FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: OCTOBER 25, 2014

TRAIN THEM UP AND SEND THEM OUT 2 BY 2

Pas­tors with their new AWANA materials

Final train­ing was held on Wed., Oct. 22 for the 6 new AWANA lead­ers who are part of our Pas­toral team. They will join the 4 expe­ri­enced Pas­tors on our team who have been hold­ing AWANA Games/Bible stud­ies for chil­dren since last year. GOAL: To teach the 80,000+ chil­dren in 28 vil­lages, all about God, his cre­ation, and the why he sent Jesus to show us “God’s path”. It is a big task, but noth­ing is too dif­fi­cult for those who love Christ and have a pas­sion to reach the lost. Thanks to a gen­er­ous donor, the AWANA lessons are now in PORTUGUESE, mak­ing this out­reach much eas­i­er for all of us.

COLORING PAGES HELP VILLAGE CHILDREN LEARN BIBLE STORIES

Ash­lynn, Nel­son, and Katie show us exam­ples of their col­or­ing skills as they pre­pare for the AWANA Teams.
The Bala­ma Blaz­ers, (Katie and Ash­lynn), as well as Youth Leader Nel­son, and I, kept very busy last week by col­or­ing 15 sets of the Sto­ry of Cre­ation for our AWANA Games teams. It took us 3 days (in our spare time) to col­or these 75 pages, and it was a joy doing it. The Pas­tors and vil­lage chil­dren tru­ly love the pic­tures, as they are a great visu­al teach­ing tool. You may not real­ize it, but most of these chil­dren have nev­er seen a book or pic­ture of ANY KIND. See­ing full col­or pic­tures that shows them what we are talk­ing about, helps them grasp the sto­ries and “make them more real”. We will con­tin­ue to col­or more Bible sto­ries as they are need­ed to go along with the AWANA lessons.

SATURDAY EMERGENCY

Our Old­est Pas­tor lives in Kpwee­t­oo (Kah-pwee-too). An fran­tic phone call was received from him at 10a.m. today after he stepped onto a “can­na stalk” while hoe­ing in his field this morn­ing. Equiv­a­lent to putting an ice pick through your foot. The Can­na entered just under his ankle bone and went sev­er­al inch­es up the inside of his leg. A BIG OWWEE! PTL FOR CELL PHONES, or it would have been hours before he we would know he need­ed a ride to the hos­pi­tal. Bala­ma Hos­pi­tal did their best to clean it out, but part of the shaft might still be inside his leg. Time will tell. A peni­cillin injec­tion, and Ibupro­fen with Tylenol is about the best they could do for pain relief. We quick­ly orga­nized 2 beds and a room in one of our hous­es. A friend of his will stay with him to do the fetch­ing and help him with essen­tials. Doing what needs to be done to help those in need. That is what we do best.

Pastor Kpweeto in bed after hospital treated and released him.

2 STORY TREE HOUSE CONSTRUCTION IN FINAL STAGE

The roof is on the tree house, and final cement “plas­ter­ing” is in progress on the con­crete pillars.

Then it’s paint, paint, paint, before the final stage, which is to mount the 3 met­al slide sheets onto the super slide mounts. Each day the chil­dren eager­ly watch our brick lay­ers and car­pen­ters work­ing at a fast pace to com­plete the “SUPER SLIDE”. With the rainy sea­son approach­ing (Nov. 15th), we are work­ing hard to com­plete the slide, and get the final loads of corn and beans out to the orphans and wid­ows in the 21 remote vil­lages before mud­dy roads pro­hib­it our trucks from enter­ing those areas.

Bless­ings and thanks to all of you for your prayers and love gifts that are mak­ing it pos­si­ble to take the love of Jesus to the chil­dren in this area.

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: OCTOBER 18, 2014

BUILDING THAT “FLIPPED IT’S LID”, BACK TOGETHER IN 4 DAYS

If it had to hap­pen, then the tim­ing was per­fect, since elec­tions had shut down all schools, includ­ing our pre-school, for this entire week Our mas­ter car­pen­ters and brick lay­ers had it rebuilt by Fri­day, PTL!

Pre-school will open on sched­ule on Mon­day, the 20th.

BABY DANIEL NEEDS A SPONSOR

Three and a half month old Daniel, total­ly signed over to us by his fam­i­ly last month, is now eat­ing rice cere­al and the high pro­tein Hypo Pop!.PTL, as his fero­cious appetite was con­sum­ing 3 cans of for­mu­la a week!

His spon­sor­ship can now be low­ered from $60 to $40/month, since his for­mu­la con­sump­tion is now only 2 cans/week. Daniel is ours for the rais­ing, and a $40/month for­mu­la spon­sor is need­ed for the next 6 months.

His atti­tude is very “up beat” and charm­ing for sure, as he has not only the moth­ers and orphan girls fight­ing to hold him, but the BOYS TOO!

AWANA IN PORTUGUESE HERE, LAUNCHING 18 TEAMS THIS WEDNESDAY

OUR GOAL: REACH THE 80,000+ CHILDREN IN BALAMA DISTRICT WITH THE STORY OF JESUS

Pas­tors bicy­cled in from all over Bala­ma Dis­trict on Oct. 8th for a Youth Con­fer­ence which taught them how to lead Awana games and teach the AWANA cur­ricu­lum. After many months of trans­la­tion work by AWANA INTERNATIONAL, the train­ing man­u­al and 22 lessons are ready to go.

The bal­ance of the 66 lessons are to follow.

