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Monthly Archives: July 2024

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog, July 27, 2024

BUNNY HOPPING TO PEMBA 

Please for­give me for not hav­ing pho­tos this week, but our post-food buy­ing catch-up kept me hop­ping on Mon­day and Tues­day. I’ve been in Bala­ma since April, so it was time to take a 2‑day break on Wednes­day and Thurs­day. Then Fri­day of this week was a pub­lic hol­i­day and I had to attend the cer­e­monies.  Next week, hope­ful­ly things will be more nor­mal (if there is such a thing around here). But at least I will be in Bala­ma the whole week! Thanks for understanding!Below are some inter­est­ing facts which I think you will enjoy knowing.
1. Six­ty-four (64) chil­dren now live in our 7 Fos­ter Care Homes;School age chil­dren = 29 Pre-school­ers = 9  Under 3‑year-olds = 26

2. These chil­dren are cared for by 33 Fos­ter Moth­ers and 9 staff, count­ing me;    

3. Infants in our Milk For­mu­la Pro­gram = approx­i­mate­ly 53 (it changes week­ly);

4. Num­ber of vil­lages we evan­ge­lize each week via the BBC Teams = 42;

5. Orphans we feed in the month­ly Vil­lage Food Give Out = 1,349 in 2 coun­ties;

6. Wid­ows that care for these vil­lage orphans = 573 in 2 coun­ties;

7. We dis­trib­ute approx­i­mate­ly 500 tons of corn, rice, and beans annu­al­ly to decrease mal­nu­tri­tion in these orphaned chil­dren in 2 counties.
I hope these facts about our pro­gram help you bet­ter under­stand the impact we have on the 2 coun­ties we assist.

Thanks to you, all this and much, much more, is pos­si­ble!
BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog, July 20, 2024

JOSEPH PROGRAM GOES INTO OVERDRIVE…

Last week when I thought we were fin­ished buy­ing rice, I received word that Mozam­bique is expect­ing even less rain­fall than we had this year with some areas going into drought! YIKES! That’s why we call this food pro­gram ‘the Joseph Pro­gram’, sav­ing up food for the time of hunger.

The rice crops bare­ly made it to har­vest this year, as the rains were spo­radic and in low­er quan­ti­ty than what we are use too.

So, con­sult­ing our rice donor, he agreed to help us buy more rice so we could stack rice sacks into every cor­ner we could find.

4,800 rice sacks that will feed the hun­gry children.
Our team imme­di­ate­ly dis­trib­uted 1,500 more sacks to the rice grow­ing vil­lages in Bala­ma, mak­ing them very hap­py. This lit­er­al­ly stripped this area of home grown rice. Not just tasty, but very nutri­tious as it nev­er goes through all the pol­ish­ing process that com­mer­cial rice does.

RICE IN THE HULL, God’s nat­ur­al pre­serv­er, allows a per­son to store it for 2 years with­out prob­lems.

Our team relo­cat­ed the Juko Beans and Peanuts into our guest house which is guard­ed, well ven­ti­lat­ed, bur­glar barred, and dry dur­ing the rainy season.

Mov­ing peanuts and Juko beans to their tem­po­rary home in our guest house.
This is only a tem­po­rary relo­ca­tion until we use up some of the food, mak­ing space for these sacks in our main barns.So as you can see from the pho­tos, we are full to the brim with rice sacks!

2nd week of rice buy­ing and stor­age in our largest barn. Love how well they bal­ance 60 kgs or 132 lbs. on their heads. Look! No hands!
HELPING WOMEN THROUGH FOOD BUYING

Many abandoned/widowed women got togeth­er and formed their own rice grow­ing co-op. Grow­ing rice by hand is hard work, so the team approach light­ens the load on everyone.

Wom­en’s Rice Grow­ing Asso­ci­a­tion receiv­ing their reward for a job well done.
Dur­ing our first rice buy­ing, we had to give equal num­ber of sacks to each co-op, which includ­ed the women. Once we learned we could buy more, this woman’s group was the first on the list to receive all the sacks they could fill! These women are quite excit­ed to be earn­ing a bet­ter life through a tal­ent they know well. Their chil­dren will have new clothes, and school mate­ri­als.


CIS TEAM BRINGS GOODIES FOR THE CHILDREN

Cup­cakes and sip­py Yoghurt were the desserts this week, caus­ing lots of excite­ment among our big fam­i­ly of chil­dren!

The high pro­tein meal was deli­cious as usu­al and full of fin­ger foods. The pho­to shows one of our lit­tle ones try­ing to get a bet­ter look at the cup­cakes, as he couldn’t wait his turn to get one!

This par­ty was tru­ly a fun time, with full tum­mies all around!

This wee tyke couldn’t wait to get a cup­cake, so tried to take one from the pan.
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR PRAYERS DURING THIS VERY BUSY TIME!

We are still acci­dent free, and I am so grate­ful this big job of food buy­ing is behind us.

Now onward to help­ing the hun­gry orphans in the vil­lages. Dis­tri­b­u­tion begins in August.

FYI: Baby Alberti­na gained 500 gms (1.1 lbs.) this week! We are so excit­ed about this!

BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog: July 13, 2024

2,800 RICE SACKS STACKED IN 4 DAYS

These last 4 days our team of 70 very pow­er­ful men man­aged to put 2,800+ sacks of rice into our big barn to help avoid hunger for the orphans in the vil­lages.

