MIRACLE HEALING ATTRACTS 80 FAMILIES TO KNOW MORE ABOUT JESUS !

Much fruit is pour­ing forth from the 2 church­es in Namuno Dis­trict, 24 miles (40 km) south of Bala­ma, spon­sored by Hine­ston Taber­na­cle of Hine­ston, LA.  Pas­tor Alber­to, our Evangelist/Teacher and his Pas­toral Trainee, Valen­tine, have been vis­it­ing the 7 local vil­lages for the last 2 months.  They plant­ed the Word of God, watered it faith­ful­ly, and now their work is bear­ing fruit, as 2 of the 7 vil­lages are now build­ing a shade area where they can meet each week.  Both church­es have about 40 fam­i­lies and at least 60 chil­dren in each church.   Pas­tor Alber­to called me on Thurs­day to tell me that a men­tal­ly ill woman in a vil­lage called “25^th of June”, (famous hol­i­day in Moz.), came to her right mind after he prayed for her this week!  This woman was known by every­one in that vil­lage as the “crazy woman”! When peo­ple wit­nessed this heal­ing mir­a­cle, 80 FAMILIES in the vil­lage came to the church to find out more about this Jesus who heals!   Jesus came to seek and save the lost.  His Holy Spir­it is mov­ing with great force through our rur­al areas, and it is a beau­ti­ful site to see.

EATING MORINGA LEAVES BUILDS IMMUNE SYSTEM

Moringa is one of God’s plants with many won­der­ful ben­e­fits.  It stim­u­lates breast milk in lac­tat­ing moth­ers as well as lac­tat­ing goats, it’s a pow­er­ful live­stock feed that keeps goats healthy, and best of all, any­one who eats it dai­ly gains a stronger immune sys­tem.                   I was noti­fied by an Aid orga­ni­za­tion who spe­cial­izes in Moringa, that we should plant imme­di­ate­ly, since a strong immune sys­tem will be need­ed to help us get through any “strange dis­eases” that might come our way.  We already have 800 trees on our prop­er­ty, as they make great fence posts, but decid­ed to plant at least 400 more, so that we’d have plen­ty on hand for all our orphans, wid­ows, and staff. The leaves regen­er­ate con­stant­ly, and the more you pull off, the faster the tree makes fresh ones! Sept to Nov. is Moringa plant­i­ng time for tree limb cut­tings.  Just cut off a branch with a 2 inch (5 cm) or greater diam­e­ter, and stick it in dry ground about 1 ft. (30cm) deep.  The field looks a bit sil­ly until they start to sprout, cause it looks like a field full of odd look­ing fence posts. Many of our Pas­tors have donat­ed their cut­tings, and this week, we cut over 200 limbs off exist­ing trees on our prop­er­ty.  Katie, Ash­lynn, and I are using it in almost all our dish­es, and the very young leaves are deli­cious in sal­ad as well.  I’ve also start­ed teach­ing many vil­lagers and our staff about Moringa and all its ben­e­fits.  Many were shocked to learn it was good for so many things, and said they planned to get their wives to start putting it in their food.  Most of these men have Moringa grow­ing in their yards, as many use it as liv­ing fence posts. God made Moringa to ben­e­fit all of us in Africa, and we THANK HIM FOR IT! Noth­ing like a year round gar­den that grows strong dur­ing the dry season!

12 FOOT SLIDE MOUNT WENT UP TODAY ON 2 STORY PLAYHOUSE

The 2 sto­ry play­house is over 50% com­plet­ed today, as the car­pen­ters mount­ed 2 of the 3 super slide SUPPORT sec­tions with the help of 2 brick lay­ers.  The gal­va­nized met­al sheet­ing that goes over these boards will be added once the major cement work is com­plet­ed.                 This slide drops from 12 feet using the “flat­tened out” mid­dle sec­tion to slow a person’s decent a bit before they land in the sand pit at the base of the slide. It’s the tallest slide in our state and pos­si­bly this coun­try, and sure to give the kids a safe and fun way to enjoy a big thrill as it is 23 feet long.                 All safe­ty mea­sures are being tak­en to pre­vent acci­dents, as the entire 2 sto­ry play­house and the 2 top sec­tions of the slide will be com­plete­ly enclosed in chain link fenc­ing to pre­vent any­one from falling off the plat­form.  Many chil­dren eager­ly watch the builders each day.  Their eyes “say it all”– they can hard­ly wait to try it out! Have to admit, it will be thrill for us adults too!   Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:SEPT. 20, 2014

