From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog, June 26, 2013

NEW WATER WELL IS A REAL GUSHER!

On Tues­day, our water well drilling team hit an abun­dant water source at 47 meters (141) on our 40 acre prop­er­ty in Balama.

Why the new well in Balama?

1. Our 2 present wells at our base are VERY shal­low and can­not meet the grow­ing needs of our orphans.

2. Over 200 fam­i­lies depend on our church well, as our 40 acre base is the ONLY OPEN LAND in the area, as hous­es have built up all around us.

3. A new well with ABUNDANT WATER was need­ed if we are meet the kid’s needs, AND start our new project for “water based food gar­dens” in the com­ing months.

WE ARE MOST GRATEFUL to the FOUR FAMILIES from north east Texas who pooled their resources to pro­vide this water well for us. THANKS hard­ly express­es my JOY as I stood in the spray of this GUSHER as the drillers flushed it out yes­ter­day to see how much water it con­tained. The drillers esti­mate over 2000 CUBIC METERS of water per hour can be pumped from this deep under­ground cavern.

THE MAN AT THE WELL

Com­ing here to drill this well TRULY BLESSED one of the lead­ers on the drilling team. Last year, I’d wit­nessed to this same drilling team, but it was like talk­ing to brick walls as they are all Hin­dus or Mus­lims. This year, a new man, named Aaron, replaced on of the team lead­ers. Aaron and I talked off and on dur­ing the 3 days of drilling as he speaks good Eng­lish and Por­tuguese. As they were flush­ing the well Tues­day after­noon, Aaron came and got me to show me the won­der­ful clean water shoot­ing up to 20 feet out of the well! It is a sight to see, just like the old GUSHERS you’d see when they first struck oil in Texas. It was FUN to stand in the cool spray being blown by the wind, and watch that tow­er of clear water bless the crops.

As I left, I sensed the Holy Spir­it say­ing: “Go fetch some Por­tuguese tracts and give them to Aaron”. I thought “OK, but they reject­ed them last year”. But I’ve learned to “hear and obey that small still voice”, so I quick­ly grabbed 4 “com­ic book” tracts that tells all about Jesus and why God sent his Son to earth. I thought that the pic­tures might catch their atten­tion enough to get them to read the sto­ry. I took the tracts straight to Aaron and he lit up like a LIGHT BULB! He said: “I’M A CHRISTIAN!” and so appre­ci­ate this infor­ma­tion! He was so excit­ed that his eyes lit up! It was won­der­ful to see. Aaron then told me he will glad­ly read and share this infor­ma­tion with his fel­low work­ers on the truck. Then he stat­ed that he has been pray­ing for an ENGLISH BIBLE. “Do you have one?”

I told him I only had a pock­et ver­sion (from Gideons), so I went back to the house to fetch it. The box of Eng­lish Bibles is rarely need­ed here, so these Bibles were in a box 8 FEET up on the top shelf in my store­room, and I’m not quite tall enough to reach it even with a step lad­der. J But I man­aged to get the box open and stretched to my full height, reach­ing in blind­ly to grab a small pock­et Bible. MY HAND TOUCHED A FULL SIZE BOOK, which I didn’t expect! I pulled the book out and it was a com­plete NIV BIBLE IN ENGLISH! I thought WOW, I guess God plans to use ME to answer this man’s prayers, as I had no idea how this Bible got into this box. I gave the Bible to Aaron and he jumped for JOY! We trad­ed phone num­bers, and I plan to keep in touch with him, call­ing him to encour­age him, as he is always on the road with the drilling team (and the only Chris­t­ian on this truck).

That Bible and those tracts will trav­el with this team ALL OVER North­ern Mozam­bique until Decem­ber this year, when they have to stop for the rainy sea­son. After they left, I felt in my spir­it that God was telling me we had just equipped a new Evan­ge­list for Him. With many lone­ly nights ahead of them, I know those com­ic tracts will be ready over and over. Our prayer is that many of these work­ers PLUS those whom Aaron meets on the road, will come to Christ. Aaron is a real­ly nice man, and a nat­ur­al talk­er, so I KNOW God will use his “gift of gab” to reach the lost.