On Oct. 22, we will launch 18 teams who will begin telling God’s sto­ry of Cre­ation to large num­bers of chil­dren through­out Bala­ma District.

This is the LARGEST EVANGELISTIC OUTREACH we’ve ever attempt­ed, and our lead­ers are in it for the long haul. Train­ing up a child to tru­ly know the heart of Jesus takes time.

Jesus sent us to seek and save the lost, and the joy I feel to see the fruit from 15 years in Bala­ma, has my heart soar­ing! For the 1st time, we have enough TRAINED PASTORS to han­dle the task at hand. We are cur­rent­ly train­ing lead­ers who are called to this task in both Melu­co and Namuno Coun­ties. Once trained, they also will be equipped to reach the mul­ti­tudes of chil­dren in their areas.

ORPHANS UNLIMITED REACHING OUT TO THE AN “UNLIMITED” NUMBER OF CHILDREN. THAT ‘S “JESUS’ WAY”.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:SEPT. 13, 2014

TWO STORY SUPER PLAYHOUSE AND SLIDE 60% DONE

With the help of our 4 man car­pen­try crew and the 5 man brick­lay­er team, today, we accom­plished the following:

1. Put in the 2nd sto­ry slat­ted floor (4X4 wood­en beams) of the 2 sto­ry play­house. 2. Built and mount­ed the 3.5 ft. wide (1.2m) lad­der that reach­es from the con­crete 1st floor to the wood­en 2nd floor. 3. Poured the 2nd set of 5 ft. (1.5m) pil­lars to sup­port the 2nd of the 3 sec­tions of the super slide.

Still much to do, but it’s com­ing along. Pro­ject­ed com­ple­tion is ear­ly October.

While I was busy play­ing mon­key with our car­pen­ters in the new play­house today, Katie and Ash­lynn were hav­ing a total­ly cul­tur­al break­fast of boiled sweet pota­toes with the dorm boys.

Katie and Ash­lynn are real­ly get­ting into the local cul­ture as well as work­ing hard to learn Por­tuguese and com­mon phras­es in Makua. The 3 of us had an excit­ing soc­cer game with 20 of the local boys yes­ter­day after­noon. As the old­est, I got to be the ref­er­ee and was hap­py to do it. Katie and Ash had to work hard to keep up with those fast mov­ing young men.

AWANA GAMES NOW AVAILABLE IN PORTUGUESE! PTL!

We extend a heart­felt THANKS to those who made this trans­la­tion of AWANA GAME LESSONS INTO PORTUGUESE. We are the first to receive it!

The down­side is we will have to wait a few weeks before we can use it, but that actu­al­ly gives us the time need­ed to print it out for use in our train­ing ses­sions that are sched­uled for next week.

Why the delay?

Mozam­bique Nation­al elec­tions for their next Pres­i­dent are Octo­ber 15th. Due to numer­ous polit­i­cal pro­grams in the vil­lages dur­ing the next 4 weeks, it is nec­es­sary to not have any children’s pro­grams except on Sun­days at church. Any “con­gre­gat­ing” of large groups is not allowed at this time, (and our children’s pro­grams attract over 300 people/ vil­lage), includ­ing adults. We are in total agree­ment with this as sev­er­al Pas­tors expressed a need to stop after approached by elec­tion offi­cials. AWANA will con­tin­ue at our mis­sion sta­tion dur­ing this time. Only the remote vil­lages will be sus­pend­ed temporarily.
FOOD HAND OUTS FED OVER 750 ORPHANS AND WIDOWS THIS WEEK! We have a very com­pressed sched­ule through the end of Sept. since we will be unable to dis­trib­ute from Oct. 1st till after the 15th in both Melu­co and Bala­ma Dis­tricts. Load em up and head them out! Folks we will be rolling those trucks to mul­ti­ple sights, feed­ing over 2,500 orphans and wid­ows in the next 14 days in both Dis­tricts. We praise the Lord for BOTH our large trucks and the 2 Land Cruis­ers that pro­vide the effi­cient deliv­er­ies each week. Oth­er­wise, kids would go hun­gry. Hav­ing the right equip­ment sure makes our work a lot easier!

NELSON, OUR OLDEST ORPHAN, SHOWING OFF THE NICE WELL AT OUR CHURCH SITE PROVIDED BY NORTH EAST TEXAS DONORS. Serves more than 100 fam­i­lies daily.

THANK YOU JESUS FOR PROVIDING OUR NEEDS THROUGH ALL THESE TRUCKS, THE DRIVERS, AND THOSE WHO LOAD’EM UP!

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: OCTOBER 12, 2014

SHEER WIND TAKES OFF ROOF AT CHILDREN’S CENTER

While hit­ting send on the arti­cles below, I heard that hor­ri­ble screech­ing sound of a roof being ripped off a build­ing. Rac­ing down to the Children’s Cen­ter, I found the back half of the Pre-school roof sit­ting on the front half.

 
A large piece of the roof had been torn off the baby weigh­ing room, and hit the ground right in front of the swing set fence.

PTL that the chil­dren play­ing on the swings were not hurt! This build­ing hosts our pre-school, as well as the rooms for weigh­ing babies and stor­ing the week­ly food giv­en out on Thursdays.

I am very grate­ful that this hap­pened on a SUNDAY after­noon, as there were very few peo­ple around. I don’t even want to think about what could have occurred on a week­day when the pre-school was in ses­sion and the play­ground full of children.

