Bush Beat Blog

DATE: OCTOBER 24, 2015

20 WATER WELLS BEING REPAIRED THANKS TO MANY GENEROUS HEARTS

Manuel loads the water well parts from the MFA aircraft.

With the help of mul­ti­ple donors, we were able to meet the $1,700 parts bill for the water wells in Melu­co Dis­trict,  pay trans­port costs, AND pro­vide the 3 man team’s food expens­es for 5 days in the bush!  Unknown to me, the “2015 price list” that I quot­ed from was not cor­rect due to the mas­sive for­eign exchange “tur­moil” that took place Oct. 1st.  This caused ALL import­ed parts prices to sky rock­et­ed through­out Mozam­bique in the last few weeks!  (these water well parts are import­ed from India

BUT GOD KNEW THAT, and pro­vid­ed through mul­ti­ple donors to make up the difference!

WE EVEN HAD ENOUGH FUNDS TO BUY 15 EXTRA BASIC REPAIR KITS! 

These are much needed,

as we just received requests to repair ANOTHER 4 WELLS in Bala­ma that that have broken.

Oct. and Novem­ber are the dri­est of the dry months, and our busiest with water wells.

The rub­ber water well rings usu­al­ly only last about a year.

Keeps Manuel and his 2 man team hop­ping for sure!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU to all who gave so gen­er­ous­ly so that more than 40,000 peo­ple can have clean water in the next 2 weeks

BUSH BUNNY AND CREW HOPPED AT FULL SPEED THIS WEEK

Our week jumped out of the start­ing gate on Mon­day with a 4:30a.m. dri­ve for Lay­la and I to Pemba.

Lay­la left for RSA on a com­mer­cial flight, and MAF fetched me in their 6 seater Cess­na for the 1 hr. 20 min. flight to Nam­pu­la City, 7 hours dri­ve to the south of us.

With the water well parts being the pri­or­i­ty, MAF (Mis­sions Avi­a­tion Fel­low­ship) offered Manuel and I a help­ing hand, spar­ing me the long, bumpy, and VERY exhaust­ing  14 hour round trip dri­ve to Nampula. 

Thanks to Steve, our MFA pilot, for these pics from his iphone

Manuel is my “right hand man”, as Eric Dry trained him to be our “handy man”.  Besides main­tain­ing the vehi­cles at our base, he is our WATER WELL FIX IT MAN!  One of the best around, as his “fix it” skills are request­ed by mul­ti­ple dis­tricts each dry season.

He went with me to Nam­pu­la to make sure we received the right parts need­ed to repair the 20 water wells in Melu­co. (Was a good thing, as he dis­cov­ered sev­er­al errors in the order which he corrected.)

MONDAY NIGHT, in  Nampula:

Cape­na, our Bala­ma office man­ag­er, called to say we had a team of orphan­age inspec­tors com­ing from Pem­ba on Wednes­day at 11 a.m.  That meant I had to can­cel all plans for Tues­day shop­ping in Pem­ba, and race to Bala­ma instead of fetch­ing the much need­ed baby for­mu­la, and fab­ric for mak­ing clothes for our orphans.

TUESDAY in Nam­pu­la: Manuel left by taxi at 6:30 a.m. to fetch the water well parts.  At 8:30 a.m., I renewed my pass­port and was ready to go.

MAF was very accom­mo­dat­ing, and had us out of the air­port by 10:30 a.m.   We were back in Pem­ba by 12 NOON and made the 4 hour dri­ve to Bala­ma, arriv­ing before dark!

WEDNESDAY: Our entire Staff showed up ear­ly to help orga­nize the food and equip­ment for the food dis­tri­b­u­tion for the inspec­tors to observe on Thurs­day.  Watch­ing “HOW” we dis­trib­ute the food to the wid­ows was a main item on their agen­da.  They arrived at 11, and we were in meet­ings with them until almost 4pm that after­noon, as they read every detail of our children’s files.   (All was found in order, PTL!)

THURSDAY:  The inspec­tion team left with smiles on their faces, as they were hap­py with our food dis­tri­b­u­tion process.