It may look like chaos on the video, but let me assure you it is “orga­nized chaos”, thank you very much! Each man knows his par­tic­u­lar job in the process, from haul­ing the bags to the scale to be weighed, then mov­ing them to be dou­ble sewed, fol­lowed by putting them on someone’s head to be hauled and stacked inside the barn. 
Orga­nized chaos! Each man knows his job and in real­i­ty, this is tru­ly orga­nized! Click to see them in action:

https://youtube.com/shorts/KUBYAIq0jvM?feature=share
The sewing of the sacks with a very strong cord is nec­es­sary to keep the bags from explod­ing when they are on the bot­tom of a 20 TON stack of rice. The vil­lagers use a sim­ple cord that breaks when too much pres­sure is put on it, mak­ing our “dou­ble sewing” essen­tial to keep the bags closed.

700 bags of rice ready to be weighed at 4:30 a.m.
SO WHAT DID WE DO ON MONDAY?

While our office and 1 of our board mem­bers in Texas were rid­ing out Hur­ri­cane Beryl, a small team of work­ers in Bala­ma were very busy weigh­ing peanuts and Juko beans.

They weighed and stored 120 sacks of Juko Beans, and the final 61 sacks of peanuts need­ed to feed our 64 chil­dren liv­ing in our 7 orphan’s homes for 1 year.

Mon­day weigh-in of peanuts and Juko beans for our children.
FYI: Our office and staff was divine­ly spared any harm, PTL, even though the trees suf­fered loss of many limbs. They were in the path of the EYE of the hur­ri­cane. Thank­ful­ly, none of the fly­ing debris hit any win­dows or vehi­cles! The office did suf­fer a day with­out elec­tric­i­ty, but thank­ful­ly, that area was one of the first to have their pow­er restored! THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WHO PRAYED FOR THEM, KNOWING THAT OUR OFFICE IS SITUATED WEST OF HOUSTON, TX.

Sor­ry to have to keep it short, but duty calls as a set of orphaned twins just arrived, with the fam­i­ly need­ing milk for their new arrivals. 

Alberti­na is gain­ing weight and now plays with her baby toys.
NOTE: Baby Alberti­na has now lost all her ede­ma, and is slow­ly gain­ing weight. She is far from being out of dan­ger for ANY ILLNESS could snatch her from us. Please keep her in your prayers.

BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF

Bush Bunny Brenda Blog July 6, 2024

FRAGILE LITTLE ALBERTINA RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL

After bat­tling 5 weeks in the Bala­ma Hos­pi­tal, Baby Alberti­na has dumped 500gms or 1 lb. of ede­ma caused by ane­mia. She is still very frag­ile, but woke up on Wednes­day and asked for her high pro­tein cere­al! She was hun­gry!

This is tru­ly a mile­stone for Alberti­na who hasn’t said a word since we start­ed car­ing for her in the hos­pi­tal. She now sits inde­pen­dent­ly, and is gain­ing strength dai­ly on her high pro­tein diet of Baby For­mu­la and Hypo cere­al. She is on a 3 hourly feed­ing sched­ule which has done won­ders for her heal­ing. Her lit­tle feet are still a bit swollen from the ane­mia, but that will dis­ap­pear soon with our con­tin­ued high pro­tein diet.

We are just THRILLED to have her home with us! Keep her in your prayers, as she is a long way from what I call “safe” from mal­nu­tri­tion com­pli­ca­tions. Thanks so much!

Home after 32 days in hos­pi­tal. 5.5 kg/12 lbs. at 14 months. She should be twice that weight.
ELEVEN LITTLE ONES LEARNING TO SLIDE 

Get­ting these 3‑to‑5 year old chil­dren to pose for a pho­to is dif­fi­cult, so I tried for the action video instead. All 11 of our lit­tle dis­ci­ples were on our lit­tle slide (as we have a big 16-foot­er for the school kids), so out came the phone to cap­ture them in action. 
This will soon be our largest class. The Lit­tle Dis­ci­ples Class will increase year­ly as our 20+ infants are grow­ing fast. Won’t be long before many of them will be 3 years old and able to par­tic­i­pate in learn­ing Por­tuguese, num­bers, and the alpha­bet, much of it taught through games and songs to make it fun and help them to remem­ber it better.
BABY ESTALESIA LEARNING TO WALK

When I vis­it­ed the Infants in the Leop­ard House, bet­ter known as House # 7, I was amazed to see Estale­sia hold­ing fast to the house wall while a Fos­ter Moth­er watched her attempt to walk. She is learn­ing to bal­ance and walk with­out an adult’s help. I find her inde­pen­dence extra­or­di­nary, as few ven­ture into this phase with­out their mother’s help.

This lit­tle one has had a rough start in life and some thought she wouldn’t make it. Just goes to show what prayer, lov­ing care, and good nutri­tion can accom­plish. These chil­dren belong to JESUS as He sent me here to care for them. I just fol­low His instruc­tions when we have a frag­ile one who needs His heal­ing touch.

Estale­sia using the wall to bal­ance as she walks.
ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE AN ANSWER. THEN DO WHAT THE HOLY SPIRIT TELLS YOU.THOSE ARE THE 2 KEYS THAT BRINGS JOY AND RESULTS FROM OUR LORD JESUS.

BLESSINGS,
BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE
AND THE BALAMA STAFF