BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: MARCH 23, 2019

DEVASTATION BEYOND WORDS

That is the only way to describe the destruc­tion left by Cyclone Idai. An esti­mat­ed 1.7 mil­lion peo­ple are with­out safe homes, food, or safe drink­ing water through­out Cen­tral Mozambique.

There is still no word from our orphan, Fati­ma, who is at busi­ness school south of the Beira area. We are believ­ing she is safe, as her school seems to be out­side the flood zone, but inside the cyclone wind zone. Many of her school mates are from Beira, mak­ing it dou­bly hard on them not know­ing where their fam­i­lies are.

PRAYER NEEDS:  

1. RAPID RECOVERY for those still strand­ed in the flood waters.

2. SAFETY FOR THE RESCUERS risk­ing their lives to save those strand­ed souls.

3. FOOD SUPPLIES TO MULTIPLY, as the aid groups are strug­gling to help everyone.

4. COMMUNICATIONS/ELECTRICITY TEAMS to be able to restore pow­er and phones soon.

The res­cuers are fac­ing mon­u­men­tal tasks try­ing to air­lift or res­cue by small boats, over 13,000 peo­ple still strand­ed in the flood waters this week. It is esti­mat­ed that the “SPRINT PHASE” of the res­cue efforts could con­tin­ue for anoth­er 2 weeks. THE MARATHON PHASE will go on for over a year, for these peo­ple will need food sup­port along with SEEDS to plant so that a har­vest is pos­si­ble in April, 2020.

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO RESPONDED IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE RELEASE OF THIS STORY. YOUR GIFTS ARE HELPING MERCY AIR’S 2 HELICOPTERS SAVE 1000’S OF LIVES. Our goal is to keep them in the air for as long as needed.

Mer­cy Air drop­ping food box­es in iso­lat­ed areas.

Mer­cy Air’s STAFF has adopt­ed an orphan­age destroyed in the storm that host­ed 26 lit­tle boys. Any funds donat­ed for Cyclone Relief that end up not being need­ed for fuel have been des­ig­nat­ed to help them rebuild the orphanage.

THERE IS STILL TIME TO GIVE IF YOU WANT TO HELP! (See our giv­ing instruc­tions at the bot­tom of this blog post.) We will make a 2nd trans­fer to their account in a week’s time for gifts being sent this week.

As long as they have fuel, Mer­cy Air’s 2 heli­copters will go out loaded with food box­es, med­i­cines, and hygiene pack­ets to those in remote areas where no roads exists.

Togeth­er, we are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, one life at a time.

BACK IN BALAMA, OUR CHILDREN ARE SAFE

Thank you for all the emails ask­ing if we are OK. Bala­ma is on HIGH GROUND, about 1,950 ft. (600 meters) above sea level.

1. House #6 con­struc­tion resumed last Mon­day with the erect­ing of the roof. As of today, half the roof is on, but we had to delay the 2nd half due to rainy weath­er. The foun­da­tion of their lunch room and kitchen is now in the ground.

Builders lift­ing truss­es into place.

Roof­ing com­plet­ed on 1st half of house #6.

Foun­da­tion on new kitchen/lunch room begins.

2. Meluco’s bridge has been giv­en a tem­po­rary make-over. Just in time, for our March sup­ply truck leaves next week to take much need­ed items to the  515 orphans we sup­port in that area. My dri­ver is very hap­py, for he does not like shar­ing the back road through the game reserve with the Ele­phants or Baboons.

Bless­ings to all of you, and thanks again for your prayers and gifts that are tru­ly mak­ing a difference.

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

AND THE BALAMA STAFF

FOR THOSE WANTING TO DONATE FOR CYCLONE RELIEF

Please email me if you are able to help. If I know your gift is on its way, I will pull from our emer­gency funds to speed up our help­ing hand. 

Make checks payable to Orphans Unlim­it­ed and please note CYCLONE RELIEF on the memo line of the check.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can donate to us via Pay­Pal at this link and use the pull­down to indi­cate Cyclone Relief.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=NZNS33RBE6Z9Y&source=url

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG, ‑SPECIAL-

DATE: MARCH 20, 2019

URGENT: HELP NEEDED FOR CYCLONE IDAI VICTIMS IN MOZAMBIQUE

Trop­i­cal Cyclone Idai slammed into the coast of Mozam­bique near Beira on Fri­day. Sim­i­lar in strength to a Cat­e­go­ry 3 hur­ri­cane, the storm left wide­spread destruc­tion and com­mu­ni­ties under deep water in an area over 30 miles wide! Hun­dreds of peo­ple are already con­firmed dead and sur­vivors are still strand­ed on rooftops and in trees as the flood­ing has not yet reced­ed.

