TWINS AT LUNCH TIME This cou­ple walked a LOOOONG WAY to get help for their tiny twins. Their home vil­lage is about 30km/15 miles from our base. First, they took the babies for advice and help at an out­ly­ing clin­ic about 6 miles from us. That clin­ic direct­ed them to walk to the Bala­ma Hos­pi­tal where they arrived exhausted.

Par­ents watch intent­ly as Anna teach­es, and Social Ser­vices tech, Dulce, observes. Mix­ing milk and using a bot­tle is very for­eign to remote vil­lage residents.

Only 4.4lbs./2 kgs each, these 5‑week-old twins were in des­per­ate need of milk. What lit­tle breast milk the moth­er had was now gone. Social Ser­vices called me, ask­ing if we could spare the milk to assist these babies. Since the cyclone left few sup­plies in the local stores, every­one knew that our sup­plies were lim­it­ed also. But thanks to our mot­to of always being pre­pared, I had stock piled baby for­mu­la and ster­ile water bot­tles before the cyclone hit, know­ing that sup­plies would be hard to get after the storm.

Baby’s first attempt at drink­ing from a bot­tle. Very dif­fer­ent from breast feeding.

I called our Children’s Direc­tor, Anna, who went with me to the hos­pi­tal to teach the par­ents how to mix the for­mu­la. We had to rush, as a heavy rain storm was mov­ing in. We had 5 days of rain after the cyclone left our area. The par­ents of the twins would stay with fam­i­ly in Bala­ma, so they were instruct­ed to come to our mis­sion the fol­low­ing day to offi­cial­ly enroll in the baby for­mu­la pro­gram. Twins at lunch time means drop­ping every­thing to go the extra mile to save lit­tle lives, espe­cial­ly when heavy rains are on the horizon!

THIS WEEK IN BALAMA… Found all of us work­ing hard to keep the chil­dren healthy, and over­come the last of the cyclone effects. Malar­ia has been a big prob­lem for all ages here, so we are pray­ing for the rains to STOP! NO RAIN will decrease the mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tion, and thus decrease the malar­ia cas­es. The corn, bean, and rice crops are all pro­duc­ing well, and we are thrilled that the cyclone didn’t send a lot of wind our way. (The 515 Melu­co orphans and wid­ows liv­ing north of us didn’t get any rain at all from the cyclone, PTL, as they all live in frag­ile mud huts.)  THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS FOR OUR FOSTER MOTHERS AND THE CHILDREN IN OUR CARE.RAISING CHILDREN TAKES A LOT OF HARD WORK, AND KNOWING YOU ARE HOLDING UP OUR HANDS WITH YOUR PRAYERS, MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE TO ALL OF US. BLESSINGS, BUSH BUNNY BRENDA LANGE AND THE BALAMA STAFF