DIXON JOINS OUR MISSION FAMILY

Dixon became very ill last week with a dead­ly type of amoe­bic dysen­tery. His moth­er is not well her­self, and her weak­ness made it dif­fi­cult for her to walk the 6 miles from her vil­lage to our mis­sion sta­tion to ask for our med­ical help. ONLY BY GOD’S GRACE did Dixon sur­vive 4 days with bloody diar­rhea that should have killed him with­in 1 day! Super­nat­ur­al pro­tec­tion is most evi­dent here, as God’s pro­tec­tive angels sur­round that child, thanks to your many prayers. After a full course of med­ica­tions, Dixon has recov­ered ful­ly and is back to his cheery self again!

The mutu­al deci­sion was made to move the entire fam­i­ly into one of our widow’s homes at our base for close obser­va­tion and pro­tec­tion. With the mother’s unex­plained weight loss and extreme weak­ness, Dixon’s health as well as the lives of his broth­er and sis­ter are at high risk. This week, we will orga­nize a med­ical con­sult for the moth­er to deter­mine what is caus­ing her prob­lem. Please keep her in your prayers.

GIRL’S DORM AWAITS HEALTH INSPECTORS

Eric installed the solar pan­el and bat­tery yes­ter­day, and all that is left is to paint the doors and around the win­dow frames. I’m work­ing with Social Ser­vices and the health inspec­tor in hopes that we can final­ize their inspec­tion this week and actu­al­ly move them in by next week­end. Pray for favour, as the rainy sea­son is upon us and we need to get them into the house before the mud gets too deep!

BOY’S DORM is in the final stages of being paint­ed and the windows/doors being mount­ed. We hope to have them in by Christmas.

NAMARA CHURCH was inau­gu­rat­ed today, as the local mem­bers built it and our car­pen­ters blessed them with the tin roof. NACACCA CHURCH received it’s tin roof last week, so those mem­bers are very hap­py to have a safe place to wor­ship dur­ing the rainy season.

MIRACLE IN NACACCA

Last week, a group of peo­ple from the west­ern part of Nacac­ca came to Pas­tor Sufu’s home ask­ing for help. They’d heard about the heal­ing mir­a­cles that Jesus is doing, and want­ed prayer for a friend who was very ill with a very dis­tend­ed abdomen (pos­si­ble liv­er fail­ure). Pas­tor Sufu went to this man’s home with a large crowd fol­low­ing. He prayed for the man but noth­ing hap­pened at that time. The crowd left. But the next morn­ing, the man was sit­ting up and EATING when he hadn’t been able to do that the day before! The word spread like wild­fire, because every­one thought this man was about to die. He’s mak­ing a rapid recov­ery, and we may not know what was real­ly wrong till we meet the Lord him­self. The WORD WORKS, and I encour­age ALL OF YOU to pray for the sick where ever you encounter them. YOUR HEALTH is irre­place­able. Nev­er take it for grant­ed. I praise God dai­ly for my health and His heal­ing pow­er that can flow through all believ­ers as they pray. My heart’s desire is for a greater anoint­ing so that ALL the sick are healed as we lay hands on and pray for them.

ABOUT OUR TEAM MEMBERS

Eliz­a­beth Rum­ball from Syd­ney, Aus­tralia, has come to assist with our children’s pro­grams for the next 4 weeks. It’s her first Mozam­bique expe­ri­ence, so she is work­ing hard to learn some key Por­tuguese and Makua phras­es. The chil­dren love her and get a big laugh at her attempts as talk­ing to them in their lan­guage. Wel­come aboard, Elizabeth!

Eric Dry will go on hol­i­day to South Africa on Dec. 15th. Keep us all in prayer as “us girls” will have to hold down the fort while he is gone.

MY 2013 SPEAKING TOUR SCHEDULE IS ALMOST COMPLETE If you would like me to speak to a church or group, please con­tact me imme­di­ate­ly as I still have 2 open dates.

Bless­ings!
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma gang

AND THE LAME SHALL WALK!