Our lit­tle Fati­ma is in this area and we have no way of find­ing out how she is because no phone ser­vices exists. All cell tow­ers were dam­aged as well as roads and bridges have been washed away for many miles.

Before and after flood­ing: Peo­ple are strand­ed on rooftops.

Peo­ple gath­er­ing in the high­est areas.

Our Chris­t­ian friends, Mer­cy Air, who depend on dona­tions, are in the area help­ing sur­vivors with their heli­copter and plan to send their 2nd chop­per on Mon­day.

Funds are need­ed imme­di­ate­ly to assist with FUEL for their emer­gency food drops and rooftop res­cues. No gift is too small. 

All love gifts des­ig­nat­ed CYCLONE RELIEF will be sent direct­ly to them to help them with FUEL.

Mer­cy Air mak­ing air drops of food for strand­ed citizens.

Mer­cy Air flight paths mak­ing relief runs on Tuesday.

Food packs have been donat­ed by oth­er groups, but there is no way to get it to those in need except through air drops. These guys are work­ing long hours to get help to those strand­ed in trees, on roof tops, and small islands of land.

The water will not recede for weeks, and no roads exist to the need­i­est areas.

Peo­ple are still strand­ed through­out the area.

Let’s give them a help­ing hand and pray our Fati­ma and her school­mates are safe.

Please email me if you are able to help. If I know your gift is on its way, I will pull from our emer­gency funds to speed up our help­ing hand. 

Make checks payable to Orphans Unlim­it­ed but please note CYCLONE RELIEF on the memo line of the check.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can donate to us via Pay­Pal at this link and use the pull­down to indi­cate Cyclone Relief.

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=NZNS33RBE6Z9Y&source=url

BLESSINGS 
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA 

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: MARCH 16, 2019

JESUINO MAKING GREAT RECOVERY

Many have asked how Jesuino is doing, so here is the latest! 

He’s gain­ing weight rapid­ly, mak­ing his face almost unrec­og­niz­able from his entry pho­to. This shows all of us how lit­tle bod­ies can bounce back when giv­en the opportunity. 

Jesuino upon admis­sion in mid-Jan­u­ary (left) and then in mid-March (right) after much prayer and a high pro­tein diet.

Social Ser­vice mem­bers from Pem­ba and Bala­ma vis­it­ed us yes­ter­day after­noon and were AMAZED at the dif­fer­ence. Great prayer and a high pro­tein diet do won­ders for mal­nour­ished lit­tle bod­ies. He weighed 4 kg (8.8) in mid-Feb­ru­ary when admit­ted to the hos­pi­tal with life threat­en­ing ane­mia. His weight on March 14 was 5.7 kg (12.54 lbs)!  He still has a ways to go before he catch­es up with his age brack­et, as most 1 year olds weigh 12 kg (26 lbs.). 

THANK YOU for your prayers and love gifts which are mak­ing his rapid recov­er a reality.

CYCLONE IDAI (EE-DIE) HITS BEIRA, CAUSING MASSIVE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION

This is the 2nd cyclone (hur­ri­cane) of 2019,  and the STRONGEST to hit the mid­dle of Mozam­bique in the last 10 years accord­ing to Accuweath­er. Winds gust­ing to 240km/hour (120–140 mph) hit Thurs­day night, but PTL, the 8 inch­es of rain they expect­ed it to bring ashore did not materialize.

At least 100 peo­ple lost their lives in Mozam­bique and Malawi.  EVERYONE in the area lost their crops, and many their homes.  Please keep these folks in your prayers, for it will be an intense year of hunger for the sur­vivors with all the crops now destroyed in this huge area.

Eric Dry was sched­uled to leave RSA TODAY with essen­tial sup­plies for our food buy­ing pro­gram not avail­able in our area. His annu­al trip was sched­uled 2 months ago, with no one expect­ing a late cyclone to interfere.

MAF (Mis­sions Avi­a­tion Fel­low­ship), which is called Ambas­sador Avi­a­tion in Mozam­bique, was uncer­tain until late last night if they could fly to meet Eric in Inham­bane next week due to the high winds that they must fly through. Lots of text mes­sages were rac­ing back and forth between Eric, the pilot, and I over the last 3 days. Eric takes vaca­tion time to help us with this trip, so he is on a set schedule.