They want­ed radios in the 2 hous­es of younger chil­dren, so they could lis­ten­ing to music and the news.  (The 8 boys in the dorm have had a radio since day one for this pur­pose.)  They also want­ed more “tra­di­tion­al food” added to their diet, so that cor­rec­tion was made imme­di­ate­ly on their week­ly menus.

Since we cor­rect­ed these prob­lems with­in that same day, the inspec­tors were extreme­ly pleased.

FRIDAY:   2 a.m.  Pas­tor Alber­to, Evangelist/Bible School teacher work­ing with the 830 new con­verts in Namuno Dis­trict, called me to say he was very sick and need­ed imme­di­ate trans­port to the hos­pi­tal.  Our 2nd dri­ver, Gen­i­to, was fetched by bicy­cle by one of my guards, and was on his way to Namuno Dis­trict to fetch him by 4 a.m. (Alber­to is now recov­er­ing at home from a her­nia attack.)

At 5 a.m., I drove to Pem­ba to fetch LAYLA, who received her Res­i­den­cy Visa, AND to pur­chase the much need­ed BABY FORMULA and FABRIC for the children’s clothing.

UNKNOWN TO US, BABY FORMULA PRICES  great­ly increased as it is also import­ed.  Most stores were sold out because the store own­ers don’t have enough mon­ey to buy at the high­er price in RSA.

My 2 man team and I spent 4 hours going to every store and tiny mar­ket stall in Pem­ba, buy­ing up the few cans that each had in stock.

PTL! We man­aged to obtain a 5 week sup­ply (160 cans) for the 32 babies cur­rent­ly in the program!

One of the major importers has promised to save us 15 cas­es when her Novem­ber ship­ment comes in.  For this we are most grateful!

Our mot­to:  We do what it takes to pro­vide for our chil­dren, and QUIT is not in our vocabulary.

Keep your prayers com­ing that the “promised for­mu­la” arrives on time in November.

Nev­er a dull moment around here for sure.

AWANA LEADER SETS ANOTHER NEW RECORD

CARLITOS JORGE AND AMBROSIO, show­ing off new bike and AWANA game mate­ri­als after set­ting new atten­dance record in Mar­i­ca Village.

These 2 are the “dynam­ic duo” when it comes to Children’s Evangelism

Car­l­i­tos Jorge and assis­tant,  “now grown up orphan” Ambro­sio, did their 3 nor­mal AWANA pro­grams in NQUIDE Vil­lage on Saturday.

They then trav­eled on their new motor­bike to MARICA Vil­lage to start a new program.

596 chil­dren and 46 adults attend­ed this meet­ing, with all hear­ing the GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST for the FIRST TIME!

In a vil­lage of 4,000, this is AMAZING!

DE BUNNY is “bushed” after all that hap­pened this week, but it’s amaz­ing to watch as “Jesus’ plan” pro­vid­ed our needs and brought many to know about HIM at the same time.  Per­se­ver­ance and per­sis­tence.  Much need­ed qual­i­ties for all those who serve JESUS, no mat­ter what coun­try you are in.

Bless­ings,

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange

Lay­la Sil­va (hap­py to be “home” again).

  I know some­one is tru­ly “called” to serve when they look for­ward to return­ing to “remote” Balama.

DATE: OCTOBER 10, 2015

425 CHILDREN ATTEND AWANA IN N‑QUIDE VILLAGE

Youth Lead­ers Car­l­i­tos  and Ambro­sio return­ing from N‑Quide Vil­lage.  Set a new record today with 425 chil­dren in atten­dance today.  (3 meet­ings over 4 hour time span).Car­l­i­tos Jorge and his assis­tant, Ambro­sio, (one of our orphans all grown up now), have set up THREE AWANA GAMES sites in the remote, but very large vil­lage of NQUIDE (N‑Qwee-dee).

Trav­el­ing on Car­l­i­tos’ old but faith­ful motor­bike, these 2 young men hold 3 com­plete pro­grams each Sat­ur­day morn­ing in 3 dif­fer­ent areas of this large vil­lage of over 2,500 peo­ple.  Many adults attend also, as the chil­dren are tough com­peti­tors mak­ing the games very excit­ing and LOUD!

Devo­tions with a Bible Les­son fol­lows each com­pe­ti­tion, and many are start­ing to under­stand who Jesus is.  Nquide is an “unreached” vil­lage, so it takes some time to get every­one to know who is God, and why He sent Jesus to be our Saviour.

Pas­toral train­ing with Car­l­i­tos George using a dra­ma­tized sto­ry to illus­trate to our Bala­ma Coun­ty Pas­tors what he learned at the AWANA Con­fer­ence in Mozam­bique ear­li­er this month.

Car­l­i­tos is a very “ani­mat­ed” teacher who uses object lessons and dra­mas to help every­one under­stand the lessons.

Thanks to your prayer and love gifts, Car­l­i­tos and the oth­er 26 AWANA lead­ers are now spread­ing God’s Word in a very real way to over 3,000 peo­ple each week in THREE COUNTIES.

NEW CHURCH STARTED TODAY IN N‑TELE VILLAGE

Pas­tor Gito has been busy evan­ge­liz­ing in N‑Tele (N‑Tell‑y) Vil­lage for almost 6 months now.  He announced at our Sept. 30thPastor’s meet­ing that the church mem­bers had com­plet­ed their grass roofed church area.  Gito invit­ed our youth team to come dance and sing at the inau­gu­ra­tion to help them offi­cial­ly open the church today, Oct. 10th.  So off they went with their key­board, speak­ers, and bat­tery set up to praise the Lord over anoth­er vil­lage com­ing to Christ.

Bala­ma Youth Team off to the inau­gu­ra­tion of the new church in N‑Tele Village.

FOOD GIVE OUTS SPREADING GOD’S LOVE TO MANY HUNGRY PEOPLE

Sep­tem­ber to Decem­ber are the hot, dry months here in north­ern Mozam­bique, which is also known as the “time of hunger”.  Most of our orphans can raise enough food to last up to 6 months of the year, but need help from August to Jan­u­ary when their new­ly plant­ed seeds begin to pro­duce food.  Dur­ing these months, we spend many hours load­ing and unload­ing our 6 and 7 ton trucks at food give outs in 2 coun­ties.  This com­ing Mon­day to Fri­day,  we will load and dis­trib­ute over 30 TONS of dried corn and beans to more than 1,500 orphans and wid­ows in 17 vil­lages in 2 coun­ties.  This means many long hours for our staff, dri­vers, and dis­tri­b­u­tion teams.

Orphan boy help­ing his granny car­ry their food allot­ment to his village.

A wid­owed Granny car­ry­ing her food allot­ment for her­self and the one lit­tle orphan she cares for.

ORPHANS UNLIMITED IS DEDICATED TO THE “HANDS ON” WORK IT TAKES TO FEED CHILDREN BOTH SPIRITUALLY AND PHYSICALLY.

BUT WE CAN ONLY DO THIS BECAUSE YOUR LOVE FOR THESE PEOPLE MAKES IT POSSIBLE.

THANKS FOR HELPING US MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE LIVES OF THESE CHILDREN. 

They are bear­ing fruit, as more and more of them come to Christ, and help lead oth­er chil­dren to know Him also.

LAYLA SILVA JUMPS IN WITH BOTH FEET!

Lay­la has a big heart for serv­ing Jesus.  She has learned more Por­tuguese in this 7 day peri­od than I thought pos­si­ble, and also start­ed teach­ing Eng­lish to our school age and pre-school stu­dents this last Tues­day.  She’s won­der­ful to work with, and a joy to be around, as she loves to laugh and sing.

A mer­ry heart does good like a med­i­cine!  I am very grate­ful that Jesus “spoke to her spir­it”, telling her this is where He want­ed her to serve.

Keep her in your prayers, as she has an intense learning/orientation peri­od ahead in these next 3 months.

Bless­ings,

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange

Lay­la Silva

“Bush Bun­ny” Bren­da Lange

 
LOVE GIFT TO: ORPHANS UNLIMITED in RSA
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(branch code) 011–54515
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