BEAN BUYING HAS BEGUN We received our buy­ing license last Fri­day, then gave out sacks on Mon­day so our Pas­tors and their church mem­bers could begin fill­ing them. Weigh­ing start­ed on Fri­day and will com­plete on Mon­day for the beans.  It’s already cool here with the ear­ly morn­ings at 60 F/19C which great­ly helps our work­ers to stay cool. I can hear you all laugh­ing about the tem­per­a­tures, but since we are REALLY HOT 9 months of the year, that’s a big drop for us.

My 4:30 a.m. view of the day’s work on Fri­day. 736 sacks at 60kg/ 132lbs. Each.

Fri­day, our 40-man team moved, weighed, and stacked 736 sacks of beans weigh­ing 132lbs./60kg each. Since we start­ed at 4:30 a.m., I have only a car head­light pho­to of what it looked like when we start­ed. This team is very strong and real­ly good, as we com­plet­ed the pro­gram by 7 a.m. and had a nice break­fast of fresh­ly baked bread rolls and a large fried bean pat­ty called a “bagia”. (Bah-gee-ah) Thanks to your love gifts, we will have enough beans in the barn to keep over 1,800 orphans and the wid­ows who raise them, from suf­fer­ing pro­tein mal­nu­tri­tion this year. TWO- AND 3‑YEAR-OLDS LEARNING TUG-O-WAR It is a joy to see our lit­tle ones grow­ing up, and hav­ing so much fun doing it! Last Sat­ur­day, all the chil­dren were on the soc­cer field play­ing games, when I man­aged to catch the 2- to 3‑year-olds at their first tug-o-war game. Hilar­i­ous hard­ly describes it, so enjoy the video I made of their first attempt at grab­bing the bean bag for their team. (Win­ner is the first to pull the oth­ers to their side where one of the chil­dren can grab the bean bag.)

Our 3‑year-olds hav­ing their first 4 way tug-of-war!

Noth­ing like see­ing them in action!

NOTE: From now until food buy­ing is over in late July, the blogs will be short but sweet. Your prayers for all of us will be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed, as it is no easy task to move 500 TONS of beans, corn, rice, and peanuts by hand. The group of men who do this are very strong, but the job is still exhaust­ing for all of us. Bless­ings,  Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange And the Bala­ma Staff