Rabia (Rah-bee-ah) is 8 years old and had not walked for 5 years due to some kind of ill­ness that affect­ed both her legs. Severe­ly mal­nour­ished and very frail, both her low­er legs were cov­ered with open, infect­ed ulcers. Rabia and her grand­moth­er came to our church last week for the first time. We prayed for her com­plete heal­ing and com­mand­ed life back into her legs. I treat­ed her ulcers with Melaleu­ca oil (which has 5 times the heal­ing pow­er of the Alav­era cac­tus) and gave her antibi­otics as well as a week’s worth of the high pro­tein cere­al, Hypo Pop, for mal­nour­ished children.

TODAY, RABIA SHOCKED ALL OF US BY WALKING TO THE CHURCH AND SHOWING EVERYONE THAT JESUS HAD HEALED HER!!!!!

It was amaz­ing to see her WALKING on legs that were no more than tooth­picks with skin cov­er­ing them. The smile on her face said much more than words ever could. Her grand­moth­er said that 5 days after we prayed for her, she just got up and start­ed walk­ing. Before this, Rabia had to be car­ried everywhere.

BACKPACK CLINIC BRINGING MANY TO CHRIST

I spent over an hour treat­ing the sick after church today, as many are com­ing to seek prayer and med­ical help from the “back­pack clin­ic” that I hold right after the Nama­ra church ser­vice. A teenage boy brought his lit­tle 4 year old broth­er because his moth­er had neglect­ed the lit­tle boys’ severe­ly injured foot for 7 days. A met­al rod had punc­tured the top of his left foot, caus­ing an open wound that was bad­ly infect­ed. How the lit­tle one tol­er­at­ed the pain, was amaz­ing to me. The moth­er couldn’t be found, so the aunt agreed to come with us so the child could be attend­ed at the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal. The lit­tle one needs 7 days of Peni­cillin injec­tions and fre­quent ban­dage changes, so he will be liv­ing with his friend Veron­i­ca (the woman who was healed of the severe­ly burnt foot). These 2 fam­i­lies know each oth­er well, and Veron­i­ca was glad to have them stay with her while the lit­tle one gets the prop­er treatment.

My Christ­mas Wish List includes med­i­cines for my “BACKPACK CLINIC”. This clin­ic is sav­ing many lives each week with med­i­cines that costs pen­nies per treat­ment. A child’s life can be saved for ONE DOLLAR. That is all it cost to treat a child with an infect­ed wound, diarhea, res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion, or an ear ache. $60 buys 1000 tablets of antibi­otics that can save the lives of 65 children.

ROCKET STOVES BLASTING A REPUTATION IN BALAMA

FIVE HOUSES received the Rock­et Stoves last week and more will be built this week. As you read this, Engi­neer Michael Lowe, will be land­ing in Atlanta, after work­ing with our brick lay­ers for the last 3 weeks to deter­mine the best stoves for our needs. He built 2 dif­fer­ent types: large stove for the huge pots need­ed for large groups, and the small­er house­hold stove for families.

Rock­et stoves use less fire­wood and put out very lit­tle smoke in com­par­i­son to nor­mal open fire cook­ing (which is all we could do before learn­ing to build the Rock­et Stoves). The moth­ers LOVE THE STOVES as the food cooks so much faster, mak­ing it eas­i­er to pre­pare and eat a meal with­out hav­ing to wait 2 hours for the beans to cook.

THANK YOU MICHAEL LOWE FOR YOUR HELPING HAND IN BRINGING EFFICIENT COOKING TO OUR WIDOW’S HOMES.

We’d also like to thank our Texas donor who blessed Michael with the funds for this trip. God used Michael in many ways. He told me before he left that he real­ly learned a lot from us too. It was a great learn­ing expe­ri­ence for all of us.

Food Dis­tri­b­u­tions are now com­plet­ed for 2012 and it has rained 2 days this last week. We are hus­tling to com­plete all the con­struc­tion as oil paint doesn’t dry well in damp weath­er. More to come next week, so stay tuned to the Bush Bun­ny Blog for fur­ther development.