BUSH BUNNY “WINGED OUT OF THE WAY” BY GUARDIAN ANGELS

The 2nd sto­ry of the Super Play­house reach­es into the tree branch­es of the huge Man­go Tree that shades it. We need­ed to cut off a few branch­es in order to make room for the small roof that will pro­tect the chil­dren and the super slide from falling man­go fruit from Octo­ber to Decem­ber each year. Green man­go fruit is as hard as a base­ball before it ripens. A “goose egg” size knot on your head is the nor­mal, if you get hit by one that drops off due to a big gust of wind.

I was busy tak­ing pho­tos of the men cut­ting the limbs as it was quite a feat for them to chop away at the same branch they were sit­ting on.

When it came to the last and largest branch that had to be removed, the 5 men on the ground ask me for a rope so they would have bet­ter con­trol as the branch fell. We’d already had a small­er branch dam­age one of the 4X4’s on the play­house, and want­ed to avoid any fur­ther damage.

I was well out of the way, or so I thought.

This huge branch snapped off pre­ma­ture­ly with a loud CRACK! My heart jumped for it was not falling as expect­ed, and was head­ed straight for ME!

Argenti­no is cut­ting one of two limbs. His right foot is on the limb that tried to take out The Bunny.

All I remem­ber is piv­ot­ing to jump out of the way, and 2 sec­onds lat­er found myself lay­ing in the dirt with 5 guys grab­bing my arms and drag­ging me to my feet.

THE HUGE TREE BRANCH was lay­ing just inch­es beyond my feet!

THIS IS THE REASON I KNOW IT WAS ANGELS WHO INTERVENED:

I land­ed so soft­ly in the dirt that I was with­out pain, scratch­es, or bruis­es, which is not pos­si­ble with­out super­nat­ur­al inter­ven­tion. I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of how I got where I did, because it was over 12 feet from where I’d been stand­ing. There were NO foot­prints in the dirt between the spot I piv­ot­ed and the spot I landed.

The men said I just flew through the air with this huge branch actu­al­ly piv­ot­ing on it’s point so that it FOLLOWED ME!

My crew were total­ly ter­ri­fied, as it looked like I would sure­ly be crushed by the limb. After I was on my feet, one of the men had to sit down before he faint­ed! He said he couldn’t believe I was OK.

After a few laughs, they cut that huge limb into pieces, and removed it from the playground.

It was too heavy for even 5 men to lift it.

I’m very, very grate­ful to be alive, and I thank Jesus, the Holy Spir­it, and God’s Angels for “lift­ing me” out of harm’s way.

2 MAN TEAM OFF TO REPAIR 15 WATER WELLS IN MELUCO

In mid-August, I was noti­fied by the offi­cials in Melu­co Coun­ty that 15 of their wells need­ed repairs.

The list of parts need­ed to repair them was staggering!

Thanks to a gen­er­ous gift by Wayne K. of But­ler, PA, lit­er­al­ly 1000’s of peo­ple will have access to clean water by next week.

Manuel and Mario, our 2 man “water well fix-it team” will leave ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing, spend­ing 3 days repair­ing water wells in the super dry Melu­co Dis­trict where 515 of our orphans live. A few of these wells are ones we drilled, but most have been around for years, and their main parts are total­ly worn out.

Each year, over $3,000 is need­ed in repair parts to main­tain these hand pump Afridec wells. Thanks to the drilling com­pa­ny who sells us the parts, we can stretch this gift even fur­ther this year, as they gave us a dis­count because we bought in bulk.

Manuel and I orga­nized and repacked this table full of water well parts last Thursday.

Life can­not exist with­out clean water. Repair­ing exist­ing wells is the fastest way to bring LIFE and HEALTH back to a vil­lage in need.

ASHLYNN GOT HER RESIDENCY! PTL!

