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Monthly Archives: May 2015

VISITORS ARRIVING SATURDAY, SO BBB OFF TO PEMBA

 

 
FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA”

DATE: MAY 21, 2015
 

 

Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents resid­ing in the state of Texas, Caitlin Pruitt and Abbie Wheel­er fly into Pem­ba for a 6 week “helps” mis­sion that will bring in the 300+TONS of corn need­ed to feed the 2,500 orphans and wid­ows in our care. More about them once they arrive.

BABY SERANA IN THE ARMS OF JESUS

Ser­e­na, the 11 month old baby girl I told you about in last week’s blog, fought brave­ly for her life over last week­end.  She per­son­al­ly met our Lord and Sav­ior, Jesus Christ, just min­utes after I returned from Pem­ba last Sat­ur­day after­noon.   Her fam­i­ly was very grate­ful for our help in try­ing to save her, but it was a very sad ride for all of us as we took her back to hut where she was born.  Pas­tors Fred and Domini­ca trav­eled with us, and explained in Makua that the 3 oth­er chil­dren (all severe­ly mal­nour­ished), were to con­tin­ue receiv­ing food in our Thurs­day give outs.  It was plain to see they were deeply touched by this act of love and kind­ness.  THANKS TO YOUR LOVE GIFTS, we are able to bless those who tru­ly need a blessing.

ZITO OUT OF HOSPITAL AND DOING WELL BACK HOME

Zito received his last antibi­otics on Mon­day morn­ing, and was released at noon.  Manuel took him home in our Land Cruis­er, which is always a fun treat for any child.  He left us with a big smile on his face, as he was thrilled to be going home.   Pas­tor Ramadane will keep a close eye on his sores, and let us know if Zito has fur­ther needs.

BOTH LAND CRUISERS BACK IN SERVICE AFTER MAJOR BREAKDOWNS

Our “green” Land Cruis­er was tak­en in with a bro­ken trans­mis­sion in the mid­dle of April.  The old trans­mis­sion could not be fixed, so a re-built one had to be locat­ed.  I was amazed when the head mechan­ic called me on Mon­day (May 18th) to say it was ready for ser­vice!  4 weeks is a true record in Mozam­bique for such a quick fix of a trans­mis­sion.  Manuel went to Pem­ba Tues­day, May 19,  to bring it home!  FOR THIS WE ARE TRULY GRATEFUL!

BABY VACCINATION WEEK IN BALAMA.  OOPS, OUR TRUCK IS OUT OF COMMISSION!

Our old­est Land Cruis­er, which does most of the local work in Bala­ma, includ­ing help­ing with the Dis­trict (coun­ty) wide vac­ci­na­tion pro­grams  twice a year, was down for the last 2 weeks with dam­aged bear­ings and bro­ken wheel hub seal on the right front tire.  Eric bought the seals in South Africa, and had them flown up by DHL couri­er.  How­ev­er, our pack­age was placed on the wrong plane, and took a slight detour to the wrong city, final­ly arriv­ing last Thurs­day. (7 days lat­er).  This is Africa folks!

Manuel and our Por­tuguese mechan­ic friend in the near­by town of Mon­tepuez, spent all last Fri­day work­ing to fix it.

THANKS TO THEIR HARD WORK, THE TRUCK WAS BACK IN ACTION JUST IN TIME FOR THE MONDAY VACCINATION PROGRAM!

THOUSANDS of babies and tod­dlers will great­ly ben­e­fit from the Vit. A drops, deworm­ing, and oth­er vac­ci­na­tions being giv­en dur­ing this whole week.

We are pleased to be able to help save lives by trans­port­ing the med­ical crews to all the remote vil­lages in the Bala­ma District.

FINAL LICENSING DOCUMENTS NOW ON THEIR WAY TO MAPUTO FOR REVIEW!

The state office feels cer­tain we will be accept­ed for licens­ing this time, as we have passed all inspec­tions this year.

SWITCH IN PLANS FOR MELUCO CORN BUYING TRIP

MANUEL, main mechan­ic and our only long dis­tance dri­ver for the 7 ton truck, called in at 3:30a.m. THURSDAY to say he had just tak­en his wife, 8 months preg­nant, to the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal in labor.  He was sched­uled to pull out at 5a.m. with a load of beans and all the corn buy­ing equip­ment for Syl­vai, the man­ag­er of the Melu­co orphan­age.  Syl­vai and 2 assis­tants will be spend­ing the next 20 days deep in the bush, buy­ing corn for the 515 Melu­co orphans and sleep­ing on top of it (to guard it), until it can be trans­port­ed to our mis­sion sta­tion in Melu­co town.  They hope to acquire up to 36 tons of corn from the only 2 vil­lages that have a crop to sell.

Since Manuel couldn’t dri­ve today, we quick­ly unloaded the 7 ton truck, and placed all that was need­ed into the Green Land Cruis­er.  Office man­ag­er, Cape­na, came to the res­cue, and drove out today at 11a.m. with the load.  Cape­na had gone to the bank in Mon­tepuez to do our month­ly gov­ern­ment paperwork.

So all is well, as he will return on Fri­day, after drop­ping off the much need­ed sup­plies to his broth­er, Sylvai.

NOTE:  As of noon on Thurs­day, Manuel’s wife is still in mild labor, and it is unknown what the out­come of her sit­u­a­tion will be.  Will let you know in my next let­ter.   We are pray­ing for the labor to stop, as a pre-mature baby has lit­tle chance if born in this area.  So far, so good, thanks to Jesus!

Dawn Horg­er will be “Big Boss” on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, along with Nel­son, my now “grown up” spir­i­tu­al­ly adopt­ed son, who is in the 11th grade.  He speaks enough Eng­lish to trans­late for Dawn as needed

RINGED MONGOOSES VISIT BBBRENDA

 Head Mon­goose:  “Hey guys, come on over, the water’s great!

 

  Wife with kids answers:  “Keep your stripes on!  We’re coming!”

Bless­ings,

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange

Dawn Horg­er, Assis­tant Director

“LET THERE BE LIGHT”- PASTORS ABUZZ OVER SOLAR POWER KITS.

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA“DATE: MAY 14, 2015
SOLAR IS GOD’S POWER, THE POWER THAT KEEPS ON GIVING!A Kansas spon­sor is part­ner­ing with our Pas­tors in 3 Dis­tricts so they can afford solar lights and 12 VOLT phone recharg­ers in their homes.

Bala­ma and Melu­co towns have elec­tric­i­ty (some­times), but it costs over $235 (R2,585) min­i­mum to hook up.  That is way out of most people’s budget.

Our mis­sion sta­tion is total­ly solar as God’s pow­er is nev­er end­ing around here, since we live in a very sun­ny area.

Most of our Pas­tors of our 22 church­es live very remote, where no pow­er sources exists, and solar is the only answer.

The solar kits pur­chased local­ly cost $128 (R1,408).

They include a 20 watt solar pan­el, medi­um size bat­tery, with one 12 volt light and a phone recharg­er.  (oth­er lights can be added).

Pas­tor Fred­eri­co with his new solor kit.

This pro­gram has the Pas­tors buzzing with excite­ment.  Many told me they have been sav­ing for months, and had lit­tle hope of get­ting a kit any time soon.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH to our spon­sor and to the Lord for mak­ing lights pos­si­ble for our Pas­tors and their families.

HOSPITAL RUNS KEEP US HOPPING THIS WEEK

On Wed., at 5 a.m., I got a call from our Nama­ra Pas­tor, telling me that ZITO,  our mir­a­cle boy from Nama­ra vil­lage, was very ill and need­ed imme­di­ate trans­port to the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal. I threw a mat­tress in the back of our Land Cruis­er pick-up and by 5:30a.m., Cape­na, our office man­ag­er, was on his way to fetch him.  Zito was diag­nosed with Sep­sis, and had once again bro­ken out in large sores on his back and shoul­ders.  He is doing bet­ter after 24 hours of treat­ment, but will remain in the hos­pi­tal for IV Antibi­otics until Mon­day.  (And yes, he is still walk­ing well!) Quite amaz­ing indeed!

