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