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Monthly Archives: June 2024

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog: June 29, 2024

ALBERTINA SHOWING GREAT IMPROVEMENT!

She is far from being “safe” from mal­nu­tri­tion com­pli­ca­tions, but her face and arms are now free of the ede­ma that plagues severe anemic/ mal­nour­ished chil­dren. The only remain­ing swelling is in her legs and feet. That area is the first to swell and the last swelling to leave. Your prayers are work­ing, as this is a very rapid rate of recov­ery for this frag­ile lit­tle girl.

See­ing her have the strength to sit on her own, is tru­ly awe­some!

Thank you for pray­ing for her.

Amazed that she is strong enough to sit up only 7 days after we start­ed her high pro­tein diet.
ORPHANS IN REMOTE VILLAGE RECEIVE NEW SWEATSHIRTS

With June being unusu­al­ly cold, there was a lack of school age sweat­shirt sizes at the Bala­ma mar­ket. Once we were able to buy last week, our BBC Motor­bike team took the sweat­shirts, along with 2 weeks of food sup­plies to these chil­dren and their 3 elder­ly aunts.

These 3 ded­i­cat­ed aunts, who watch over these orphans so faith­ful­ly, also received sweat­shirts, thanks to your Love Gifts. The 7th of April Vil­lage where they live is eas­i­ly accessed by motor­bikes, where a pick-up truck would strug­gle.

The BBC faith­ful­ly takes food to these 3 fam­i­lies every 14 days. Your Love Gifts make it pos­si­ble for them to go to school as well. 

Orphans and their elder­ly Aunts receive warm sweat­shirts, thanks to you shar­ing your love.
CORN AND RICE BUYING BEGINS JULY 1st

Our 60 man food team will receive, weigh, and store 1,150 sacks of corn next Tues­day and Wednes­day.

Our Vil­lage Pas­tors all received their emp­ty sacks on June 27th, and promised to have them at our barns on July 2nd.

This is only the begin­ning of our July work, as we must receive, weigh, and store over 140 TONS (2,800 sacks) of rice in the hull for the com­ing year.

All this is done so that hun­gry orphans will have food dur­ing the “time of hunger” lat­er in 2024, and into 2025.

YOUR LOVE GIFTS AT WORK, AS WE GO MARCHING INTO JULY TO DEFEAT HUNGER IN ORPHANED CHILDREN. 

BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog: June 22, 2024

CRITICAL NEW ARRIVAL, ALBERTINA

Thir­teen-month-old orphan female, Alberti­na, is the def­i­n­i­tion of neglect and abuse by her grand­moth­er. I per­son­al­ly have nev­er seen a child this bad­ly neglect­ed and mal­nour­ished.

The grand­moth­er dropped her off at the hos­pi­tal 3 weeks ago with malar­ia, and a Hbg (hemo­glo­bin) of only 6. She weighed only 11 lbs./5.7 kg! She should weigh at least dou­ble that!

Her Aunt cared for her while in the hos­pi­tal for the first 10 days, dur­ing which time Alberti­na was giv­en a blood trans­fu­sion, bring­ing her Hbg up to 11, PTL! (above 10 is normal)

Alberti­na, the day we took over her hos­pi­tal care.
On Mon­day, June 17th, the Aunt told the hos­pi­tal staff that she had to get home. Her part­ing words were “give her to Aguas Vivas”. Social Ser­vices called us in a pan­ic, ask­ing if we could accept Alberti­na, and could we send some­one to care for her imme­di­ate­ly.

With­in 30 min­utes we had 2 moth­ers at her bed­side, who took over the care of this super mal­nour­ished infant. When I first saw her, I thought to myself that it is a mir­a­cle she lived this long!Albertina remains crit­i­cal, as her mal­nu­tri­tion is near the point of no return. But as we know, “NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD”.

SHE NEEDS OUR PRAYERS FOR A MIRACLE if she is to survive.THANKS TO A PRAYER PARTNER AND A WONDERFUL FRIEND OF HERS IN OREGON, ALBERTINA ALREADY HAS A SPONSOR. With some med­i­cine and food/milk changes this week, Alberti­na is show­ing slow improve­ment, but she has a long way to go.
THANKING GOD FOR LIZARDS!