FYI: due to a slight­ly faster inter­net ser­vice now in our area, I can now down­load Face­book. I have reac­ti­vat­ed my per­son­al page, so look me up if you want to be friends. Search for bren­da­sue­lange and you will find me.

PRAY FOR SAMANTHA BARNHART, as she will fly out this Wed. and be back in But­ler, PA by Fri­day. SAM has been an awe­some helper over the last 90 days as she assist­ed in the Sept. corn buy­ing as well as coor­di­nat­ed the load­ing of all the truck loads of food that was dis­trib­uted in the last 3 months. Sam assist­ed Leona with the woman’s pro­grams, and helped with many children’s and sports evan­ge­lism pro­grams. We wish her well, and hope God will call her back to us very soon.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma gang

P.S. Per­son­al thanks and bless­ings to all our read­ers who have sent get well mes­sages and prayer sup­port for me while I have been mend­ing from my alter­ca­tion with the rogue vac­u­um clean­er. The road to heal­ing con­tin­ues and God is faith­ful teach­ing us new things dai­ly. Con­tin­ued prayers are appreciated.

The orga­ni­za­tion­al part of the res­cue will be com­plet­ed tomor­row, as our team will coor­di­nate the last 2 vil­lages need­ing food.

On Tues­day, the largest vil­lage with 545 bad­ly mal­nour­ished chil­dren and wid­ows will be giv­en corn, beans, soap, and salt. We plan to serve the 3 largest vil­lages by Thurs­day, as we have a food hand­out to our orphans in Kwe Kwe on Friday.

The 2 small­er vil­lages will be giv­en food next Mon­day. It will be a busy week, no doubt.

So pray for both our food teams as we will load BOTH TRUCKS to make the food hand­outs this week. With 100 bags (7 tons) of corn and 3 tons of beans going to each vil­lage, we can only serve one loca­tion each day.

I’ll be get­ting pho­tos and send­ing those along as soon as Eric gets back from South Africa on Sept. 18th.

MY SUNDAY MORNING was spent get­ting Veron­i­ca, the woman who burned her foot, treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal. Her appoint­ment with the Doc in the ER was 8a.m., but when we arrived, they were out of ster­ile ban­dages. I was asked to return at 10a.m. with her for treatment.

Veron­i­ca’s foot is heal­ing well, with only the toes and a small part of
her foot still in need of heal­ing. Thanks to Samanatha Barn­hardt, who arrived yes­ter­day from But­ler, PA, we received the MUCH NEEDED Sil­vadene Oint­ment that has helped her burns heal
so quick­ly (my sup­ply was almost gone). My sec­re­tary, and all around “girl Fri­day”, Lin­da Fer­gu­son, is the behind the scenes per­son who makes all these pur­chas­es, and gets them to who­ev­er is trav­el­ing our way. I give my heart felt THANKS to both Sam and Lin­da and to YOU, who’s Love Gifts make all this possible.

Veron­i­ca’s sis­ter is back to help care for her for a few days, so we used the time to move them into one of our wid­ow’s hous­es since Veron­i­ca will stay per­ma­nent­ly with us. Her sis­ter is mar­ried and has a fam­i­ly so she can­not give her the sup­port she needs in Nama­ra. Veron­i­ca’s only lit­tle helper is her 5 year old daugh­ter, as her hus­band passed away sev­er­al years ago.

I look for­ward to hear­ing from many of you soon, as I know that sev­er­al church­es are pre­sent­ing our corn need to their members.
THANK YOU for your “Jesus Love” shown through your gen­er­ous giv­ing towards
His Children.

Love and Blessings,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Mozambique

From: brenda@orphansunlimited.org

Sub­ject: Blog, August 26, 2012

Date: August 26, 2012 6:03:38 AM CDT

ORPHANS UNLIMITED HAS A NEW COLORFUL WEBSITE!