The front half of the roof seems intact, but the solar pan­el that charged the bat­tery for the Bas­ket­ball Court is under all that torn up roof­ing and pre­sumed to be crushed. But, as every­one knows, mate­r­i­al things can be rebuilt/replaced. But lit­tle lives are a pre­cious gift that only God can restore.

Again, we PTL that no one was hurt.

Our truck team spent this entire week trans­port­ing more than 35,000 donat­ed mos­qui­to nets from the WHO (World Health Org.) to over 30 remote vil­lages in coor­di­na­tion with the Bala­ma Health Department.

Malar­ia ranks among the top “killer dis­eases” in our area, as untreat­ed, it can kill in 3 days. Sev­er­al 100 of our 2,500+ orphans lost their par­ents to malaria.

No vac­cines can stop malar­ia as of yet, and not all peo­ple have easy access to the 3 day treat­ment that cures it. Pre­ven­tion is the best, and the #1 item that pre­vents mos­qui­tos from bit­ing while you sleep is the good ole mos­qui­to net. Sup­plies were lim­it­ed, but the major­i­ty of our orphan house­holds liv­ing in remote vil­lages were blessed with new nets.

The objec­tive was to pro­vide nets to the most vul­ner­a­ble moth­ers and chil­dren who had no way to afford them. We are most grate­ful for being able to help with this great project, and see­ing how it blessed the multitudes.

NAMUNO DISTRICT TRULY HUNGRY FOR JESUS!

Evan­ge­list Alber­to preached in the remote vil­lage of Njan­jawey (N‑john-ja-whey) this week where the Gospel has nev­er been heard. The Holy Spir­it is mov­ing in a pow­er­ful way, as 125 FAMILIES as well as chil­dren too numer­ous to count, made a deci­sion to fol­low Jesus.

This week, these new con­verts were busy build­ing a large grass cov­ered shade area for their church meet­ings. Our Hine­ston spon­sors donat­ed the poles and bam­boos, and the church mem­bers are doing the work. Alber­to is super excit­ed as the har­vest of souls flows in from unex­pect­ed places. No greater deci­sion will ever be made in anyone’s life than the one to fol­low Jesus.

BUSH BUNNY TIDBITS

1. Super slide sec­tion 3 is being paint­ed and will be mount­ed this week. The first Mon­key Bars are now com­plet­ed and our teens ver­i­fied that they are just right!

2. Pres­i­dent of the coun­try vis­it­ed this last Thurs­day. Was quite a thrill with 2 heli­copters fly­ing over our town. We only rarely see a small plane, so this real­ly brought the chil­dren into the streets.

3. Elec­tions this Wed., Oct. 8th. We’ll be stay­ing close to home as the mul­ti­tudes fill the Bala­ma area in order to vote. No com­put­er vot­ing here! Sim­ple paper bal­lots, so long lines are expected.

4. Please keep us in prayer for a peace­ful vot­ing day between the 3 parties.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: OCTOBER 4, 2014

GET READY FOR THE COMING OF THE SON

Three weeks ago, the Lord showed me that it was now HIS TIMING for me to share my SECOND ENCOUNTER with Him.

This pho­to­graph is the result of that meeting.

GOD’S STATEMENT is very clear.

Christ­mas Morn­ing, 1989, the Lord woke me at 4a.m. I clear­ly heard Him say to me: “Pho­to­graph the sunrise”.

It was MINUS 10 F out­side (about ‑20C). I obe­di­ent­ly answered “ok”, and grabbed for my insu­lat­ed coveralls.

Before the sun rose, I was in my horse barn, won­der­ing what type of sun­rise He was about to reveal.

As the sky light­ened, I walked out into my largest horse pas­ture, where I had a clear view of the east.

Sud­den­ly, 5 fluffy streaks of clouds SHOT ACROSS THE SKY in a “fan pat­tern”, like they came from 5 invis­i­ble jet engines! Many beau­ti­ful shades of blue, pink, and yel­low began to min­gle in the sky.

Yet I saw no “spec­tac­u­lar shape” form in the sky, just lots of beau­ti­ful colors.

Then a huge bird, with a good 6 foot (1.8m) wing span, appeared out of nowhere, fly­ing in a large cir­cle above my head (remind­ed me of that huge feath­er­less bird of the dinosaur ages). My mouth dropped open in total shock, for this was total­ly out of char­ac­ter for any bird on such a frigid morning.

I thought: “that’s real­ly weird!”, as I watched the bird fly off into the large trees close to my barn.

Curios­i­ty won, so I walked in that direc­tion, hop­ing for a bet­ter look, for it seemed to have skin and not feathers.

Approach­ing the barn caused my hun­gry hors­es to run to the cor­ral fence to greet me. I turned my back on the sun­rise for just an instant to greet them, and heard the Lord say: “TURN AROUND”.

I gasped in awe! For what I saw took away my breath! The beau­ti­ful array of col­ors in the sky were beyond descrip­tion. My eyes could see no dis­tinct shape, just the most mag­nif­i­cent col­or scheme I’ve ever seen paint­ed in the sky.

Yet there was an excite­ment in my spir­it, as it “saw” what my eyes could not. Rais­ing my cam­era, I quick­ly focused and cap­tured that scene. In the split sec­ond it took me to focus, that huge bird launched itself from a near­by branch, and was cap­tured right in the mid­dle of the photo.

It kept fly­ing south east and was nev­er seen again.

Coin­ci­dence? Not in my think­ing, for I believe that bird (which had to be huge to show up at that dis­tance), was sent to rep­re­sent the Holy Spirit.