Just as the Samar­i­tan woman came to tru­ly know Jesus at a water well, Aaron had his prayer answered at our well. Now he has all he needs to preach God’s Word to the mul­ti­tudes “just as the Samar­i­tan woman did after meet­ing Jesus!” Jesus is tru­ly THE LIVING WATER that wash­es our sins away.

I’m so, so grate­ful that Jesus loves us so much and that He answers our prayers, no mat­ter how small.

BLESSINGS, LOVE, AND HUGS, BUSH BUNNY BRENDA

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG , JUNE 21, 2013

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LINDA STANLEY!

Lin­da Stan­ley, Danielle Van Zyle, Emma Clif­ford, Eric Dry, Melis­sa Olms­dahl, and Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange
We held Linda’s 76th birth­day today at our lit­tle bush camp we call EDEN. It’s our lit­tle hide­away only a 10 minute dri­ve from our base, but since the locals don’t go there, we can have a great par­ty with­out inter­rup­tion. A few cows passed by, but they weren’t inter­est­ed in us. The menu was chick­en sal­ad sand­wich­es with fried pota­to wedges. I took the Ket­sup (Toma­to Sauce) as fries just aren’t the same with­out it! TONIGHT at sup­per we have Linda’s favourite cake: our ver­sion of the Pineap­ple UPSIDE DOWN cake.

THREE SETS OF TWINS BORN TO GOAT FAMILY TODAY!

This morn­ing, Danielle and I went out to deworm 2 Mom­my goats who had babies yes­ter­day (1 set of twins and 1 sin­gle birth). Just as I got home from Linda’s pic­nic, one of my goat man­agers, Car­l­i­tos, raced up on his motor­bike to tell me about the mul­ti­ple births cause his phone bat­tery was dead. Danielle, Emma, and Melis­sa were gone to lan­guage class­es, so Car­l­i­tos and I drove out to han­dle the deworm­ing and check the babies. Car­l­i­tos knew I was to leave at 5a.m. on Sat­ur­day for Pem­ba and wouldn’t return till ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing. Deworm­ing the goats with­in the 1st day after giv­ing birth is VERY impor­tant, since any stom­ach worms present are imme­di­ate­ly trig­gered to pro­duce up to 5,000 worm eggs A DAY due to the hor­mones released in the birth process.

So at the moment we have NINE strong baby goats (3 females and 6 males). The 6 new­bies were BAAAing their heads off when we left, look­ing for that won­der­ful drink they call the “Udder Unco­la”! That’s a farmer’s joke for mommy’s milk, my friends!

FIRST GOVERNMENT INSPECTORS SURPRISED US ON THURSDAY

On Wed. a “lit­tle birdy” told us to expect com­pa­ny on Thurs­day. We held a quick clean up, as kids will be kids and the rooms are not always mil­i­tary clean and neat. The Bala­ma Admin­is­tra­tor (a woman), came at 9a.m. Thurs­day with 4 cars full of her fol­low­ers. Togeth­er we walked the vil­lage in order to vis­it our Girl’s and Boy’s homes that we built last year. She’d nev­er seen them and dear­ly loved the ROCKET STOVES the women were cook­ing on. She also vis­it­ed our orphan’s home that is under con­struc­tion for lit­tle boys and girls under 11 years of age. We real­ly appre­ci­ate our “lit­tle birdy” friends and are very grate­ful for the favour we have with the local gov­ern­ment. Dur­ing our walk, the Admin­is­tra­tor asked me to report to her office at 2pm that after­noon. Seems the bas­ket­ball court at the local high school needs a face lift and new goals. We’ve been asked to “make it hap­pen”, so Mon­day, off we go to start dig­ging holes for the new cement goal posts. We’ll also be haul­ing in 420 sacks of RICE straight from the fields on Mon­day. Noth­ing like a busy day to keep one out of trouble.

OFF TO PEMBA IN THE MORNING

MELISSA , SITTING PRETTY, ON OUR BEAUTIFUL NEW 50CC MOTORBIKE.

On Sat­ur­day, June 22nd, Melis­sa Olms­dahl will fly back to RSA to get her police clear­ance and Res­i­den­cy Visa. She returns to us on July 17th to begin her new “Bik­ing Career” as she brings Christ to the Youth of Mozam­bique. We were blessed last week with a 50 cc motor­bike, that Melis­sa will use to trav­el with Car­l­i­tos Jorge, our trav­el­ing Children’s Leader to bring Christ to the 1000’s of kids in remote vil­lages. Our heart­felt thanks goes out to those who made this bike possible.