Thurs­day, an 11 month old, severe­ly mal­nour­ished infant was brought in by the fam­i­ly after the moth­er died from a long ill­ness.  This lit­tle girl weighs only (3.5kg) or 7.7 lbs at 11 months of age, as her mother’s ill body pro­duced lit­tle nour­ish­ment for her.  We rushed her to the hos­pi­tal, and she is present­ly fight­ing for her lit­tle life.  One of our fos­ter moth­ers is stay­ing with her, as her father, who is the only liv­ing adult fam­i­ly she has, is not allowed to stay with her in pedi­atrics (women only).

Will keep you post­ed on her progress, as I ful­ly expect this lit­tle one will need to live with us for a while after she is discharged.

Her father has his hands full with 4 oth­er chil­dren, and with­out lots of TLC, her future might be cut short.

Need­less to say, we have had our hands full this week, with both med­ical emer­gen­cies and unex­pect­ed deliv­er­ies of much need­ed supplies.

On Tues­day the 1.5 TONS of Mon­te­ga beans arrived from Nias­sa, Mozam­bi­can state to our West, 2 weeks ahead of schedule!

We are required to feed 2 kinds of beans in the children’s diets, and this PINTO BEAN TYPE is the only oth­er bean avail­able in quantity.

These beans required imme­di­ate sack­ing and stor­ing, so our well trained bean team went to work and had them ful­ly processed in 2 hours on Wed. morning.

Just as we fin­ished stack­ing these beans, our roof­ing beams (4x4’s) arrived (for roof­ing 2 Pastor’s hous­es in a remote vil­lage).  All 200 of them!  Weren’t expect­ing them so soon either.

So need­less to say, Wednes­day was a hec­tic, but blessed day!

I have no idea what God is doing with all these ear­ly deliv­er­ies, so I just THANK YOU, LORD, and appre­ci­ate know­ing we have what is needed.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:

MY MOM AND DAD BOTH RECOVERED AND ARE DOING WELL, thanks to your fer­vent prayers, and great care at the Eagle Lake, TX hos­pi­tal.  Mom was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal on Mon­day, and is doing much bet­ter.  Dad has almost whipped his Res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lem, and has his voice back.

DAWN HORGER, New Assis­tant Direc­tor, NOW HAS RESIDENCY! Yeah!!!!  She is on her way back from Pem­ba as I write this, as she had to spend the day at Immi­gra­tion to achieve this status

Fri­day is my turn, as I have to put in for a renew­al on my 5 year res­i­den­cy sta­tus.  After you have been here 10 years under one orga­ni­za­tion, you are eli­gi­ble to apply for a 5 year renew­al sta­tus vs. the 1 year that all oth­ers have to com­ply with.  I just com­plet­ed my first 5 year renew­al period

Bless­ings and Hugs to all of you!

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange

Dawn Horg­er

BALAMA BEANS IN THE BARN! ALL 100+ TONS

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA”

DATE: MAY 9, 2015
 

TRUCKING IN THE BEANS.

God is so, so good to us, for we made our quo­ta before oth­er buy­ers got to the beans.

 

WEIGHING THE SACKS.

Price went up from last year, but that is to be expect­ed with short sup­ply and BIG demand.

 

SPRAYING AND SACKING THE BEANS FOR STORAGE.

Our team of 63 men man­aged the pro­cess­ing and stor­age in THREE DAYS!  Our team real­ly pulled their weight and did a tremen­dous job

 

STACKING THE BEANS (EACH SACK WEIGHS 132 LBS. ‚OR

(60 KGS).

The pics tell it bet­ter than I can.

BUSH BUNNY TIDBITS

Bean buy­ing “con­sumed” us this week, but we still host­ed 2 sets of INSPECTORS for our hous­es.  One group on Tues­day, who just drove up with­out notice.

They loved our work.  Then the BIGGY—2 health inspec­tors who per­formed the final health inspec­tion for our Nation­al Orphan­age Licensing.