LOTS OF PHOTOS

CHECK IT OUT!

www.orphansunlimited.org

REALITY IN MINISTRY, NOT ALWAYS A SUCCESS STORY

Today, we locat­ed Dol­lar’s Mom with her burned arm. She had returned to

her mud hut after run­ning away from the hos­pi­tal where she refused the

oper­a­tion that would have saved her burnt arm and hand.  She has now

devel­oped Gan­grene in her right hand, and the future is very lim­it­ed for

her.  Her hus­band has aban­doned her com­plete­ly, so we found her and her

2 year old son with­out food or hope when we arrived.  Our Pequaria

Pas­tor con­vinced her to go with us for treat­ment, but when we got her to

the hos­pi­tal, she once again refused to allow them to oper­ate.  There is

no hope for her sur­vival with­out the oper­a­tion, and there is noth­ing we

can do but make her com­fort­able for the time she has left.  So we gave

her food and took her back to her mud hut. Tomas,our Pequar­ia Pastor,

will make sure that food is deliv­ered to her, so they won’t go hungry.

Our main con­cern is to help the 2 year old to survive.

Dol­lar will remain with us, and his 2 year old broth­er will probably

join us once he is orphaned.

It is very sad when peo­ple con­tribute to their own death through a lack

of knowl­edge and super­sti­tion.  But it is espe­cial­ly sad when the

chil­dren are the only ones left to suf­fer the trau­ma of being abandoned

and final­ly orphaned.

Keep this fam­i­ly in prayer this week, I’m sur­prised the moth­er could

still func­tion in the con­di­tion she is in.  Our pas­tor is doing his best

to show her the way to eter­nal salvation.

CHURCH IN NAMARA GROWING EACH WEEK

With 30+ adults and 100+ kids today, we had a GREAT church meeting!

New Con­verts includ­ed 19 children/teenagers, and 7 adults.

The men start­ed build­ing their new mud brick church, and a tin roof has

been donat­ed for when the build­ing is complete.

One of today’s new sal­va­tions was a moth­er with a naked baby, and 1 small

tod­dler boy.  She came wear­ing only the ragged remains of a t‑shirt and an

old worn out piece of cloth for a skirt.  I could see every rib bone, as

she is very mal­nour­ished (as are the chil­dren).  Pas­tor Ramadan told me

she has no food in her home and that she is tru­ly one of the poor­est of

all the poor in Nama­ra.  After church, the Pas­tor him­self donat­ed food to

her, and will buy her and the baby some cloths with today’s church

offer­ing of $2.

One thing I can say for sure about this church. The mem­bers have true

“Jesus hearts”, and share what they have with those in need.

We taught them from the begi­in­ing that we must do “what Jesus would do”.

They grabbed that real­i­ty imme­di­ate­ly and have walked in it daily.

Next week, we will go to Nama­ra bear­ing gifts of food and oth­er items

need­ed by this fam­i­ly, and sev­er­al oth­er wid­ows in the church who lack

food.

This is YOUR LOVE GIFTS in action, and it is a plea­sure to be the one able

to deliv­er what you freely give.

BUSH BUNNY TIDBITS:

1. Fati­ma’s house is fin­ished and our trac­tor will head deep into the bush

on Mon­day to fetch 100 4X4 build­ing beams for the new tin roof.  Around

here if you want to build some­thing, you have to con­tract cut­ters to go

cut the trees, and then cut those trees into 4X4’s with 2 man saw.

2.  ZITO is walk­ing bet­ter with his crutch­es, and his 4 leg and arm ulcers

are heal­ing nicely.

3. Lit­tle Cal­ca, the goat who broke his leg, is now walk­ing on all 4’s.

YEAH!  Lots of our Mam­ma goats are lit­er­al­ly wad­dling, as they near their

time to POP OUT new babies in the next few weeks.