Stayed tuned for more adven­tures next week. Around here, FLEXIBILITY is the name of the game.

REMEMBER: THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN A PROBLEM AND A SOLUTION IS: The dis­tance between your knees and floor. The one who KNEELS to the Lord can STAND UP to anything!

LOVE AND HUGS,

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA AND THE BALAMA GANG

ERIC DRY

LINDA STANLEY

EMMA CLIFFORD

DANIELLE VAN ZYL

MELISSA OLMSDAHL

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG, JUNE 16, 2013

LIFE AFTER CORN BUYING DOES EXIST!

200 TONS of corn in the barn.

When the whole team is focused on corn buy­ing for 9 days straight, it can seem like an eter­ni­ty. For this Bun­ny, here’s my dai­ly time line: Get­ting up at 3:30a.m., get the office work done before weight teams arrive. 5a.m. our 2 trucks and weight teams (28 men) leave for the bush vil­lages where the corn co-op groups eager­ly await our arrival. I orga­nize break­fast and lunch for these teams as well as make sure they are fuelled, have drink­ing water, etc. Sort of like get­ting a mas­sive group of kids off to sum­mer camp each day.

5:30a.m. the mis­sion­ary team and I leave for the barns. 5:35a.m. singing, prayer, and an evan­gel­i­cal mes­sage is giv­en to the 65 work­ers (most who don’t know Christ). Got to have our spir­i­tu­al food so we can start out day. 6a.m. the work begins. The 65 man crew moves up to 500 sacks of corn/day, unload­ing the trucks, run­ning it through the sack­ing chutes, and stack­ing it 13 rows high (14 ft. or 5.5 meters) in our barns. It must be done PERFECTLY or that 100 ton moun­tain of corn WILL come tum­bling down. Our mis­sion­ary team oper­ate the chutes mak­ing sure all the bugs are erad­i­cat­ed before it goes into the sacks.

EACH of those 500 sacks (140 lbs. or 70kg) is lift­ed at least 6 times between the weigh­ing process and being stacked in our barn. That is one rea­son we need so many men, as that is an aver­age of pick­ing up 2,500 sacks in a 5 hours! (about 50 sacks/person so it’s not an over­load). But climb­ing a “lad­der” made of stacked corn to get it up to that 13th row IS A CHALLENGE for all of the men and is very tir­ing. I orga­nize extra men to help on the 2 days we have to “take it to the top”.

Lots of prayer goes on before each day’s work for pro­tec­tion from acci­dents. I per­son­al­ly saw 3 men fall off the “lad­der” try­ing to get the bags to the 13th row. NO ONE was harmed in these falls as the bags fell to the side instead of crush­ing bones. Our angels are “on guard” so that even the unbe­liev­ers go unharmed. I thanked JESUS every day as we com­plet­ed the work in record time, with no injuries.

FRIDAY YOUTH NIGHT OPENED LAST NIGHT

What we lov­ing call our “Dream Team”, con­sists of Emma Clif­ford, Danielle Van Zyl, and Melis­sa Olms­dahl. All these girls have youth min­istry expe­ri­ence. With Eric’s and Linda’s help they did a great job of orga­niz­ing their first “Youth Night”, show­ing the movie: THE CROSS AND THE SWITCHBLADE (in Por­tuguese). The church was packed out! We plan a 2nd Chris­t­ian movie next Fri­day to get draw more young peo­ple. After that, they will orga­nized games and evan­gel­i­cal pro­grams to help these teenagers find Christ and learn to walk accord­ing to the Bible.

P.S. Bre­anne Bram­mer returned to the USA on Wed. due to a diag­no­sis of “com­pli­cat­ed malar­ia”. She is now safe­ly back at her home. We wish her a speedy recovery.

MELISSA FLIES TO RSA TO OBTAIN PERMANENT RESIDENCY STATIS FOR MOZAMBIQUE

Melis­sa, 25 year old Youth Direc­tor from George, S. Africa, is top notch at work­ing with young peo­ple. She has com­mit­ted to a year and will return to us on July 17th, as it will take sev­er­al weeks to get her police clear­ance and oth­er required doc­u­ments in order. WELCOME ABOARD, Melissa!