PTL, the head pilot texted late last night that the flight would be delayed by a day or 2, but it would hap­pen. The MAF crew plan to drop sup­plies for storm vic­tims on their way to fetch our sup­plies.  Thank­ful­ly, Eric orga­nized a 3 day stay so all should work out. 

Please keep Eric and his youngest daugh­ter Chanelle and her 2 chil­dren in your prayers, as they make this life sav­ing trip to help our chil­dren. Stay tuned for “the rest of the sto­ry” next week!

BUSH BUNNY AND CREW TO THE RESCUE! 

Our staff are trained RESCUERS and that includes the 4 legged kind too! When the fran­tic wife of our Bala­ma doc­tor raced into our office to ask us to save her dog, our team went into action.

Her 4 legged friend had fall­en into a 36 ft. (12 meter) deep, open water well the night before and was alive!

She and her guard had searched for over an hour, and final­ly heard him whin­ing from deep with­in this water well. The ground around the well was very soft, so we placed our heavy alu­minum lad­der across it to secure the rope, pro­vid­ing the res­cuers a safe foothold. The Dr.’s house guard, who knows the dog well, brave­ly low­ered him­self to the bot­tom of the well using a stur­dy rope we provided.

Nor­mal­ly, a dog will pan­ic and fight, thus slip­ping out of a sin­gle loop placed around his chest. This young pup seemed to under­stand the sit­u­a­tion, and stayed super calm allow­ing our team to lift him out on the first try. We could not believe he was UNHURT.   He eager­ly greet­ed those he knew and start­ed rolling in the sand to dry off. He had been sit­ting in dirty, chest deep water for at least 16 hours!

Dog as he was pulled out of the well.

Get­ting the guard out was now our major chal­lenge. With the guard assist­ing by using the footholds dug into the side wall of the well, our 4‑man res­cue team lift­ed him out using all the strength they could manage. 

Guard strug­gling to climb last 6 feet out of deep well.

The final 6 feet were very dif­fi­cult, as the dirt crum­bled if the guard touched it. With much help from our team, he final­ly made it out, unharmed. The relief at being out of that hole was very evi­dent on his face!

Guard strug­gles out after a dif­fi­cult 10 minute climb.

THANKS TO OUR TEAM,  this very blessed dog and his fam­i­ly hap­pi­ly walked towards their home to feed a very hun­gry dog!

Our team closed the top of this well to pre­vent fur­ther acci­dents at this site.

BLESSINGS TO ALL OF YOU WHO MAKE THIS PROGRAM POSSIBLE.

We save lives, both great and small, because JESUS loves them all!

UNTIL NEXT WEEK,

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE 

AND THE BALAMA RESCUE STAFF

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: MARCH 9, 2019

BUILDING THE FUTURE CHURCH OF BALAMA

 
Chil­dren are the cen­ter of Jesus’ eye, and He wants ALL chil­dren every­where to know how much he loves Him. I know these num­bers must seem too good to be true, but believe me, these are TRUE HEAD COUNTS.

The largest pop­u­la­tion in Bala­ma is UNDER 15 years age. So it makes sense that the largest group in the church­es will be the chil­dren. This month’s stag­ger­ing report even caught me off guard!
 
BAWANA GAMES: 30,825 CHILDREN/WEEK HEARD GOD’S WORD COUNTY WIDE!!!
SALVATIONS:  22 adults, 19 teenagers, and 24 chil­dren
Note:  Most of the chil­dren in the Bawana Games groups have already prayed to receive Christ into their hearts.
 

Crowds of kids gath­er to hear God’s word

Tug-of-war in the vil­lage takes on new meaning!

All our kids lined up on the soc­cer field for Bawana games.

SCHOOL DAYS ROCK!
 
In Bala­ma, chil­dren are in their class­room only half days. You either enter at 7 a.m. and exit 11:30a.m. or attend the after­noon ses­sion from 12:15pm to 5pm. Chil­dren in grades 5 and up are assigned a Phys­i­cal Edu­ca­tion day which occurs dur­ing the time frame they are not in the class­room. Exam­ple: If a child is in the morn­ing class, then they will have P.E. one after­noon dur­ing each week LEAVING FOUR DAYS for sports and Bawana Games at our mis­sion station.

