CYCLONE CAUSES MASSIVE DAMAGE IN NORTHERN MOZAMBIQUE Our chil­dren and staff spent Mon­day to Fri­day this week, try­ing to avoid the many rain show­ers that came with Cyclone Jude. The dam­age wasn’t to our build­ings, PTL, but to the bridges and roads south of us that con­nect us to all the sup­plies we need.   This is seri­ous, as we depend on sup­ply trucks that come from Maputo and South Africa.Several bridges and pieces of the roads were destroyed on the major north to south road that all sup­ply trucks must use. So, need­less to say, there were no pro­grams of any kind this week since schools were closed for sev­er­al days, and the mud­dy ground made any out­door activ­i­ties impos­si­ble. Our biggest con­cern this week was Esteva­sia, our 9‑month-old baby girl who is in crit­i­cal con­di­tion in the Bala­ma hos­pi­tal. From Mon­day to Tues­day, the sit­u­a­tion looked pret­ty grim for her recov­ery as she refused to eat or drink any­thing for 4 days.

Esteva­sia with her Fos­ter Mom at the hospital.

But Wednes­day, the Doc­tor real­ized that her refusal to eat was because of a seri­ous Fun­gus infec­tion in her esoph­a­gus. We were con­tact­ed to find a spe­cial IV med­i­cine that would destroy this fun­gus, but it is hard to come by. (I con­tribute this find and her improve­ment since this find, to the ongo­ing world-wide prayer chain for her.) THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS! We locat­ed 3 pills of this anti-fun­gal med­i­cine in a small Bala­ma Phar­ma­cy, but the only IV form was locat­ed in a Pem­ba phar­ma­cy. We bought the pills, and the hos­pi­tal liqui­fied the cor­rect dosage and gave it to her oral­ly at noon on Wednes­day. By that night she was able to swal­low a few bites of liq­uid Hypo cere­al and drink some water. This is the first nutri­ents she has con­sumed in 4 days! Every­one was ecsta­t­ic! Thanks to the help of my phar­ma­cy friends in Pem­ba, they called to tell me they had FIVE IV BOTTLES of this med­i­cine! At 1pm, my friends placed it on a taxi that the phar­ma­cy knew would get it to Mon­tepuez (town 60 km/30 miles from us). They even paid for the trans­port! The med­i­cine arrived at 9pm last night (trav­el time is 6 hours min­i­mum, 8 hours in the dark). Our mechan­ic, Sim­ba, was wait­ing at the taxi park to pick it up min­utes after it arrived.

Sim­ba’s head­lights reveal Man­go tree block­ing the road.

But the sto­ry con­tin­ues, because Cyclone Jude had weak­ened the ground of a large Man­go tree near the road that goes between Bala­ma and Mon­tepuez. Just 9 miles/18km out of Mon­tepuez, Sim­ba had to stop as the road was blocked by this huge Man­go tree that had fall­en over the road while he was wait­ing for the med­i­cine. Sim­ba and sev­er­al locals worked 4 hours, final­ly man­ag­ing to break and chop part of the limbs off of this huge tree so that his pick-up could squeeze by. He didn’t arrive in Bala­ma with the med­i­cine until 3 a.m.! But nonethe­less, this med­i­cine is now being giv­en to Estava­sia, so stay tuned for the “rest of the sto­ry”. **see update, below. PLEASE KEEP PRAYING AS HER HEALTH COULD STILL GO EITHER WAY.WE SERVE A MIRACLE WORKING JESUS, AND I EXPECT GREAT THINGS TO COME OF ALL THIS.  BLESSINGS, BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE AND THE BALAMA STAFF

UPDATE: As we were prepar­ing this blog post to be dis­trib­uted to you all on our mail­ing list, Bren­da called to share the dif­fi­cult news that Estava­sia had gone on to meet Jesus. Every­one was so hope­ful, espe­cial­ly in light of her recent ral­ly. But she was called home, now made whole and pain-free. Please con­tin­ue your prayers for the whole Mozam­bique team, espe­cial­ly Estavasi­a’s Fos­ter Mom. Bren­da will pro­vide a fur­ther update in a few days.