DANIELLE AND MELISSA’S ENGLISH LESSONS HAS THEM SPEAKING MAKUA!

Nel­son teach­ing Makua and Por­tuguese to Emma, Melis­sa, and Danielle (sit­ting in our pro-school class­room) cause it has a black board.

Nel­son, my won­der­ful 16 year old orphan inter­preter, has now turned lan­guage teacher! Nel­son desires to fol­low in my foot­steps as a Preacher/nurse/interpreter. His first chal­lenge is to learn Eng­lish, so I asked the girls to teach him. The Lord impressed on Melis­sa that she must learn Makua. Next thing I hear, is that they are swap­ping lan­guages! All 3 “student/teachers” are learn­ing at a fast pace. Our meals are now a mix­ture of 4 lan­guages, mak­ing it a bar­rel of laughs. You’ll hear Eng­lish, Africaans, Por­tuguese, and Makua. But Emma and I don’t stop there, as we usu­al­ly throw in a bit of Tex­an when we sing the “HEE HAW TV THEME SONG”. Now the whole team knows it. Lin­da even does the HEE HAW shout with a fan­cy leg kick! P.S. Linda’s birth­day is June 22.

WHY LEARN MAKUA? Because it’s the local lan­guage spo­ken by EVERYONE in the vil­lages. What bet­ter way to teach the Word of God, than to learn it so you don’t depend on an inter­preter like I do. Both these young ladies and Emma, who speaks Span­ish, are also study­ing Por­tuguese from our com­put­er taught coarse.

BIBLE SCHOOL FOR THE MISSIONARIES

Our Inter­na­tion­al Vic­to­ry Bible School has been in ses­sion for sev­er­al years, teach­ing God’s Word to new con­verts in the vil­lages. This week our ener­getic young peo­ple have now start­ed an infor­mal Bible School via DVD for our mis­sion­ar­ies. Each per­son can take it at their own pace to enhance their under­stand­ing of God’s Word. THANK YOU VICTORY CHRISTIAN CENTER for pro­vid­ing us with these classes.

OUR DREAM TEAM IS DEFINENTLY AN ENERGETIC ONE!

They remind me of intel­lec­tu­al sponges, with the speed at which they are learn­ing. Emma and Danielle just com­plet­ed 30 days in Moz., and Melis­sa just joined us on June 1st! No grass grows under their feet for sure!

Danielle and I weighing Toto on our baby scale. He got in a dog fight and needed an injection (dosage by weight) and this was the only scale that would weigh him.

Love and Hugs,

Bush Bun­ny Brenda

Eric Dry

Lin­da Stanley

Emma Clif­ford

Danielle Van Zyl

Melis­sa Olmsdahl

From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog, June 8, 2013

BUSH BUNNY AND TEAM PUSHING TO FINISH CORN BUYING THIS COMING WEEK

Our team of 90 men, 2 trucks, and 4 young ladies pushed an amaz­ing 167 TONS of corn into our barns this week! Just 35 tons remain in the field for the June buy­ing sea­son. Meluco’s price war was very intense, but Sylvia, our orphan­age man­ag­er, was able to res­cue 30 tons of corn before com­mer­cial buy­ers could get it.

 

The 4 young ladies help­ing us have been real troop­ers as it’s a dusty, dirty job. The cool sea­son is upon us, so the temps are in the low 70’s each day, mak­ing it eas­i­er on all of us to get through the intense 5 hours of corn pro­cess­ing each morn­ing. These men are unload­ing and stack­ing over 500 sacks of corn a day. Those bags weigh 140 lbs. (70KG) EACH! Moz. men are tough and VERY STRONG.

 

Lin­da Stan­ley took the girls “shop­ping at our local MALL today”. That’s our “nick name” for the local out­door mar­ket in bustling down­town Bala­ma! They bought me a new “Caplana” with a map of Mozam­bique on it. A Caplana is a 100% cot­ton cloth in vivid col­ors that makes a wrap-around skirt for the local women or in my case, a new table cloth for my book table.

 

Emma and Bre­anne have opened a “shade tree Eng­lish class” on Sat­ur­day after­noons, so they are busy teach­ing verbs to 3 of our youth who help as inter­preters when I teach in the villages.

