DATE: MARCH 28. 2015

Baby Edna and her fos­ter moth­er are a sweet reminder of ore mot­to, HAND IN HAND WITH THE LEAST OF THESE.

Thank you to all who sup­port these pre­cious lit­tle ones.

To have an effec­tive min­istry on any mis­sion field, means a mis­sion­ary is always open to mul­ti­ple attacks from many avenues.

This week, we had more than our share.

1. Sad­ly, over last week­end, Stephen Miller, decid­ed that Bala­ma was not for him and request­ed to go home.  While I was in Maputo last week, he strug­gled to han­dle the stress of the lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion of a city man in a total­ly iso­lat­ed coun­try set­ting.  Stephen was a great help while he was here as he tru­ly loves the Lord.  My prayer for him is that he finds a place in the USA where he can faith­ful­ly serve the Lord.

Balama’s lack of social life and enter­tain­ment is hard on every­one who comes here.  Some just can­not live in such a qui­et, iso­lat­ed area, where we have to make our own entertainment.

I have had mis­sion­ar­ies from cities with­in Mozam­bique who have ques­tioned how I han­dle the isolation.

My answer after 25 years of “liv­ing it”:

First, you have to be tru­ly called of God, cou­pled with a “spir­it deep commitment/never say QUIT atti­tude”, towards both GOD and the peo­ple He sent you to serve, or you will nev­er make it.

Sec­ond, You have to be a “self-starter”, well-moti­vat­ed, full of per­sis­tence, per­se­ver­ance, and the desire to serve the Lord no mat­ter what is thrown at you.

I had no idea as I waved good­bye to Stephen on Mon­day morn­ing,  that the busy week­end was just a warm-up for what was about to hit.

2. MONDAY:  First acci­dent at our play­ground.  A neigh­bor­hood boy, age 7, fell and broke both bones in his left fore­arm while get­ting out of the sand pit at the foot of the pre-school slide.  I was at the goat pen, 3 miles away in Rovu­ma vil­lage when it hap­pened.  We had 3 men super­vis­ing the chil­dren, as it hap­pened at after­noon activ­i­ty time.

Youth Pas­tor, Car­l­i­tos Jorge, had his motor­bike near­by.  He and guard, Dia­man­ti­no, cra­dled the boy on the motor­bike and took him to the hos­pi­tal. (With all the pot holes in the road, this gave him a smoother ride than I could have done in my King Cab.)

His fore­arm was at a 90 degree angle, so a seri­ous break.  They called me from the hos­pi­tal, so I dropped all and head­ed to the emer­gency room in Bala­ma.  All end­ed well, as the hos­pi­tal staff did a great job of putting the arm straight, and then cast­ing it.  Smart­ed a bit, as no anes­thet­ic is avail­able at our hos­pi­tal, but this young man was super brave and only shed a few yells and tears.

I then took him home, which was “fun”, since this lit­tle one only knew the route “he walked” to get to our play­ground.  We lit­er­al­ly had to take him to our com­pound and then retrace his route to get him home.  Sort of like wind­ing through a rat’s maze, as we snaked our way between mud huts on nar­row roads.

His moth­er is one of the local school teach­ers, and was shocked but most grate­ful for the care we had giv­en her son.  I saw him yes­ter­day run­ning down the road, so it is obvi­ous no bro­ken bones will keep that lit­tle man from hav­ing a good time!

3. TUESDAY:  Our corn grind­ing mill broke down after milling only 4 sacks of corn (still had 14 to go).  The axle in the mill final­ly wore out after 4 years of use and was mak­ing a hor­ri­ble rack­et.   Fast action was need­ed, since we still had about 840kg (1,848 lbs) of corn to mill that was to be dis­trib­uted at Thursday’s food give out.

Cape­na, our office man­ag­er, was out on an errand, and Manuel, our mechan­ic and dri­ver, had just left for our Melu­co orphan­age, 6 hours away.  I called Cape­na, who raced back to fetch the corn, tak­ing it to a local mill he hoped would help us out.  Not all mills will take that much corn at one time, since it means they can­not attend their reg­u­lar cus­tomers.  It takes about 5 hours to mill this much, but God gave us FAVOR, and it was done by late that after­noon.  PRAISE THE LORD!