Kids need to be active to stim­u­late brain growth, thus enhanc­ing their learn­ing capac­i­ty. So we pro­vide plen­ty of activ­i­ties each morn­ing and after­noon at our bas­ket­ball court or soc­cer field.

Our pre-teens learn­ing basketball.

All the younger chil­dren have a 1 hour homework/study time with Pas­tor Jose each day. Jose has com­plet­ed 12th grade, so he tutors the younger chil­dren in Por­tuguese and the more dif­fi­cult school assignments.

Our High School teenagers have study time at our dorm with Pas­tor Arman­do each day. We have a COMPLETE LIBRARY of school books for them to read and take notes from. This study pro­gram worked very well last year, and ALL our high school stu­dents improved their grades.
 

BUSH BUNNY TIDBITS:
 
With the chil­dren all set­tled into school, our lives can con­cen­trate on many chores that keep this mis­sion ticking.

1. Rains are still com­ing night­ly, which has caused us to halt all con­struc­tion at that site due to super mud­dy con­di­tions. We will raise the roof, lit­er­al­ly, as soon as the rain stops falling. It’s a patience game, as the rains should be dimin­ish­ing, but this year weath­er pat­terns have been dif­fer­ent than in the past.
 
2. Brick mak­ing (cin­der blocks) is mov­ing for­ward at max­i­mum capac­i­ty. Our team makes 256 large (28 lb/14kg) bricks dai­ly for house #6 and all its sup­port buildings.

Brick mak­ing for house #6.​

3. Our 6 ton truck, so vital to food buy­ing, now has a new set of front springs. This truck sat idle for FOUR due to the lack of parts.  But thanks to Eric Dry in RSA and friends in the trans­port busi­ness, the parts final­ly arrived last week. Patience is some­thing every­one learns here whether you want too or not.
 
4. Car­pen­ters are hard at work mak­ing doors, win­dows, and kitchen cab­i­nets. Our goal is to have every­thing ready to be mount­ed in House #6 as soon as the roof is on.
 
BECAUSE YOU CARE, OVER 2,000 ORPHANS AND THE WIDOWS WHO CARE FOR THEM, ARE EATING HEALTHY AND THE CHILDREN ARE ABLE TO GO TO SCHOOL.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR JESUS HEART TOWARDS OUR CHILDREN.
 
BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: MARCH 2, 2019

FLOOD CRISIS TAKES OUT 3 BRIDGES NEAR MELUCO ORPHANAGE

Cape­na drove to Melu­co last Mon­day for his annu­al meet­ing with staff and gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Melu­co Dis­trict (coun­ty). Your Love Gifts assist 515 orphans and wid­ows with food, cloth­ing, school mate­ri­als, and build­ing sim­ple mud hut hous­ing in very crit­i­cal situations.

All went well on Mon­day until a mas­sive rain storm hit just as Cape­na fin­ished his meet­ings. I told him to stay the night as the storm would cause slip­pery roads and dan­ger­ous travel.

Lit­tle did we know that this very storm would wash away THREE BRIDGES that link Melu­co town with the main high­way 33 miles (55 km) away. Expect­ing him home by noon on Tues­day, I was SHOCKED when I got an ear­ly morn­ing pho­to from Cape­na show­ing the 1st miss­ing bridge at the edge of town.

Noth­ing remains of the main bridge lead­ing into Melu­co town.

The good news is that the 1 lane game reserve road going out the oth­er side of town was open to small 4 wheel dri­ve trucks. It was a rough 9 hour dri­ve with “BEWARE OF ELEPHANTS” signs post­ed where they love to cross the road.

Cape­na said they did not spot any ele­phants, (PTL!) but that they saw many Baboons with some stand­ing up to 5 ft. (1.5m) tall.

That reserve does like to grow them big! A 5 foot baboon can reveal his 3 to 4 inch “canine teeth”. Dead­ly to any­thing it attacks. They are also known to have 3 times the strength of a STRONG full grown man. 

FYI:  You do not want to meet an ele­phant on a 1 lane MUDDY road, for you have no avenue of escape.  Ele­phants are famous for flip­ping cars with their tusks, or sit­ting on the hood, killing your engine. 

We are tru­ly grate­ful that the Lord Jesus brought Cape­na and assis­tant dri­ver, Mario “Big”,  home safely.

Bala­ma’s main road just after a heavy rain. Slip slid­ing away!

The only dam­age to the truck was a lost license plate on the front. He said they had to dive through 4 deep mud/water holes that cov­ered the road. He thinks it was ripped off as they crossed one of those holes. 

NEVER A DULL MOMENT WHEN JESUS GIVES YOU A BUSH MINISTRY!

9 OF OUR 10 NEW FAMILY MEMBERS NOW BLESSED WITH SPONSORS

The last to need a spon­sor is Momade Alber­to. He’s in 2nd grade at 9 years of age. We all call him Alber­to to avoid con­fu­sion, for we have anoth­er boy named Momade in the same house. 

These 2 boys are great friends now, and I see them help­ing each oth­er car­ry water from our near­by water well to their home. If the Lord places “Alber­to” on your heart, we would all be most grate­ful. He’s a great kid with a beau­ti­ful smile.

Momade Alber­to and his beau­ti­ful smile.

NEW SHIRTS DONATED TO OUR 13 YOUNGEST BOYS

Peter, my friend at the Graphite Mine, has returned for anoth­er year of work at the mine which is just down the road from our mission.

Alex, Leanne, and Peter are avid sup­port­ers of our chil­dren.  They do their best to send cloth­ing and shoes from Aus­tralia each time Peter trav­els back to Bala­ma for his job.

Leanne just blessed our boys with fan­cy new shirts. Alex sent long sleeved shirts for the cold­er weath­er which begins in April. We are most grate­ful for these much need­ed gifts, and for Peter’s will­ing­ness to bring them to us.

13 hap­py boys with new polo shirts for 1st time in their life.

THANKS ALEX and LEANNE, for your recent gifts put big smiles on 13 beau­ti­ful faces!

Bless­ings, 

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange

And the Bala­ma Staff

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: FEBRUARY 23, 2019

Blog is very brief today as BBB’s inter­net is out with just brief moments of con­nec­tion. She did man­age to get us this pho­to of baby Jesuino. He was released from the hos­pi­tal today with a low, but improved, Hbg of 8. He is in a frag­ile con­di­tion, but improv­ing. Please con­tin­ue to pray. They are all so hap­py he is back at home. 

Baby Jesuino in his new baby mos­qui­to-net­ting… or “anti-mozzy net”, as BBB calls it!

Please pray also for the restora­tion of com­mu­ni­ca­tion channels.

Bless­ings, 
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE 
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG-supplement

DATE: FEBRUARY 19, 2019

Just want­ed to send a quick mid-week update and prayer request.

Baby Jesuino con­tin­ues to improve in the hos­pi­tal after his Malar­ia and ane­mia scare last week. How­ev­er, he is in need of a 2nd blood trans­fu­sion today to cor­rect his severe ane­mia. He still has a bat­tle before him, so please con­tin­ue to lift him up in prayer.

Baby Jesuino with two of our fos­ter moth­ers watch­ing over him.

Bless­ings, 
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE 
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: FEBRUARY 16, 2019

BABY JESUINO ALMOST LOST HIS FIGHT FOR LIFE

JESUINO start­ed with a fever late Tues­day night, which devel­oped into full blown malar­ia by Wednes­day morn­ing. Even with oral malar­ia treat­ment, his ema­ci­at­ed body quick­ly lost strength by Thurs­day morn­ing. The malar­ia kills the red blood cells caus­ing severe ANEMIA, the most com­mon killer of post malar­ia babies and young children.

Jesuino before his life threat­en­ing illness.

Ear­ly Thurs­day, I raced him to the emer­gency room, with his con­di­tion dete­ri­o­rat­ing before my eyes. His lab results showed his Hemo­glo­bin had dropped to a crit­i­cal lev­el of 4!!!  Nor­mal is 12 to 14.

With FERVENT PRAYER, he sta­bi­lized in the emer­gency room, but lost con­scious­ness after a short cry when they began his IV. (I was just thank­ing the Lord they found a vein!) With IV malar­ia treat­ment plus IV flu­ids, he slept com­fort­ably as we worked to find a donor with an A+ blood sup­ply. By 3 pm, a blood trans­fu­sion was admin­is­tered, which rapid­ly improved his vital signs.

Fri­day, he looked alert and back to his old self. Eat­ing and grab­bing at what­ev­er came close to his lit­tle hands. By Sat­ur­day, the Doc­tors told us he has devel­oped bronchial pneu­mo­nia, but is respond­ing to treat­ment and eating.