One of our Land Cruis­ers is due for its year­ly inspec­tion in Pem­ba this week, so Danielle and Melis­sa are out “play­ing” with Eric’s high pres­sure water sprayer that turns a bar­rel of water into an instant CAR WASH! The girls came laugh­ing into the office just now to tell me they were fin­ished, and to show me how hard they worked. The LC looks GREAT! But “Mama Bren­da” sent the girls straight to the show­ers as it looked like they’d had a mud-sling­ing con­test! Guess I’ll have to hide the sprayer on Sat­ur­days as I’m sure they’ll be vol­un­teer­ing to wash the 6 ton truck next! Not sure we would rec­og­nize them after that big job. From the sounds of wild laugh­ter com­ing from the women’s quar­ters, the fun must be con­tin­u­ing in the showers!

Lin­da Stan­ley is in the kitchen, as I hear pots and pans bang­ing. She’s mix­ing up a batch of her home­made GOAT ENCHILADAS for sup­per tonight. YUMMY! This Bun­ny can hard­ly wait. That life here in Bala­ma on a qui­et Sat­ur­day after­noon, where “fun” can be found if you just look for it!

Until next week!

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Eric Dry Lin­da Stanley

Bre­anne Brammer–USA Emma Clif­ford-USA Danielle Van Zyl-RSA Melis­sa Olmsdahl-RSA

From: “Brenda Lange” Date: May 31, 2013, Subject: Birthday Notices

TO ALL MY WONDERFUL FRIENDS!

I was OVERWHELMED by the tremen­dous response received after Lin­da post­ed her Birth­day poem to me.
THANK YOU for all who sent BD mes­sages. With our chal­leng­ing corn buy­ing going on, I’ve not had time to answer most of the 45+ BD wish­es. Please for­give me for that, but at the moment, there are not enough hours in the day to meet the needs of what has to be done to secure food for our orphans. Know that I love you all, and pray for ALL OF YOU! THANK YOU for all the encour­age­ment and love you sent in those won­der­ful notes. I read every one of them, as tears of joy flowed over my cheeks. Yep, you made the Bun­ny VERY HAPPY because many times, I feel a bit for­got­ten out here.

Fil2 saved this yummy “virtual cupcake” for you!

 

God is our provider.

God has pro­vid­ed helpers and for that I am very grate­ful. This team is real­ly won­der­ful, and TOGETHER (that means with your help and prayers) we will defeat the dev­il and save 1000’s of kids.

Love and Hugs, Bush Bun­ny Brenda

On May 25, 2013, at 10:21 PM, Brenda Lange

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG

 

SATAN ON THE RUN,

AS 3 WITCH DOCTORS COME TO CHRIST THIS WEEK!

The Witches Pot is ready for the fire

Last Sun­day, May 19th, our whole team was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in destroy­ing Alena’s Witch Doc­tor Med­i­cine Hut in Nama­ra Vil­lage. This is a big thing out here, and drew a large crowd of curi­ous vil­lagers, as they all thought Satan would do some­thing bad to us.
Ale­na, the Witch Doc­tor, had been sick for sev­er­al months and unable to get heal­ing from her own pow­ers giv­en by Satan. She’d heard of all the mir­a­cle heal­ings at Nama­ra church, so she came to our Bible School meet­ing on Fri­day, May 17th. She learned of Jesus’ heal­ing pow­er, and she made a deci­sion for Christ that very hour. Ale­na was INSTANTLY HEALED when our Pas­tors and Bible School stu­dents prayed for her that day. Upon see­ing this, her hus­band and kids imme­di­ate­ly accept­ed Jesus too! After her Witch Hut was destroyed Sun­day morn­ing (see photos),

The Witches Hut was torn apart and prepared for burning

every­one went to church. The hut would be burned Sun­day night, as strong winds that Sun­day morn­ing made it impos­si­ble to burn with­out catch­ing the neighbor’s homes on fire.

FOUR FAMILIES AND A 2ND WITCH DOCTOR came to Christ in that church ser­vice after see­ing how much Jesus changed this fam­i­ly! The Witch Hut of the 2nd Witch Doc­tor was destroyed and burned on Tuesday.

A last look inside the Witches Hut

 

THE CHAIN REACTION CONTINUES!