We passed with only a request for a few minor adjust­ments (paint­ing boys and girls sym­bols on the bath­rooms doors), and believe it or not (col­or changes of some of the paint used inside the hous­es.  These men pre­fer white vs. our cheer­ful yel­low, so we must repaint, (not a great col­or for young boys with dirty hands).

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:

My Mom, Con­nie, is back in the hos­pi­tal, and my Dad, Willard, has been sick with a res­pi­ra­to­ry infection/allergies this week.  Mom has mul­ti­ple prob­lems and is very weak.  Progress will be slow.

Prayer is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed for both of them.

Dawn and I are hav­ing a great time work­ing and fel­low­ship­ping togeth­er.  She did a great job as Observer/Guard at the Bean Barn these last 2 days.  (Dawn flew in from South Africa on Thurs­day night, after get­ting her Res­i­den­cy visa).  We only had a few men in our group of 63 who tried to “hide” vs. doing their work.  Dawn’s “eagle eyes” kept every­thing run­ning smoothly.

Some of the men who KNEW I couldn’t have seen them sneak behind the barn, began to think I had eyes in the back of my head!  I didn’t both­er to tell them oth­er­wise. Tee Hee.

Super nice to have a 2nd set of eyes on duty!

BLESSINGS,

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

DAWN HORGER

 

BISHOP CHISALE, AGUAS VIVAS NATIONAL LEADER VISITS BALAMA, MAY 2, 2015

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA“DATE: MAY 2, 2015
BISHOP CHISALE, AGUAS VIVAS NATIONAL LEADER, VISITS BALAMA THIS WEEK 

 NATIONAL PASTORAL TEAM WITH NEW READING GLASSES GIVEN BY U S A DONORS.

NATIONAL PASTORAL TEAM, NATIONAL PASTOR, CHISALE, 3RD FROM LEFT, AND OUR STATE PASTOR FREDERICO, 4TH FROM LFT.
   We had a great time vis­it­ing 3 of our 19 Bala­ma church­es last week­end, meet­ing the chil­dren, and see­ing all we’ve accomplished

Bish­op Chisale was appoint­ed by our Inter­na­tion­al lead­ers who are based in Blan­tyre, Malawi (Liv­ing Waters of Blan­tyre has church­es in 4 countries).

He took office in Jan­u­ary, due to the death of our pre­vi­ous leader, who died of a heart attack last year.  HE SPEAKS ENGLISH, so this is a great plus for Dawn and I, as we now have some­one we can eas­i­ly com­mu­ni­cate with on the nation­al lev­el, (and he has email!)

Since the Bishop’s Por­tuguese and knowl­edge of Moz. is very lim­it­ed, 2 exec­u­tive mem­bers of the nation­al office came with to show him the bus route that leads to Bala­ma.  Takes 3 looong days on pub­lic trans­porta­tion to get from TETE CITY, our nation­al head­quar­ters, to Bala­ma, so it is no easy ride.

 

Got a call from the Bish­op after he arrived home on Wednes­day.    Said he felt like he had FLU!  After a few ques­tions, I quick­ly diag­nosed it wasn’t flu but MALARIA, which he had nev­er expe­ri­enced.  PTL he was able to get the treat­ment need­ed to kill it out, and is now on the road to recovery.

MUSIC MINISTRY MAKES BIG IMPACT ON BALAMA CHURCH

MUSIC TEAM: YOUTH PASTORS BERTINO, KEYBOARD, AND DAUDE, DRUMS.

The YOUTH GROUP spent 5 months work­ing hard at clean­ing farm­ing fields for our neigh­bors and for me.  (hoe­ing by hand)

The GOAL:  buy a key­board for the church.

The church orga­nized a bat­tery set up to pro­vide elec­tric­i­ty for the key­board, and Youth Pas­tors Berti­no and Daude BUILT THE DRUMS from local materials.

Sort of fun­ny to see 3 solar pan­els out­side the front door of the church on Sun­days, but what­ev­er it takes, is our mot­to around here.

Elec­tric­i­ty in this area exists, but the church is not hooked too it yet, as it is more OFF than ON.

I PTL for our YOUTH who are show­ing great matu­ri­ty in doing this on their own, and not expect­ing the church to pro­vide the funds

DAWN HORGER, HEADED TO SOUTH AFRICA ON MONDAY TO ORGANIZE RESIDENCY !!!

DAWN has worked in the south­ern part of Mozam­bique for a total of 18 months in the last 2 years.  When the min­istry lead­ers had to leave due to their children’s health prob­lems, DAWN began look­ing for anoth­er group with­in Moz. to work with.  Her heart is CHILDREN, so she con­tact­ed me, and the doors opened from their for her to join us.

I tru­ly appre­ci­ate her lead­er­ship skills, fun per­son­al­i­ty, matu­ri­ty, and deep under­stand­ing of this cul­ture and how things work in this coun­try.  She has stepped in and tak­en many jobs from my shoul­ders in the last 3 weeks.  Present­ly, she is study­ing Por­tuguese to increase her vocabulary.

An accoun­tant with a Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion Degree, makes her super valu­able, as she has “busi­ness savvy”  that is of great val­ue around here.

So pray for her as she trav­els on Mon­day, May 7th, to get the spe­cial “res­i­den­cy visa” need­ed to stay in this country.

Eric Dry will host her while in RSA.

She is learn­ing our pro­grams at a rapid pace, and will return just in time for the bean sack­ing that will begin May 11th.

It is GREAT hav­ing a per­son here who tru­ly feels “called” to Moz., and who’s heart’s desire is to stay long term.

She real­ly miss­es the cool spring days that her home state Michi­gan is hav­ing right now.  But the cold is com­ing ear­ly to Moz., as our morn­ing temps are down to 59F, (19 C).  We usu­al­ly do not feel these kinds of temps till end of May, so God is chang­ing the sea­son to cool and dry a bit ear­li­er than usual.

RSA is already quite cold, so “Polar Bear” Dawn is ready to go cool off for a few days!

BUSH BEANS A FLOWING!

THE HARVEST MAY BE SMALL, BUT PTL, JESUS IS SENDING IT ALL OUR WAY!

We received our buyer’s license this week, prayed for 100 TONS OF BEANS, and the flood gates opened!

The Mecu­ti area that I told you about last week, sup­plied us with over 40 TONS this week.  (and are now tapped out)

THIS IS A GOD THING, as this area NEVER has beans in any great quantity.

We didn’t got fetch 1 bean!

The vil­lage farm­ers orga­nized local trucks that can car­ry up to 2 tons and brought the beans to us!  Quite a site to see on Wednes­day, as we had 5 small trucks lined up at our gate by 5a.m. wait­ing to unload.  Good thing too, for our larg­er 6 and 7 ton trucks couldn’t get into the areas where the beans were located.

GOD HAS MADE A WAY, WHERE NONE SEEMED POSSIBLE.

Cape­na, our vil­lage food coor­di­na­tor, dis­trib­uted 500 feed sacks this week to sev­er­al vil­lages that have some beans.

Those beans are being sacked as I write this, and we plan to fetch them some­time this week, hop­ing to com­plete the 100 tons.

SUPER THURSDAY ON APRIL 30TH

I was super proud of all our staff and bean team yes­ter­day, as they accom­plished the fol­low­ing simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with only min­i­mal help from Dawn and I.

1.       Dis­trib­uted 2 tons of food to 300+ wid­ows and orphans at our nor­mal Thurs­day food give out.

2.       Weighed, sacked, and stacked 20 TONS OF BEANS (400 sacks that each weigh 120 lbs. or 60Kg).

3.       Cape­na and Fred got all the staff salaries paid by NOON, as the 30th was April pay day.

We have nev­er attempt­ed such a mas­sive pro­gram in 1 day, and I take my hat off to them for mak­ing it happen.

LOVE AND HUGS TO ALL OF YOU FOR MAKING OUR ORPHAN RESCUE PROGRAM POSSIBLE.

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

DAWN HORGER, soon to be Assis­tant Manager