KIDNAPPED

 

MEET DOMINICA, AGE TWO

Nov. 1st start­ed out as an unevent­ful food dis­tri­b­u­tion morn­ing at our Bala­ma base, which turned into an “AMBER ALERT” by 2pm. The 2 year old tod­dler, Domini­ca, has been with us for over 18 months. She was removed from her home as a 6 month old infant, due to severe neglect by her “men­tal­ly dis­turbed moth­er” (giv­en no food until she almost starved to death, and left out­side to cry for hours with no care). This woman has caused sev­er­al dis­tur­bances at Balbina’s fos­ter home in the past, includ­ing one inci­dent where she brought her machete and demand­ed the return of her child. When that occurred last year, Bal­bi­na sent some­one to fetch us and calm­ly kept this woman “at arm’s length” until help arrived. A severe coun­selling at the police sta­tion, and she kept her dis­tance for over 10 months. Last Thurs­day, this high­ly dis­turbed moth­er went to Balbina’s house demand­ing her food allowance for the week. (She nev­er showed up at our mis­sion sta­tion that morn­ing to get the food we nor­mal­ly give her). Bal­bi­na explained she didn’t have her food, and that she would have to go to Mama Bren­da, as the food dis­tri­b­u­tion was over. She began to scream at Bal­bana and grabbed for Domini­ca, who was being held in Balbina’s arms. Bal­bi­na jerked away, but not before this woman bit Balbina’s arm. The pain from the bite, loos­ened Balbina’s grip enough that this des­per­ate woman was able to snatch the child and run. Balbina’s hus­band got home just has it all hap­pened. He raced to my office on his bicy­cle to tell us that Domini­ca had been kid­napped. Domini­ca was once again in the hands of this men­tal­ly unsta­ble woman and no one knew where she would be tak­en. (FYI: Bal­bi­na was fine as the bite didn’t’ break the skin.)

I imme­di­ate­ly called our Dis­trict Social Ser­vices offi­cer, but he was in Pem­ba (4 hours away). He instruct­ed me to get our lead­ers and go to the police if she wouldn’t return the child. Cape­na, Head Admin­is­tra­tor for O.U, in Bala­ma, and Nilza, our res­i­dent Social Ser­vice work­er, met me at my house. We decid­ed to “trade her” for what she real­ly want­ed. (The food she nev­er picked up that morn­ing.) She has said many times she has no use for Domini­ca, so we knew she didn’t real­ly want the child.

We fixed up the food she was sup­posed to receive that morn­ing and went look­ing for her. PTL that she head­ed to her mud hut in a vil­lage about 3 miles from us, and our team locat­ed her near her home. She will­ing­ly gave up Domini­ca in exchange for the food, and was told that if she does this again, she will go to jail. (The Police is the only thing she is real­ly scared of). In Moz., the laws pro­tect the men­tal­ly dis­turbed. Unless she phys­i­cal­ly harms some­one, the police can do noth­ing to this woman. So although this looks like it was not the right thing to do (giv­ing her what she want­ed), the impor­tant thing is that Domini­ca was returned unharmed. This was very trau­mat­ic for Domini­ca, as she sees Bal­bi­na as her true moth­er. She pos­si­bly has some mem­o­ry of the bad times in her ear­ly life with her birth moth­er, so right now we are con­cen­trat­ing on mak­ing her feel secure. We also real­ize that if this woman fails to pick up her food in future, we need to take spe­cial pre­cau­tions to pre­vent a repeat of this incident.

WEIRD WEATHER IN MOZAMBIQUE

Nor­mal­ly, Octo­ber and Novem­ber are SUPER HOT AND DRY—98–102 degrees F (38–40 C) with no rains till end of Novem­ber. But Antarc­ti­ca has been send­ing us some unique cold fronts this year, caus­ing many kids to have colds and upper res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tions. Remem­ber, these kids have only thin cot­ton cloth­ing, and most don’t own a long sleeve shirt, much less a jack­et. Thurs­day and Fri­day it RAINED many hours with strong, bit­ter­ly cold winds com­ing from the south. I spent the day in a sweat suit!

With the unex­pect­ed rains, our teams had to scram­ble as the Nac­ca­ca church is not roofed yet, and the Nama­ra church need­ed it’s con­crete foot­ing and oil paint to pro­tect it from blow­ing rain. Our 18 man brick lay­ing team went out yes­ter­day and in 6 hours com­plet­ed all the work on the Nama­ra church. Our teams will work hard this week to dig the holes need­ed so the roof can be built over the Nac­ca­ca church.

With Jesus return­ing soon, the only “norm” we can expect is that “NOTHING WILL BE AS IT WAS IN THE PAST”. So expect the unex­pect­ed and you won’t be caught off guard.

ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Michael Lowe, of North Car­oli­na arrived yes­ter­day. After church today, I took Michael to 3 of our homes so he could “get a visu­al” on what is need­ed. He will be assist­ing us in plan­ning and build­ing 2 types of very effi­cient wood burn­ing stoves that use only small amounts of fire­wood, even twigs if that is all you have. I’ll keep you updat­ed on how this goes and we’ll send pho­tos of the end result. Michael has 3 weeks to orga­nize, build, and train our team to dupli­cate what works best with our local materials.

Bless­ings, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma gang

 

From: “Brenda Lange” Date: November 4, 2012, 7:25:24 AM CST Subject: Blog addition, Nov. 4th, 2012

 

THE PRICE OF SERVICE TO OUR LORD JESUS

In Mozam­bique, if you want a church in the bush, the mem­bers have to build it. Pas­tor Alber­to just returned a few min­utes ago with a heavy heart. He went to preach God’s Word at Ntele, a very remote vil­lage with over 40 adults and 80+ chil­dren attend­ing our newest “under the tree” church each Sun­day. The rainy sea­son is only 2 weeks away, so the mem­bers are in a rush to com­plete their church. It only lacks the roof. Late yes­ter­day after­noon, a group of church men were out cut­ting bam­boo poles for the roof. The grass and bam­boos were sway­ing in the heavy winds. It was hard to hear and dif­fi­cult to see with all the dust fly­ing. Unknown to these men, a black mam­ba, the fastest snake in the world, was stalk­ing the area. The snake struck one of the men before any­one saw it. That man only had min­utes to say his good­byes before his tongue was par­a­lyzed by the fast act­ing ven­om. He met Jesus a few min­utes lat­er. Alber­to encoun­tered the church mem­bers dig­ging his grave when he arrived. Alber­to preached the funer­al, as the whole vil­lage looked on.

This man did not die in vain, as many from his vil­lage heard the gospel today who might not have ever heard it oth­er­wise. His earth­ly body lays near the church he helped build, while he’s enjoy­ing a NEW BODY with Christ Jesus in heaven.

BLESSINGS,

BBB and The Bala­ma Gang