Ale­na and her fam­i­ly said they slept peace­ful­ly on Sun­day night after burn­ing the Witch Hut as they had been harassed by evil spir­its since mak­ing a deci­sion for Jesus. The hus­band was so excit­ed about Jesus and how He had healed his wife, that on Mon­day, they walked the 7 km (4.2 miles) to Mapone Vil­lage to tell their whole fam­i­ly about Jesus, their new Savior.

Praising Jesus for the victory

Alena’s moth­er-in-law heard her tes­ti­mo­ny and SHE WANTS JESUS TOO! Two of our Pas­tors will be going there on Wednes­day to lead her to the Lord and destroy her Witch Hut as well. Pas­tor Ramadane will begin a “Shade Tree” church in Mapone so that this “unreached” vil­lage will know that Jesus wants to save and heal them too.

Folks, this is ONLY THE BEGINNING of God’s End Time Har­vest. God is unleash­ing his angels to bring the Earth’s FINAL REVIVAL to those who will “open their ears to hear and eyes to see” the won­ders of God’s Love. It is an hon­or and a priv­i­lege to be a part of this End Time Revival to the “unreached” in north­ern Mozambique.

THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE THROUGH YOUR PRAYERS AND LOVE GIFTS. YOU are a partner in everything we do.

LOVE IN CHRIST, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Gang.

From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog, May 18, 2013

BEAN BUYING FINISHED!!!! 101 TONS IN THE BARN!

Thank you all for your prayers for as you can see, we exceed­ed the min­i­mum 80 tons nec­es­sary to keep the kids in food. Mon­day, the team will join our 80 man haul­ing crew to start the pro­cess­ing so the beans can be stored for up to a year.

VISITORS JOIN THE BUNNY FOR A GOAT RODEO!

Our vis­i­tors arrived safe­ly with all lug­gage on Wed. after­noon. When trav­el­ing 10,000 miles, get­ting here with all lug­gage intact is some­thing to brag about! Pas­tor Buzz has helped bring in the beans for the final 2 days while the 3 young ladies helped with children’s ministry.

Today, the team was up at 4:30a.m. to be at the goat barn by 5:30a.m. Best time to deworm since their tum­mies are emp­ty, and it’s cool weath­er for everyone.

Bre­anne Bram­mer weigh­ing with a “wrap-around goat weight tape, so Bren­da can give the right dose of de-wormer.

 

Emma Clifford gets lots of attention from a very friendly baby goat. If you put him on the ground, he follows you around so he can chew on your skirt when you stand still.

Bre­anne Bram­mer and Danielle Van Zyl are both from farm fam­i­lies and were a GREAT HELP with weigh­ing and draw­ing up the med­i­cine for the goats while I did the dos­ing (got­ta keep your fin­gers in the right spot in their mouth or you’ll lose it!) They have very pow­er­ful jaw teeth.

Danielle Van Zyl and her new “baby”.

Emma Clif­ford and Pas­tor Buzz Sny­der took the pho­tos and then wan­dered off to play with the babies.

Pastor Buzz Snyder and Pastor Joaguim (goat barn manager)

After all, it does get a bit bor­ing when you do the same thing to 70 goats in a row. Our 8 goat wran­glers did all the catch­ing and hold­ing. They are get­ting very good at it, and our goats are a bit tamer than last year, so all went smooth­ly. Last year our “ Mom­my goats” were real­ly WILD!

The pho­tos tell it all.

Love and Hugs from the Bala­ma Team Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Eric Dry Lin­da Stan­ley Vis­i­tors: Pas­tor Buzz Sny­der Bre­anne Bram­mer Emma Clif­ford Danielle Van Zyl
PS A hap­py “thanks” to Amy Clif­ford, of Mag­no­lia, Texas, for notic­ing the jux­ta­po­si­tion­ing of our great pics of Emma and Danielle in Blog #1, pub­lished ealier today.

Amy is Emma’s Mom, and she noticed the mis­take right away… good going Amy. You are a blessing!