As I was walk­ing to my out­door kitchen on Thurs­day, I opened the gate to the fence, AND BARELY MISSED STEPPING ON A SNAKE EATING A LIZARD!

Not sure what kind it was, but the 2.5‑footer was scram­bling to get away from me. My guard quick­ly put it out of its mis­ery with a long bam­boo pole. Very unusu­al to see snakes in June and July, as it is usu­al­ly too cool for them. But it was mid­day, mak­ing it the most like­ly time that one would be on the hunt. Too bad it didn’t get to fin­ish its last meal! I AM VERY GRATEFUL it had a lizard stuffed in its mouth, as my foot was just inch­es from its head, (before I jumped back in sur­prise and yelled for help!) Yeap, even at my age, the old “HOP OUT OF THE WAY” BUNNY hasn’t lost her abil­i­ty to jump!

PRAISE THE LORD FOR LIZARD SACRIFICES!
BBC MOTORBIKE TEAMS TAKING JESUS TO REMOTE AREAS!

I’m very proud of our all our BBC teams who are tak­ing Jesus to remote vil­lages where the gospel is NOT being preached. No church exists in these vil­lages, so the BBC out­door Bible class is the only Jesus info they are receiv­ing. The expan­sion of the team from 2 to 4 bikes has made all this possible.Watch the videos and share in the children’s excite­ment as 2 remote vil­lages learn about our Lord.
Creation being taught to large crowd of new believers.
Cre­ation being taught to large crowd of new believers.
Enthusiastic crowd praising Jesus with hand clap in super remote mud hut village.
Enthu­si­as­tic crowd prais­ing Jesus with hand clap in super remote mud hut village.
Closing prayer after 5 children in middle received Jesus as Lord and Savior.
Clos­ing prayer after 5 chil­dren in mid­dle received Jesus as Lord and Sav­ior.


BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog: June 15, 2024

NEW BICYCLES FOR BALAMA BBC

A BIG BLESSING from a very gen­er­ous donor has pro­vid­ed us with 4 new bicy­cles for the 4‑man BBC team. This team works with the chil­dren who live with­in 5 miles of Bala­ma town. Their old bicy­cles were so worn out from trav­el­ing an esti­mat­ed 1000 miles/1,667km since 2020, that repair­ing them was becom­ing very difficult. 

4 very hap­py chil­dren’s Pastors!
With new wheels, the team left today with big smiles on their faces. These 4 men teach Bible sto­ries to about 400 chil­dren a day, depend­ing on the size of the vil­lages.

A BIG THANK YOU TO OUR BICYCLE DONOR FOR KEEPING THIS TEAM ROLLING!
CORN PROCESSING TEAM TRAVELS TO MELUCO

Load­ing our 7‑ton truck in the cold rain was not a fun task. June and July are the COLD SEASON months in Mozam­bique, with tem­per­a­tures at 50°F/13°C each night and bare­ly hit­ting 70°F/25°C in the day­time. That is VERY COLD for these peo­ple who have lit­tle to no warm cloth­ing, and are used to tem­per­a­tures above 95°F/35°C.

But our team man­aged it on time as the rains slowed to a light driz­zle. The cold months bring occa­sion­al rains, with the rain water feel­ing like it came out of a refrig­er­a­tor! BRRRRR!

Corn team work­ing in a fine driz­zle to cov­er their equip­ment need­ed in Meluco.
Each year, our Melu­co Dis­trict site man­ag­er, Syl­vai, buys 600 sacks of local corn in the Melu­co Dis­trict for the 315 orphans need­ing assis­tance there. That’s about all this area pro­duces that the vil­lagers are will­ing to sell.

Then our 7‑ton truck with its 4‑man team loads up all the equip­ment need­ed, and helps them pre­pare the corn for long-term stor­age in the small ware­house we have there. This is a 4‑day process, as it takes one day of trav­el each way just to get there and back! 