THIS LITTLE GUY IS A TRUE FIGHTER WITH THE KING OF KINGS WATCHING OVER HIM. Few would have sur­vived all that has come against him. Next week’s blog will pro­vide a fur­ther update. Keep him in your prayers, for he’s not out of the woods yet, and may need a 2nd blood transfusion.

WELLNESS DAY FOR OUR OTHER 48 RESIDENT ORPHANS

The Bala­ma Doc­tor made his month­ly vis­it, for it was time to update their med­ical cards, and let the 10 new chil­dren receive their first phys­i­cal.  The babies were not crazy about get­ting vac­cines, but then I’ve nev­er seen any­one who liked shots. Before leav­ing, the Doc­tor declared our chil­dren in good health. PTL!

Each baby was weighed and mea­sured for his growth chart.

Dr. Inter­views each child for health issues.

Baby San­tos in the arms of Anna, our Chil­dren’s Director

UNTIL NEXT WEEK!

BLESSINGS, 

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

AND THE BALAMA STAFF

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: FEBRUARY 9, 2019

SCHOOL DAYS, SCHOOL DAYS, OUR MOMS ARE CELEBRATING SCHOOL DAYS!

Mon­day found our staff busy dis­trib­ut­ing back­packs filled with the appro­pri­ate books, pens, pen­cils, rulers, etc. for each grade lev­el from 1 to 12. The kids are thrilled for it means new school uni­forms and shoes!

Vil­lage orphans receiv­ing school materials.

ALL OF THIS IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE YOU GAVE SO GENEROUSLY. OUR CHILDREN HAVE ALL THE TOOLS NEEDED TO DO THEIR SCHOOL WORK PROPERLY, INCLUDING COMPLETE SETS OF BOOKS FOR THE HIGH SCHOOL KIDS! Note: The 1st to 7th grades receive their school books from the school district.

First day of school! Our teens head­ed to high school.

Zito (mid­dle) and 8 oth­er teens receive school supplies

Most of the chil­dren real­ly do like going to school, but like all fam­i­lies, we have a few lit­tle boys who would pre­fer a full day of recess. With 8 of our 10 newest fam­i­ly mem­bers get­ting to enter the huge Bala­ma Town school sys­tem for the first time, it has been a very busy week  for Cape­na and Pas­tor Arman­do. These 2 men worked hard seek­ing school doc­u­ments so they could trans­fer these 8 new stu­dents from their vil­lage schools to the Bala­ma school.

By Fri­day, the final doc­u­ments were signed and all our 80+ school chil­dren were in their prop­er class­es. PTL!

Pri­ma­ry school stu­dents get­ting uniforms.

BABIES, BABIES, AND MORE BABIES!

Our infant milk for­mu­la pro­gram is expand­ing with 22 babies cur­rent­ly in the pro­gram. Three of those infants entered in the last 2 days.

Late yes­ter­day, Elsa, a 6 week old infant girl was sent to us from the hos­pi­tal, accom­pa­nied by her men­tal­ly chal­lenged moth­er, hus­band, and uncle. When the wife’s breast milk dried up a week ago, her hus­band scraped up mon­ey from all this fam­i­ly mem­bers to buy 1 can of milk and a bot­tle ($6.50 or R85). But as the for­mu­la ran out, the moth­er took the baby into the bush. It took the fam­i­ly 3 days to find her. She was fed on Kool Aid until they got her to us, for that was all they could afford.

The Uncle is well versed in bot­tle feed­ing, so he will teach Elsa’s Grand­moth­er how to prop­er­ly bot­tle feed her.

Baby Elsa in arms of her uncle.

THANKS TO YOUR LOVE GIFTS, THESE 22 BABIES ARE RECEIVING THE ONLY NOURISHMENT THEIR BODIES CAN ABSORB.

BLESSINGS AND MUCH THANKS FOR ALL YOU DO TO HELP THE CHILDREN OF MOZAMBIQUE.

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA 

AND THE BALAMA STAFF

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

DATE: FEBRUARY 2, 2019

EXPECTED 4, RECEIVED 10!!!

Our whirl­wind week start­ing at 8 a.m. Mon­day morn­ing with a call from Balama’s Social Ser­vices Direc­tor. He had a crit­i­cal­ly mal­nour­ished 1 year old orphan boy, (4.3kg) (9.5 lbs), who need­ed imme­di­ate place­ment with us. An hour lat­er he was in our care.

JESUINO UPON ADMISSION, JANUARY 26, 2018.