From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog, May 11, 2013 Date: May 11, 2013

UPDATE ON OUR 2 BABIES IN THE HOSPITAL

Test­ing showed that both are suf­fer­ing from CHRONIC MALARIA, which occurs when you have malar­ia and don’t get it treat­ed. They were admit­ted to the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal imme­di­ate­ly on Thurs­day. This fam­i­ly lived over 12 miles from a hos­pi­tal. The granny is ema­ci­at­ed and has no ener­gy to car­ry them. Nor did she have any mon­ey to buy the need­ed med­i­cine when they first got sick 3 months ago, so she didn’t even try. That is why we moved them into one of our homes near the mis­sion sta­tion. The Granny has been nurs­ing both babies, and her body has noth­ing left to give. Besides try­ing to save the 6 chil­dren, 3 are orphans, she is also car­ry­ing for her own moth­er, who basi­cal­ly needs total care. Our Bala­ma Doc­tor esti­mates the 2 babies have had malar­ia for 3 out of the 9 months of their lit­tle lives. When we saw them 2 days ago, they were in the last stages before death, so we got them to the hos­pi­tal just in time. Unlike nor­mal malar­ia, the symp­toms are masked much of the time as it runs in cycles. When they don’t have any fever, which is how we saw them 2 weeks ago, they don’t appear to have malar­ia. But when they can no longer hold down any­thing, even milk for­mu­la, then that is a sign that the malar­ia is ready to cycle again. As of this morn­ing, both are respond­ing well to treat­ment, and are able to hold down small amounts of food and milk. I’ll keep you post­ed on their progress.

SAD NEWS is that at 4:30a.m. today, our head Pas­tor, Fred, called me to tell me that the doc­tors man­aged to save his wife, but lost their baby. Fred’s wife began to bleed yes­ter­day at noon, (only 8 months preg­nant), and was tak­en imme­di­ate­ly to the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal. The Doc­tor trans­ferred her to Mon­tepuez Region­al Hos­pi­tal by 3pm, but they were unable to stop her labor. The baby was buried in Mon­tepuez this morn­ing, as Fred’s wife will have to stay in the hos­pi­tal through the week­end. A body dete­ri­o­rates rapid­ly in this heat, as there is no way to pre­serve it, so the bur­ial has to be imme­di­ate. Keep this fam­i­ly in your prayers, is this is her 2nd mis­car­riage in the last 18 months.

BUSH BUNNY TIDBITS

All the baby goats are doing well, so we dewormed our 30+, 1–3 month olds today, plus our 2 large males who ser­vice the herd. (I’ll do all the preg­nant mom­mas next Sat­ur­day.) Elvis, our big dad­dy goat, got his name because he grows a beard and has a super long MANE,at his top­knot, above his eyes. The poor guy could hard­ly see, he had so much hair cov­er­ing his eyes, so Mama Bren­da was pre­pared with sharp scis­sors. Elvis got his first hair­cut and wasn’t too hap­py while I was doing it! I won’t get any awards for this hair­cut, but at least he can now see. He seemed to like it once we let him go. Guess it gets old try­ing to find the ladies only by smell. Now he can see how beau­ti­ful they are!

BUSH BUNNY BRENDA A MAJOR BEAN BROKER!

Pray for con­tin­ued favor for the Bean Harvest
We have 38 TONS of beans in the barn, and a “promised” 80 tons in the field. We’ve giv­en out sacks for that much, but are not sure the peo­ple will be able to fill them. Once the Lord showed us where to look, the flood gates opened! God is reveal­ing His mas­sive pow­er to pro­vide for his chil­dren when all looks bleak in the nat­ur­al. Our goal is to have all the beans in the barn by next Sat­ur­day. Pro­cess­ing for long term stor­age will begin May 20th.

TEAM OF VISITORS TO FLY OUT OF USA THIS MONDAY

We pray trav­el­ing mer­cies for our Mis­sion Team

Retired Pas­tor, Buzz SNYDER, TEXAN trans­plant­ed to Atlanta, GA Bre­anne Bram­mer, Un. of Mis­souri Emma Clif­ford, Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty, Austin, TX Michele Davis, Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty, Austin, TX

From South Africa, we wel­come 18 year old Danielle Van Zyl, from the town of Hei­del­berg. Her par­ents have their own orphan­age called Shalom Children’s Home so Danielle has great expe­ri­ence in work­ing with chil­dren of all ages.

This team will be with us till July 31st in order to help get the food into the barn and assist with our children’s pro­grams. Our thanks goes out to each of them for giv­ing of their time and finances to help us res­cue and evan­ge­lize in Mozambique.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Eric Dry Lin­da Stan­ley The Bala­ma staff