When devel­oped, GOD’S FACE WAS REVEALED IN THAT FINAL PHOTOGRAPH.

(with that huge bird right in the mid­dle of his right cheek). The clouds are the pin­na­cle of his crown with the yel­low shap­ing his head with flow­ing hair. He’s look­ing down and to the bot­tom right cor­ner of the pho­to with His mouth in a firm line (not hap­py at what He is look­ing at). His message:

GET READY FOR THE COMING OF THE SON.

That day His mes­sage was “burned” into my spir­it, nev­er to be forgotten.

The pho­to was added proof that many still need­ed to hear God’s rea­son for send­ing Jesus.

My heart’s desire is to help every­one who will lis­ten to “get ready” for His return.

North­ern Mozam­bique need­ed a per­son­al mes­sen­ger, for none exist­ed in 1991.

That is why He sent me here.

Intense train­ing for our 25 Pastors/Youth Lead­ers began last year to pre­pare those who will lis­ten for Jesus’ return.

THE SECOND BLOOD MOON will appear on Oct. 8th (just 4 days from now).

That sig­nal is very sig­nif­i­cant for Israel, and for ALL CHRISTIANS around the world.

The world scene is chang­ing at a rapid rate.

The per­se­cu­tion and rate of change will occur at an even FASTER RATE after the 2nd blood moon.

Mark 24: Jesus states that before His com­ing, the sun shall be dark­ened (eclipse), and the moon will give no light (eclipse that makes the moon look red, thus the blood moons).

Mark 25: Then every­one will see the Son of Man com­ing on the clouds with great pow­er and glo­ry. And He will send out his angels to gath­er His cho­sen ones from all over the world—from the far­thest ends of the earth and heaven.

BE READY OR GET LEFT BEHIND.

JESUS IS COMING SOON!

Are you ready?

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:SEPT. 20, 2014

BUSH BUNNY “WINGED OUT OF THE WAY” BY GUARDIAN ANGELS

The 2nd sto­ry of the Super Play­house reach­es into the tree branch­es of the huge Man­go Tree that shades it. We need­ed to cut off a few branch­es in order to make room for the small roof that will pro­tect the chil­dren and the super slide from falling man­go fruit from Octo­ber to Decem­ber each year. Green man­go fruit is as hard as a base­ball before it ripens. A “goose egg” size knot on your head is the nor­mal, if you get hit by one that drops off due to a big gust of wind.

I was busy tak­ing pho­tos of the men cut­ting the limbs as it was quite a feat for them to chop away at the same branch they were sit­ting on.

When it came to the last and largest branch that had to be removed, the 5 men on the ground ask me for a rope so they would have bet­ter con­trol as the branch fell. We’d already had a small­er branch dam­age one of the 4X4’s on the play­house, and want­ed to avoid any fur­ther damage.

I was well out of the way, or so I thought.

This huge branch snapped off pre­ma­ture­ly with a loud CRACK! My heart jumped for it was not falling as expect­ed, and was head­ed straight for ME!

Argenti­no is cut­ting one of two limbs. His right foot is on the limb that tried to take out The Bunny.

All I remem­ber is piv­ot­ing to jump out of the way, and 2 sec­onds lat­er found myself lay­ing in the dirt with 5 guys grab­bing my arms and drag­ging me to my feet.

THE HUGE TREE BRANCH was lay­ing just inch­es beyond my feet!

THIS IS THE REASON I KNOW IT WAS ANGELS WHO INTERVENED:

I land­ed so soft­ly in the dirt that I was with­out pain, scratch­es, or bruis­es, which is not pos­si­ble with­out super­nat­ur­al inter­ven­tion. I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of how I got where I did, because it was over 12 feet from where I’d been stand­ing. There were NO foot­prints in the dirt between the spot I piv­ot­ed and the spot I landed.

The men said I just flew through the air with this huge branch actu­al­ly piv­ot­ing on it’s point so that it FOLLOWED ME!

My crew were total­ly ter­ri­fied, as it looked like I would sure­ly be crushed by the limb. After I was on my feet, one of the men had to sit down before he faint­ed! He said he couldn’t believe I was OK.

After a few laughs, they cut that huge limb into pieces, and removed it from the playground.

It was too heavy for even 5 men to lift it.

I’m very, very grate­ful to be alive, and I thank Jesus, the Holy Spir­it, and God’s Angels for “lift­ing me” out of harm’s way.

2 MAN TEAM OFF TO REPAIR 15 WATER WELLS IN MELUCO

In mid-August, I was noti­fied by the offi­cials in Melu­co Coun­ty that 15 of their wells need­ed repairs.

The list of parts need­ed to repair them was staggering!

Thanks to a gen­er­ous gift by Wayne K. of But­ler, PA, lit­er­al­ly 1000’s of peo­ple will have access to clean water by next week.

Manuel and Mario, our 2 man “water well fix-it team” will leave ear­ly Mon­day morn­ing, spend­ing 3 days repair­ing water wells in the super dry Melu­co Dis­trict where 515 of our orphans live. A few of these wells are ones we drilled, but most have been around for years, and their main parts are total­ly worn out.

Each year, over $3,000 is need­ed in repair parts to main­tain these hand pump Afridec wells. Thanks to the drilling com­pa­ny who sells us the parts, we can stretch this gift even fur­ther this year, as they gave us a dis­count because we bought in bulk.

Manuel and I orga­nized and repacked this table full of water well parts last Thursday.

Life can­not exist with­out clean water. Repair­ing exist­ing wells is the fastest way to bring LIFE and HEALTH back to a vil­lage in need.

ASHLYNN GOT HER RESIDENCY! PTL!

Paper­work was filed and REJECTED on Thurs­day, “bum­mer”, because unknown to us, the word­ing had been changed for the request let­ter since we filed Katie’s paper­work last month. Thanks to coop­er­a­tion in Bala­ma, the cor­rect doc­u­ment was orga­nized late that same after­noon, so they could return to Pem­ba on Fri­day to file the new­ly word­ed paperwork.

CLOTHNG GIVE OUT BEGINS THIS WEEK

Katie and Ash­lynn are hav­ing fun prepar­ing new clothes for the orphans in our care.

As I write this, Katie and Ash­lynn are hard at work fill­ing plas­tic sacks with the right size cloth­ing for the orphans in each vil­lage. While Manuel goes to Melu­co ear­ly Mon­day, Capena’s team will hand out food in 3 loca­tions between Mon­day and Tues­day. Each of those 340 orphans will receive a new set of clothes made at our sewing cen­ter here at our mis­sion station.

On Mon­day, BBB will keep the “home fire” burn­ing. Mon­day is corn milling and rice hulling day. Some­body has to stay behind and get it done. Beats bounc­ing on rough roads for sure! So even before the sun comes up, our teams will hit the road!

Keep your prayers cov­er­ing us, for we have lots of food to move in the next few months.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da (now hop­ping high­er than ever!) Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:SEPT. 9, 2014

ZITO IS WALKING!!!!

Zito, now 13 years old, has been in a wheel­chair for 5 years after a soc­cer acci­dent crip­pled him with a frac­tured femur at 8 years of age.

It was not set well since no doc­tors exist­ed in this Dis­trict at that time, caus­ing it to heal very crooked. He was unable to straight­en his left leg. When we met Zito 4 years ago, he was severe­ly ane­mic, suf­fer­ing from staph boils, and extreme­ly mal­nour­ished. It has been a long road to this point, as his body didn’t seem to want to cor­rect the ane­mia even with vit­a­mins, a high pro­tein diet, and Hypo (super high pro­tein instant cere­al packed with many vit­a­mins for mal­nour­ished chil­dren). PERSISTENCE is the name of the game with Zito!

We prayed for his heal­ing but noth­ing hap­pened, until I got a vis­it from his Pas­tor yes­ter­day. Pas­tor Ramadan raced to my house after church on his motor­bike to tell me that ZITO had WALKED the length of the church in front of every­one! It was too late to go out to his home yes­ter­day after­noon, as it is 8 miles into the bush, so the Bala­ma Blaz­ers and I went out today to see for ourselves.

Pas­tor Ramadan inter­pret­ed Zito’s sto­ry of what made the sud­den change in his legs.

Zito stat­ed that he woke up one morn­ing last week and just “KNEW” that he could walk. He told no one, not even his moth­er, and after she left to go fetch water, he tried his legs AND THEY WORKED! He couldn’t man­age to take more than a few steps at first, but said that after a few days, he could walk from their house to their cook­ing room (about 25 feet/8 meters). On Sat­ur­day he told his moth­er, who didn’t believe him! She demand­ed to see it for her­self. ZITO WALKED for her and then for the entire church yes­ter­day (Sept. 7th).

Today when we arrived, he was more than eager to show us that he is get­ting stronger and able to walk a good dis­tance. His left knee remains bent from con­stric­tures, as that is the way his leg healed, but he is walk­ing on it with­out pain! He also states that the pain he use to have in his good leg has also gone away. He nev­er walked on the crutch­es we gave him because weight bear­ing on his good leg was too painful.

It’s not a per­fect healing–YET! But watch­ing him walk tells me that there is more to come as he exer­cis­es, for I can see that his bent left knee looks to be straight­en­ing out more and more with each step. His entire body is stronger than I’ve seen it in the entire 4 years I’ve known him, and his ane­mia is almost gone.

For the first time, I saw a true smile in his face, as I told him how proud I am of him.

He rarely smiles, but that lit­tle grin told me our boy Zito is on the mend!

Jesus gave Zito the “go ahead” and now that lit­tle boy is mov­ing out with every ounce of strength he has.

THANK YOU JESUS!

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Balama

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:AUGUST 24, 2014

“BELIEVE IT OR NOT”, WHAT I SAW YESTERDAY IS FOREVER ETCHED INTO MY MIND!

Yes­ter­day, the Bala­ma Blaz­ers and I along with 2 of my best guards, left Bala­ma at 5a.m. so that Han­na Gilman, RN stu­dent from Seat­tle, WA, could catch the after­noon plane to begin her jour­ney back to the USA.

First on the agen­da was beach time for the 3 girls, as this was a “big­gy on Hanna’s buck­et list”.

In the mean-time, the 2 guards and I “hit the bank” to with­draw some dough so we could pick up sup­plies for the orphans.

On our way back to the beach to fetch the girls, I pulled up to a stop sign fac­ing 4 lanes of traf­fic. This street is divid­ed by a 6 foot con­crete medi­an where cars can wait to safe­ly pull into traf­fic on the far side. Since we dri­ve on the left side of the road, we look RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT before pulling out into traf­fic. Doing just that, I saw NO CARS in the imme­di­ate area. Pulling out into the medi­an, ready to turn right into the prop­er lane, I sud­den­ly faced a brand new SUV right in front of me! All I saw were 2 white car doors direct­ly in front of our car as I was turn­ing to move into that lane. Hit­ting the brakes, I saw no way to avoid a col­li­sion even though I was bare­ly mov­ing. Sand on the tar road caused my car to slide a bit as I hit the brakes.

What I saw next, will never cease to amaze me!

My car slid to a stop, NEVER TOUCHING THE OTHER CAR because an unseen force actu­al­ly pushed the oth­er car away from me!!! It remind­ed me of what hap­pens when you place the pos­i­tive ends of 2 mag­nets fac­ing each oth­er and try to make them touch. One push­es the oth­er out of the way, as like forces repel each oth­er. That is exact­ly what I saw yes­ter­day when fac­ing this near collision.

The 2 men with me in the car also wit­nessed all this, leav­ing us all speech­less with our mouths hang­ing open! The dri­ver of the SUV was yelling and curs­ing me because what­ev­er pushed him, caused him to believe we had HIT HIM. But when he saw no mark on his new car, he closed his mouth and drove off. None of us saw this car before I pulled out. All we can assume is that he came out of a small dri­ve way just to the left of where I was cross­ing the street.

Need­less to say, I was THRILLED that my ANGELS were on duty, because there is no oth­er expla­na­tion for what hap­pened. It was AMAZING to see that heavy SUV actu­al­ly move AWAY from us, as my car came to a halt. That’s a men­tal video that will nev­er be erased.

GOD IN ACTION ON OUR BEHALF.

I love HIM and all He does to keep us out of harm’s way.

So what did we do next? Cel­e­brat­ed LIFE by buy­ing a small tub of ice cream, and head­ed off to the beach to cel­e­brate Hanna’s last few min­utes with us.

GRAB the moment, for that is all God gave us con­trol of.

TIDBIT: The 2 guards had nev­er had ice cream before and dear­ly loved it. It’s tru­ly fun to watch peo­ple expe­ri­ence new foods for the first time.

HANNA GILMAN RETURNS TO NURSING SCHOOL

Han­na was a great asset to our team as she tru­ly has the mak­ings of an RN, show­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and faith­ful­ness in all she did while here. But God gave Han­na a VERY spe­cial love and “gift” for teach­ing chil­dren. So if you want­ed to find Han­na, all you had to do was lis­ten for the sounds of chil­dren play­ing. The chil­dren tru­ly adored her as she spent many hours play­ing bas­ket­ball, soc­cer, and AWANA games with them down at our Children’s Cen­ter. Han­na plans to spe­cial­ize in Pedi­atrics after grad­u­a­tion from RN school, and it is obvi­ous she will be a bless­ing to the chil­dren where ever God places her. I per­son­al­ly thank Han­na for shar­ing her gifts and tal­ents with our team and our chil­dren these last 3 months. I also send my THANKS to all her spon­sors who made her trip pos­si­ble. Han­na was a very valu­able part of con­trol­ling one of the corn chutes dur­ing food buy­ing, mak­ing it pos­si­ble to sack and stack 300+ sacks of corn that now fills our barn so that orphans will not go hungry.

MANGO TREE CHURCH FEEDING CENTER

The 7 villages in the area the Mango Tree Church, all came together on Friday to receive their first food gifts for 2014.

This year, there are 437 peo­ple in this group (277 orphans cared for my 160 wid­ows). Anoth­er child head­ed house­hold from the remote vil­lage of “Mag­a­ia” (Mah-guy-ah) have joined our fam­i­ly, as both par­ents of these 4 chil­dren passed away just 2 weeks ago from long term ill­ness­es. They had moved here sev­er­al years ago from anoth­er coun­ty north of Bala­ma, so no oth­er fam­i­ly lives near­by. Thank­ful­ly, the old­est is a 16 year old girl and is able to care for them, so major assis­tance is being orga­nized to help them. Cape­na, our Orphan Man­ag­er, plans to vis­it them this week, tak­ing cloth­ing and oth­er need­ed items. Neigh­bors in the vil­lage have vol­un­teered to guide and watch over them. YOUR LOVE GIFTS IN ACTION.

Until next week, my friends!

Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Grabill

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:AUGUST 16, 2014

BUNNY AND THE 3 BLAZERS BUSIER THAN 4 BEAVERS IN A SPRING FLOOD!

Our inter­net is down com­plete­ly, so appre­ci­ate that we had to dri­ve 60km (30 miles) in order to send this today. Wasn’t a huge sac­ri­fice since an ICE CREAM PARLOUR now opened in Mon­tepuez, so we all decid­ed to “sac­ri­fice” and have lunch at this won­der­ful lit­tle out­door café where we can all use inter­net. After all, can’t let my friends down by not send­ing “THE BLOG”. Tee Hee!

Bala­ma women “piller” (dehull) dried rice in huge home-made pedestals for the 119 orphan chil­dren liv­ing at the Bala­ma Mis­sion Station.

Car­pen­ters using hand tools to con­struct the two doors and three win­dows need­ed for the 11 child orphan home in Rovuma

THE MASTER HEALER RESCUES PEDRITO

SUNDAY AFTERNOON found me rush­ing Pedri­to, one of our 4 year old twin boys, to the hos­pi­tal along with his fos­ter moth­er, Ati­ja. After church, Pedri­to sud­den­ly spiked a fever that peaked at 106F (41C), lost con­scious­ness as we drove him the short 2 miles to the hos­pi­tal, and went into con­vul­sions short­ly after admit­ting him to the emer­gency room. We all “knew” it was cere­bral malar­ia just by look­ing at him, and prayed that Jesus would save him. Cere­bral malar­ia burns out your brain stem with a high fever ren­der­ing one uncon­scious, caus­es exces­sive brain swelling, kid­ney dam­age, fol­lowed by many con­vul­sions and final­ly death. Those that do sur­vive can expe­ri­ence brain dam­age. BUT JESUS ANSWERED in an awe­some way by hav­ing Pedri­to WAKE UP in the mid­dle of the night! (Total­ly NOT a nor­mal response to 1 dose of malar­ia med­i­cine.) When we arrived the next morn­ing, he grabbed a suck­er out of my hand, (total­ly nor­mal for Pedri­to), and asked to go to the bath­room!!!! He had to stay to com­plete his 3 days of malar­ia treat­ments, but end­ed up spend­ing 5 days because he picked up dysen­tery while there. He hap­pi­ly reunit­ed with his 3 broth­ers at their home on Fri­day noon.

JESUS saved Pedri­to with a mir­a­cle heal­ing, no one could deny. Every­one at the hos­pi­tal was amazed at his “mir­a­cle recov­ery”, for all too often they “see the signs” and know the child will per­ish. Jesus used Pedrito’s ill­ness to show them that HE IS STILL THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HEAL THOSE WHO APPEAR DOOMED TO PERISH! THANK YOU JESUS!!!

NOW THE “REST OF THE STORY”

Tues­day found Katie and I along with my Office Man­ag­er and right hand man, Cape­na, in Pem­ba to sub­mit her res­i­den­cy doc­u­ments at Immi­gra­tion. Best laid plans of mice and men didn’t work as they refused her police clear­ance because it didn’t have a “stamped” date and sig­na­ture on it (it was typed in). So new doc­u­ments were orga­nized in Texas with the prop­er stamp and should be here next week. Such are the “chal­lenges” of try­ing to get residency.

A phone call Mon­day con­firmed that the 16 lb (8kg) diaphragm need­ed to repair the 7 ton truck was await­ing pick up at the air­port. Eric, now our “Bush Bear” on the ground in South Africa, had orga­nized the part and air shipped it. Nis­san in Pem­ba didn’t have it, and would have to order, tak­ing up to a month to get. Our hun­gry kids at the Ele­phant Vil­lage can’t wait that long, so “The Bear” saved the day! We asked an Aus­tralian friend, a mas­ter mechan­ic, to install the part. Arriv­ing home from Pem­ba at 3pm with me total­ly beat after the 11 hour dri­ve, our friend called to say he need­ed to go out of town the next day, so would be there at 5pm to install the part. So Bun­ny and the Blaz­ers ate a quick sup­per, then Climbed under the truck in the dark to help. With Han­na and Katie sit­ting in the sand under the truck hold­ing a flash­light, and the head­lights of 2 pick-up’s head­lights spot­light­ing the area, our 2 Aussie friends had the truck fixed in 90 min­utes. Ran like a dream with­out com­pli­ca­tions as we took food to over 300 orphans yes­ter­day (Fri­day) in Kwe Kwe. Made a stren­u­ous 15 hour day for us which had Bun­ny drag­ging a bit the next day, but it was worth it to have the truck in action again.

AND THE FOOD GOES OUT!

Over 650 orphans and wid­ows received over 12 TONS corn, beans, soap and salt this week as Cape­na, the 3 Bala­ma Blaz­ers, and our men worked Thurs­day and Fri­day to deliv­er, return and reload to deliv­er the next day so that the kids would not go hungry.

MEGA MONKEY BARS WITH SUPER SLIDE TO BECOME A BALAMA BLESSING TO THE CHILDREN

I stayed behind when the food teams went out, because Bun­ny and her brick lay­ers are build­ing a MIND BOGGLING MONKEY BAR SYSTEM at our Mis­sion station’s playground—a dou­ble deck­er jun­gle gym with mon­key bars, and hope­ful­ly a 16 foot super slide com­bi­na­tion! The slide will begin from the top of the jun­gle gym at a height of 10 feet. Extra funds were giv­en so that this mega jun­gle gym sup­port­ed by 9 con­crete pil­lars could become a real­i­ty for our chil­dren. The team is busy putting in the foun­da­tion for the 9 con­crete pil­lars today, so I’ll pho­to­graph it as the frame goes up over the next 2 weeks. It is one of the biggest con­struc­tion chal­lenges the team and I have ever attempt­ed, as coor­di­na­tion with our car­pen­ters is need­ed for all the wood­en beams that will sup­ply the “bars”. Met­al pipe is sold out in Pem­ba due to all the heavy con­struc­tion, so we are forced to use wood instead. Will make it more of a chal­lenge to climb and to build! THE DESIGN is total­ly a “Bush Bun­ny dream design” inspired by watch­ing Swiss Fam­i­ly Robinson—always did want one of those tree hous­es! So even though ours is built from the ground, the 2nd sto­ry is IN THE TOP OF OUR HUGE MANGO TREE at the play­ground. With man­go sea­son just 3 months away, I can see the kids throw­ing rocks from the 2nd sto­ry of the jun­gle gym to get the best man­gos out of that tree.

Men using large “sift­ing trays” with screen bot­toms to clean the corn of loose debris before it is sent to the mill at the mis­sion sta­tion. We mill 1.2 TONS a week in our own mill to feed the 119 orphans who live with us ‚as well as the 150 orphans and wid­ows who fetch food each Thursday.