3. Baby Dixon, who is fea­tured on our new prayer card, is chub­by and cute

and sit­ting up on his own.  His neck mus­cles are a bit weak but he’s

get­ting stronger by the day. My secre­atry, Lin­da Fer­gu­son, is in the

process of send­ing these mag­ne­tized prayer cards to all our supporters

from 2011 and 2012.

If you are a new prayer part­ner, please noti­fy Lin­da if you do not get

one in the next few weeks. (Reply to the address on this blog).

4. Ele­phant Vil­lage received it’s 2nd food hand­out last Fri­day.  The kids

are all look­ing healthy and hap­py, but that would­n’t be the case without

your help.  The ele­phants once again took most of their har­vest even

though they tried to defend it with fire.  Stand­ing next to a tame

ele­phant is nerve rack­ing enough (as I’ve even rid­den them), BUT fac­ing a

small hun­gry herd with noth­ing but a flam­ming torch TAKES GUTS!  (some

would say insan­i­ty). They are very dis­truc­tive and dead­ly when hungry.

That’s all for this week.

Keep in touch, as I love hear­ing from you and PLEASE check out our new

web­site! You’ll love the “slide show” on the front page.

Bless­ings, BBB and Leona

Eric is still wad­ing through our shop­ping list in South Africa, but will

return to us in mid Sept.

P S

The new web­site is still being per­fect­ed. It will con­tin­ue to change and grow dur­ing the com­ing days. We think you’ll like it. Come pay us a visit.

You can check us out on Face­book too.

NAMARA CHURCH MEETING UPDATE
This group is a real encour­age­ment to me with their true hunger for Christ!
The core group of our “Under the Tree Church” is made up of about 40 teenagers and adults along with 45+ children.
I saw men and women peek­ing over fences from the near­by house, strain­ing to hear what we say.  Some wait till the meet­ing is start­ed, then edge clos­er to see the pic­ture books I show as I tell sto­ries about Jesus.
I love the teach­ing time, but the high­light for me is when we get to pray for the sick and those who desire sal­va­tion.  This always leads to spon­ta­neous teach­ing as dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions arise.

Zito, the boy with the deformed leg, is gain­ing weight and look­ing stronger and very hap­py.  This morn­ing he smiled freely and seemed to real­ly be enjoy­ing the Bible Story.

Veron­i­ca, the woman who’s met­al plate mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared from her leg, walked to the church at a strong, fast pace today.  She seems much hap­pi­er, but asked us to get her a new cook pan, as hers was stolen this week.  Pas­tor Jose will take one to her tomor­row.  Her daugh­ter needs warmer clothes, so that will also be tak­en out tomorrow.

Today, our group was joined by a woman with a very strange infec­tion that affect­ed her entire face and her buttocks.
I have nev­er seen any­thing like it, as her skin has thick­ened in these 2 areas and is cov­ered with open sores.
She was will­ing to go to us to the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal, so we took her straight to the emer­gency room.  I Praise the Lord that their best “tech­ni­ca the med­i­c­i­na” or RN is on duty today.  He took one look and said, I need to hos­pi­tal­ize her.  He would not tell me the name of the dis­ease caus­ing this ill­ness, but as an RN myself, I could tell he rec­og­nized it imme­di­ate­ly.  So I’ll let you know once we find out what it is.

JESUS FILM CRUSADE BEGINS SATURDAY NIGHT
This church is grow­ing steadi­ly, and all the adults are spread­ing the word that we will be show­ing Cam­pus Crusade’s JESUS FILM this Sat­ur­day night in front of the pri­ma­ry school.
Keep us in prayer, as we pre­pare all the equip­ment this week to kick off our 10 day evan­ge­lis­tic cam­paign in the Nama­ra area.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Brenda

INTENSE DAY, WITH MORE PRAYERS ANSWERED

Mis­sions is spelled WORK and this week has been no exception.
With Eric in Pem­ba for 2 days with our out­go­ing vis­i­tors, the work load was non-stop for those of us at the base.

