue and evan­ge­lism work.

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange Katie Pol­cyn Han­nah Gilman