OK, off to Mon­tepuez so I can find some inter­net so I can to send this. I tru­ly enjoy your e‑mails, and so far, sim­ple text e‑mails are get­ting through. Please con­tin­ue to write, as it tru­ly encour­ages all of us.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange The Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Ash­lynn Gra­bill Han­na Gilman

FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE:AUGUST 9, 2014

MOTORBIKE MINISTRY SAVES LIVES

On Thurs­day morn­ing, I was in Rovu­ma check­ing on 3 new baby goats, when Sal­vador, our 13 year old orphan from Nacala vil­lage 3 miles (5km) away, walked up to the goat pens accom­pa­nied by Pas­tor Salazar, his fos­ter Father. His bad­ly infect­ed and painful hand was so swollen that it resem­bled a rub­ber glove full of air. Straight to the hos­pi­tal we went, and PTL, the Doc­tor was able to attend to him imme­di­ate­ly in the Emer­gency Room. Hav­ing to lance any wound is very painful, but hands are even worse due to its many nerve end­ings. I take my hat off to Sal­vador, as he han­dled the pain with min­i­mal squirm­ing and only a few tears, as 3 men held on to him so he wouldn’t strike the Doc­tor dur­ing the pro­ce­dure. Because I had to be in Pem­ba on Fri­day, I orga­nized Youth Pas­tor Car­l­i­tos Jorge to take him to the hos­pi­tal for the fol­low­ing 4 days for fur­ther treat­ment and Peni­cillin injec­tions. Motor­bikes play a big part in our min­istry, as they can get to places that our trucks can­not. Nacala vil­lage is one such place, as the road is very dif­fi­cult for even 4 wheel dri­ve pick-ups.

Used for both evan­ge­lism and res­cue, these bikes are a super valu­able instru­ment in sav­ing lives both spir­i­tu­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. Your love gifts at work!

ORPHAN HOUSE IN ROVUMA NEAR COMPLETION

The walls are up and the roof is in progress.

The car­pen­try shop is busy mak­ing the door and 2 win­dows for the new house as well as a new door and a win­dow for the widow’s house. Present­ly they have no secu­ri­ty for their belong­ings, as the house only has a “cana” door. That’s a door made from the stalks of sug­ar cane. Stur­dy enough to keep out hon­est peo­ple and roam­ing goats or dogs, but is no chal­lenge if some­one real­ly wants to get in.

FOOD DISTRIBUTIONS MEANS HOURS OF GROUND WORK BEFORE HAND

Cape­na, our Office/Orphan Admin­is­tra­tor, has been busy since last Thurs­day, check­ing on the 300+ orphans & wid­ows in the Kwe Kwe area (9 vil­lages in all). Each year he per­son­al­ly vis­its the homes of those on our list to check on their con­di­tion and to make sure they still need our help with food. Orphans who are now inde­pen­dent, and no longer need our help, or who have got­ten mar­ried (age 15 is mar­ry­ing age here), are delet­ed and young orphans on that village’s “need assis­tance list” are added in their place. It’s a BIG JOB, as you lit­er­al­ly spend days walk­ing from hut to hut with the vil­lage chiefs, mak­ing very tough deci­sions as you vis­it hun­dreds of mud huts. On Mon­day, Cape­na and I will final­ize the Kwe Kwe list as their first food dis­tri­b­u­tion is this Thurs­day and Fri­day. The 7 ton truck is tem­porar­i­ly out of action, as we need to have the air brake sys­tem repaired to pre­vent a road­side break­down if the “cylin­der” hap­pens to crack fur­ther with all the jar­ring this truck takes on these rough dirt roads. The part is being flown up this week, and should be in our hands by Tues­day. Once the part has cleared cus­toms, Eric plans to fly in to make this major repair. This makes the Kwe Kwe dis­tri­b­u­tion a bit more dif­fi­cult since we can only use 1 truck, but NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH JESUS BY OUR SIDE!

NELSON TO REPRESENT OUR ORPHANS IN STATE CHILDREN’S PARLIAMENT THIS WEEK

Mon­day after­noon, Manuel will take Nel­son, age 16, the orphan leader of our boy’s dorm, and 4 oth­er teens, to the 2 day State Children’s Par­lia­ment being held in Pem­ba. School is out for the next 2 weeks, so teens from all over the state will be spend­ing this week help­ing law mak­ers by giv­ing tes­ti­mo­ny on how new laws could help all chil­dren in this nation to grow up to be bet­ter cit­i­zens. It’s a great hon­or to be cho­sen as the 5 will rep­re­sent the 80,000+ chil­dren in our coun­ty (dis­trict).

KATIE POLCYN BEGINS RESIDENCY PROCESS

Katie flew back from South Africa yes­ter­day with a bag full of “good­ies” for all of us. She passed the first part of the res­i­den­cy process and received her Res­i­den­cy VISA at the Mozam­bi­can Embassy in Johan­nes­burg. On Tues­day, Cape­na will dri­ve her back to Pem­ba to sub­mit the 7 required doc­u­ments to request a 1 year tem­po­rary res­i­den­cy card. This is essen­tial if she wants to help us for the next year, since vis­i­tors can only stay 90 days in this country.

A busy week ahead will keep Bush Bun­ny and the Bala­ma Blaz­ers hop­ping for sure! Keep us in your prayers.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange The Bala­ma Blaz­ers: Katie Pol­cyn Han­na Gilman Ash­lynn Grabill
POST SCRIPT,

OUR GOATS LINE UP FOR WORMING TREATMENT.

We love to show you our beau­ti­ful goats and the crew loves it too.