My big chal­lenge on Mon­day was that the maize mill wore out the grind­ing shaft and parts are not avail­able to buy.
Since we mill over 1.5 tons a week to feed 350+ orphans every Thurs­day, our corn had to be quick­ly tak­en to a pub­lic mill.
As Eric was prepar­ing to leave for his Pem­ba trip at noon on Mon­day, his mechan­i­cal genius kicked in, pro­vid­ing a solution.
He took the worn out mill part to a marine machine shop at the port in Pem­ba where all the ships are repaired.
They hope to rebuild the part and have it for us this Wed. when Eric returns to Pem­ba to fetch Dale Mein­derts­ma, arriv­ing from Michigan.

PRAY FOR DALE’S TRIP AS HE FLIES OUT MONDAY, JULY 16TH FOR SOUTH AFRICA.

FRIDAY A VERY WILD DAY
We were noti­fied on Thurs­day after­noon that a SECOND inspec­tion team was in town to con­tin­ue the inspec­tions that team #1 didn’t finish.
This includ­ed us.  Thurs­day night we went to war in the heav­en­lies with prayer, ask­ing the Lord to divert these inspec­tors from Balama.

Stress#1:  6a.m. to 8a.m. found us in a “dust­ing and de=cobwebbing” fren­zy in prepa­ra­tion for a “sur­prise” inspection.
We were told that after a “heat­ed dis­cus­sion” the inspec­tors decid­ed to go else­where, omit­ting Bala­ma from their list.
No doubts that there was divine inter­ven­tion on this one! PHEW! Thank you Jesus!

Stress #2  My goat man­agers called at 6:30a.m. to tell me that a Spit­ting Cobra bit one of my moth­er goats while she slept in the barn Thurs­day night.   The snake tract was very clear in the dirt but the cul­prit wasn’t found.   After 2 days, she is look­ing healthy, although limp­ing on 3 legs. All looks good for her sur­vival. My pas­tors laid hands on her and prayed for her.  God saves ani­mals too!

Stress #3:  Our Con­struc­tion Man­ag­er came to Eric and I ask­ing us to remove a drunk bricklayer’s assis­tant from our work site who refused to go home.  This work­er had hid­den his druken­ness at morn­ing devo­tions, so none of my top staff real­ized he was drunk until the team start­ed work.  Deal­ing with a stub­born, vio­lent drunk is nev­er a pleas­ant ordeal.  The vil­lage chief was present, so he was dis­missed legal­ly.  After 20 min­utes of lis­ten­ing to his crazy rav­ings while he slow­ly stripped off his uni­form and threw it at us, he final­ly left and work con­tin­ued.    Life is nev­er easy when deal­ing with the unsaved, no mat­ter where you live.

Stress #4:  At noon Fri­day,  my favourite baby goat died very rapid­ly after lick­ing a poi­so­nous bug while out with the herd.  (Human babies are not the only ones who put every­thing in their mouth.)  These  poi­so­nous bugs are only found on the grass dur­ing the “morn­ing dew” time and leave as soon as the grass dries up.  Our herders only take the goats out after the grass is dry to avoid this risk.
No one can explain why this 1 bug didn’t hiber­nate once the grass dried up.  This lit­tle female had a rough 3 weeks of life as her mother’s milk wasn’t enough to sus­tain her.  I’d made sev­er­al trips last week­end to give her addi­tion­al milk for­mu­la via a syringe, as she wasn’t able to grasp a “human” baby bot­tle, which was all I had to feed her with.  She had regained her strength this week as the mother’s milk had final­ly come through.  This lit­tle one RAN beside her moth­er that morn­ing as they left the cor­ral (she was always car­ried before).
Curios­i­ty and a freak inci­dent caused her demise, mak­ing all of us very sad.

This has been my week and now I’m off to the Nama­ra church in a few minutes.
Our inter­net keeps kick­ing me off and is non-exis­tend in the after­noons, so I will send an addi­tion­al blog on church hap­pen­ings lat­er today if possible.
Thank you for all your prayers and for shar­ing your love with our kids through your love gifts.
Bless­ings, BBB and the Bala­ma team