Paper­work was filed and REJECTED on Thurs­day, “bum­mer”, because unknown to us, the word­ing had been changed for the request let­ter since we filed Katie’s paper­work last month. Thanks to coop­er­a­tion in Bala­ma, the cor­rect doc­u­ment was orga­nized late that same after­noon, so they could return to Pem­ba on Fri­day to file the new­ly word­ed paperwork.

CLOTHNG GIVE OUT BEGINS THIS WEEK

Katie and Ash­lynn are hav­ing fun prepar­ing new clothes for the orphans in our care.

As I write this, Katie and Ash­lynn are hard at work fill­ing plas­tic sacks with the right size cloth­ing for the orphans in each vil­lage. While Manuel goes to Melu­co ear­ly Mon­day, Capena’s team will hand out food in 3 loca­tions between Mon­day and Tues­day. Each of those 340 orphans will receive a new set of clothes made at our sewing cen­ter here at our mis­sion station.

On Mon­day, BBB will keep the “home fire” burn­ing. Mon­day is corn milling and rice hulling day. Some­body has to stay behind and get it done. Beats bounc­ing on rough roads for sure! So even before the sun comes up, our teams will hit the road!

Keep your prayers cov­er­ing us, for we have lots of food to move in the next few months.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da (now hop­ping high­er than ever!) Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:SEPT. 9, 2014

ZITO IS WALKING!!!!

Zito, now 13 years old, has been in a wheel­chair for 5 years after a soc­cer acci­dent crip­pled him with a frac­tured femur at 8 years of age.

It was not set well since no doc­tors exist­ed in this Dis­trict at that time, caus­ing it to heal very crooked. He was unable to straight­en his left leg. When we met Zito 4 years ago, he was severe­ly ane­mic, suf­fer­ing from staph boils, and extreme­ly mal­nour­ished. It has been a long road to this point, as his body didn’t seem to want to cor­rect the ane­mia even with vit­a­mins, a high pro­tein diet, and Hypo (super high pro­tein instant cere­al packed with many vit­a­mins for mal­nour­ished chil­dren). PERSISTENCE is the name of the game with Zito!

We prayed for his heal­ing but noth­ing hap­pened, until I got a vis­it from his Pas­tor yes­ter­day. Pas­tor Ramadan raced to my house after church on his motor­bike to tell me that ZITO had WALKED the length of the church in front of every­one! It was too late to go out to his home yes­ter­day after­noon, as it is 8 miles into the bush, so the Bala­ma Blaz­ers and I went out today to see for ourselves.

Pas­tor Ramadan inter­pret­ed Zito’s sto­ry of what made the sud­den change in his legs.

Zito stat­ed that he woke up one morn­ing last week and just “KNEW” that he could walk. He told no one, not even his moth­er, and after she left to go fetch water, he tried his legs AND THEY WORKED! He couldn’t man­age to take more than a few steps at first, but said that after a few days, he could walk from their house to their cook­ing room (about 25 feet/8 meters). On Sat­ur­day he told his moth­er, who didn’t believe him! She demand­ed to see it for her­self. ZITO WALKED for her and then for the entire church yes­ter­day (Sept. 7th).

Today when we arrived, he was more than eager to show us that he is get­ting stronger and able to walk a good dis­tance. His left knee remains bent from con­stric­tures, as that is the way his leg healed, but he is walk­ing on it with­out pain! He also states that the pain he use to have in his good leg has also gone away. He nev­er walked on the crutch­es we gave him because weight bear­ing on his good leg was too painful.

It’s not a per­fect healing–YET! But watch­ing him walk tells me that there is more to come as he exer­cis­es, for I can see that his bent left knee looks to be straight­en­ing out more and more with each step. His entire body is stronger than I’ve seen it in the entire 4 years I’ve known him, and his ane­mia is almost gone.

For the first time, I saw a true smile in his face, as I told him how proud I am of him.

He rarely smiles, but that lit­tle grin told me our boy Zito is on the mend!

Jesus gave Zito the “go ahead” and now that lit­tle boy is mov­ing out with every ounce of strength he has.

THANK YOU JESUS!

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Balama