4. WEDNESDAY:  All was going well until Manuel didn’t return from Melu­co by Noon.  Mul­ti­ple tries to reach him by phone didn’t work.  I was ready to go look­ing for him when he called in.  The TRANSMISSION had gone out on the Land Cruis­er he was dri­ving in a zone where no cell ser­vice exist­ed.  This is the same pick-up he just drove on the 12 day jour­ney to Maputo and back.  He man­aged to find some­one to tow him to Mon­tepuez, the town 30 miles (60 kms) from Bala­ma.  Our mechan­ic there told him to tow the truck back to Bala­ma, for it would take sev­er­al months to find a new trans­mis­sion, and he refused to guard the truck that long.

THANKFULLY, Cape­na was at the Mont­puez bank deposit­ing funds to pay for the water well parts that we bought last week.

Cape­na was dri­ving my Land Cruis­er, and after buy­ing a strong tow rope, was able to tow him to Bala­ma.  Not as easy as you think since a HUGE RAIN STORM com­plete with heavy light­en­ing, flood­ed Balama’s streets as Cape­na and Manuel entered the last 12 miles (20km) of their dri­ve.  They final­ly made it home just before dark.

Eric Dry is try­ing to help us orga­nize a rebuilt trans­mis­sion for the truck.  Not an easy task due to the dis­tance to find parts which are only found in Maputo, 4 days dri­ve away, or South Africa, 5 days dri­ve.   Oth­er chal­lenges are the cost, and the dif­fi­cul­ty of import/export, and trans­port to get such a heavy piece of equip­ment up here.

So the truck will be sit­ting for a while, as we work out a solution.

NOTE:  When my old King Cab’s trans­mis­sion went out 5 years ago, it sat for 8 months, as we tried to get the parts up here for the repairs.

NOTHING IS EASY IN THIS PART OF AFRICA.  That is why “per­sis­tence and per­se­ver­ance” are nec­es­sary traits if you plan to sur­vive the dai­ly chal­lenges of being in mis­sions here.

5. THURSDAY:  Repair­ing the old corn grind­ing mill was not pos­si­ble as it was total­ly worn out, so Manuel found us a new one.  He plans to have it run­ning by Mon­day afternoon.

We were blessed to get 4 years from that mill,  as we mill about 1.5 TONS of corn/week  to feed the 318 orphans and wid­ows whom we serve at each Thursday’s food give out.  This group includes the 25 homes of orphans liv­ing in our spe­cial homes near our mis­sion sta­tion, plus 211 orphans liv­ing with elder­ly grand­moth­ers who can no longer farm, and are total­ly depen­dent on our help to pro­vide for their orphaned grandchildren.

FACT: It is usu­al­ly only the grand­moth­ers who will take in orphaned fam­i­ly mem­bers.   I take my hat off to these women who have tons of love and a big heart for children.

6. FRIDAY:  I was sup­posed to go to Pem­ba to get sup­plies, but I was rude­ly awak­ened at Mid­night with all the symp­toms of malar­ia.  Seems I brought  back more from my Maputo trip than I planned on, since the incu­ba­tion peri­od for malar­ia was just right.

Not the way I planned it, but there was no way I was going anywhere.

I’m total­ly fine 48 hours lat­er as I con­tin­ue the 3 day pack of med­ica­tions that kills it out, as I nev­er delay start­ing treat­ment.  Delay­ing is what caus­es this hor­ri­ble mos­qui­to car­ried dis­ease that presents with “flu type symp­toms topped off with a migraine headache” to pro­long it’s course and cause per­ma­nent organ damage.

These chal­lenges, hit­ting one after the oth­er, seemed over­whelm­ing to me ear­li­er this week, so I hit my knees.

JESUS sent HIS PEACE and ASSURANCE that He will pro­vid­ed all the solu­tions for our chal­lenges.  In years past,  I’ve wit­nessed HIS SOLUTIONS come forth to over­come greater chal­lenges than this.

That is why I call this a FAITH BUILDING WEEK.

Bless­ings and much THANKS to all of you, who faith­ful­ly pray for us through our dai­ly challenges.

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Balama