Sore­ly neglect­ed by his Aunt, lit­tle Jesuino’s (Jez-wee-noo) body could not take much more star­va­tion. In just 5 days of lov­ing care, Jesuino is fill­ing out his sunken cheeks, and allow­ing oth­ers to touch his hand with­out pulling away. He clings to his fos­ter moth­er, Hele­na, for fear she will aban­don him. 

His “aban­don­ment syn­drome” will sub­side as he real­izes food will always be there, and that we will not leave him alone. Hele­na feeds him a very high protein/vitamin cere­al on demand, along with milk for­mu­la, so that we can get max­i­mum calo­ries into his tiny tum­my each day. He also eats “Plumpy Nuts”, a high protein/peanut pack­et made specif­i­cal­ly for mal­nour­ished chil­dren. His 1 week pho­tos show how well he is gain­ing weight.

JESUINO 5 DAYS LATER, SITTING IN LAP OF HIS FOSTER MOTHER, HELENA.

WEDNESDAY WAS A CIRCUS WITH 9 KIDS IN THE RING!

Two fam­i­lies of needy orphans from 2 dif­fer­ent vil­lages moved in, fill­ing our newest home,  VICTORY HOUSE. 13 orphans now call Vic­to­ry House their home.

This means we need to do dou­ble time to com­plete house #6, for we only have 2 girl, and 2 boy beds avail­able out of 5 fos­ter homes. Rainy weath­er, cyclones, and a short­age of bricks has put us behind sched­ule. We are on it!  Mov­ing as fast as weath­er allows.

4 orphans from Kion­ga, ages 5 to 15, were liv­ing with their grand­moth­er, who has her hands full with 5 chil­dren of her own, plus a debil­i­tat­ed hus­band. We placed them in our food pro­gram a month ago, which helped curb their star­va­tion until per­mis­sion was grant­ed by Social Ser­vices to accept them into our family.

KIONGA FAMILY: Clau­sia, 15 years, 8th grade; Alber­to, 10, 1st grade; Dinis, 7, and Egidio, 5, pre-school (2 youngest must learn Por­tuguese to enter 1st grade.) All liv­ing in Vic­to­ry House.

5 orphans from Nacala Vil­lage, who were a CHILD-HEADED HOUSEHOLD (no adult look­ing after them), were doing very poor­ly after their 19 year old Sis­ter was no longer in good health and not able to care for them.  She moved in with her Aunt, leav­ing these kids to fend for them­selves. That left boys 16, 12, 10, 8, and a girl, 5 with huge respon­si­bil­i­ties! Social Ser­vices was noti­fied, and agreed they should come live with us.

NACALA FAMILY: (L TO R) LUCIA, 5, preschool; CASTRO 7, USSENE 8, AND MARIO 12.  ALL IN 3RD GRADE.  All but Mario liv­ing in Vic­to­ry House.

CIPRIANO, 16, 8TH GRADE, AND BROTHER MARIO, 12, 3RD GRADE liv­ing in boy’s dorm for over 12 to 18 year old boys.

The 16 year old boy, Cipri­ano, (Sip-ree-an‑o) has a bril­liant mind, mak­ing straight A’s in 7thgrade.  He tru­ly desires to con­tin­ue his stud­ies, and now lives in our high school dorm along with his 12 year old broth­er, Mario. His 4 broth­ers are also top notch students. 

These chil­dren DEFIED THE ODDS, man­ag­ing to go to school in their vil­lage with NO ADULT look­ing over them. Not many kids would do that! It is time to “let them be kids”, by tak­ing over the adult respon­si­bil­i­ties they have tried so hard to manage.

YOUR LOVE GIFTS AT WORK!

OUR 5 FOSTER HOMES ARE NOW HOME TO 49 ORPHANED OR ABANDONED CHILDREN.

SPONSORS ARE URGENTLY NEEDED FOR EACH OF THESE 10 CHILDREN, AS OUR GENERAL BUDGET WILL NOT SUPPORT THEM FOR LONG . 

$30/MONTH/CHILD is what we need.

Check out their pho­tos, for they are a hand­some group, although slight­ly mal­nour­ished. Please con­tact me via email if you’d like to spon­sor any of the chil­dren in these pho­tos. I will per­son­al­ly send you a close up pho­to of your child and their per­son­al data.

Thank you so very much for lov­ing all these chil­dren that Jesus sent us.

BLESSINGS,

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

AND THE FABULOUS BALAMA STAFF