The team spends 2 days orga­niz­ing the corn, and get­ting it prop­er­ly stacked in the ware­house. These 600 sacks will last the orphans through Decem­ber. In the mean­time, our Bala­ma team buys the remain­ing 400 sacks they need for Jan­u­ary to May, stor­ing them in Bala­ma. The 7‑ton truck will trans­port those 400 sacks in 5 loads in Octo­ber and Novem­ber when there is room for them in the Melu­co warehouse.
INFANT ORPHANS KEEP ROLLING IN

Infants who are orphaned just after their birth are allowed to join our INFANT FORMULA PROGRAM spon­sored by a church in New Jer­sey. These infants would per­ish with­out our assis­tance, as one can of milk for­mu­la is way too expen­sive for most fam­i­lies liv­ing in this area.

It is nor­mal to receive 1 or 2 infants each week.  We have two cat­e­gories of fam­i­lies that we assist via the INFANT FORMULA PROGAM:

1.     Orphaned infants who have an Aunt or Granny to care for them.
2.     Moth­ers who didn’t pro­duce breast milk after giv­ing birth.This week we received 2 infants. One from each of these cat­e­gories as shown, below.

Orphaned infant with her Aunt who will now care for her.

New moth­er with­out milk in her breasts.
THANK YOU TO THOSE IN NEW JERSEY WHO GAVE SO THAT THESE INFANTS HAVE A CHANCE AT LIFE.

BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA TEAM

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog: June 8, 2024

JUNE 1st, NATIONAL CHILDREN’S DAY!

Our chil­dren received a spe­cial par­ty on Sat­ur­day, June 1st giv­en by the CIS com­pa­ny.  CIS pro­vides the food to 100’s of work­ers at the Bala­ma Graphite Mine. The chil­dren were blessed with rice and beef tips, chips (French fries), chick­en pieces, coleslaw, and 3 dif­fer­ent desserts!

CIS made a BIG cake just for our chil­dren! That is some­thing that doesn’t hap­pen eas­i­ly in our area. They also pro­vid­ed frozen yogurt pack­ets and cup­cakes!  The chil­dren were ECSTATIC! Watch the videos and pho­tos as the chil­dren enjoy their Children’s Day Par­ty. 

THANK YOU CIS FOR GIVING OUR CHILDREN SUCH GREAT MEMORIES OF THIS YEAR’S CHILDREN’S DAY!

Spe­cial cake says Hap­py June 1st!

Our CIS HOSTESS, BANDE, loved being with the children.
videoNational Children's Day sponsors (CIS) handed out cold yogurt packs. A BIG HIT!
Nation­al Chil­dren’s Day spon­sors (CIS) hand­ed out cold yogurt packs. A BIG HIT!

Fos­ter Moth­er Tina sur­prised every­one by hav­ing match­ing clothes made for all her children.

Mon­i­ca, now 13, looks so beau­ti­ful in her beads and new dress. A seri­ous hole in her heart has slowed her growth, but not her spirit.
ORLENCIA HAS LEARNED TO WALK! 

Orlen­cia, a lit­tle mir­a­cle, is now 16 months old, and hav­ing great fun walk­ing all over the place!

Here’s her sto­ry:
Infant Orlen­cia came to us as a very frag­ile 3‑week-old, weigh­ing bare­ly 5 lbs./2.65kg, YIKES! Her grand­moth­er released her to us on Feb­ru­ary 21, 2023 when she final­ly admit­ted she couldn’t care for this infant.

Orlencia’s birth weight on Jan­u­ary 31, 2023 was 2.9kg/6.3 lbs.  Three weeks lat­er she had dras­ti­cal­ly dropped her weight, even with the milk for­mu­la and train­ing our pro­gram pro­vid­ed the grand­moth­er. This infant was in great dis­tress. With­out report­ing it imme­di­ate­ly to Social Ser­vices, Orlen­cia would have sure­ly died short­ly there­after. 

Thanks to all of you and our team, Orlen­cia is now offi­cial­ly a tod­dler! Walk­ing and bab­bling in her baby lan­guage as oth­ers do her age.  TOGETHER, WE ARE RESCUING AND SAVING GOD’S INFANTS!

ORLENCIA NEEDS A $30/MONTH SPONSOR. Please con­tact me by email if you would like to spon­sor this sparky lit­tle girl.
video
Orlen­cia, final­ly strong enough to walk!
FYI: Food buy­ing will con­tin­ue in late June and all through July. We are wait­ing for the corn and rice to dry prop­er­ly before we begin the 2nd phase of our food buy­ing pro­gram.

BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF