From:Brenda Lange
Date: Sep­tem­ber 17, 2011
Sub­ject: Blog, Sept. 17, 2011

MORE New Reg­u­la­tions for Orphan Homes sets off wave of mass construction.
 
  Praise the Lord that these new rules do not affect our 20 mud brick homes host­ing wid­owed grand­moth­ers who are rais­ing their orphaned grandchildren.
But the new rules spec­i­fy that orphans liv­ing in “Fos­ter Homes” (because they have no fam­i­ly at all), must be housed in CONCRETE BRICK homes.
It affects 5 of our homes host­ing 15 orphans and 2 fos­ter moth­ers (as well as our teenage boy’s dorm).
The con­struc­tion must be fin­ished by Dec. 2012.
Sounds like a long way off, but Dec. to April is the rainy sea­son mak­ing con­struc­tion very difficult.
 
Cur­rent­ly, I’m super­vis­ing the con­struc­tion of the new dorm for orphan boys ages 11 to 18.
Our con­struc­tion teams con­sist of 3 brick lay­ing teams, one roof­ing crew, an 11 man rock break­ing crew, and 1 car­pen­try team mak­ing doors and windows.
Out here if you need some­thing, you make it yourself.
 
This is what it takes to build some­thing in our area:
Our car­pen­ters con­tract­ed wood cut­ters to cut 4X4 beams and boards in the bush.  We trans­port them to our ware­house, where the car­pen­ters turn them into roofs, doors, win­dows, and tables for the kids.
The brick lay­ers have to have cer­tain size rocks for the foun­da­tions of the homes, so 11 men sit all day in a shad­ed area break­ing rocks with hammers.
The only thing we buy ready-made is nails, tin roof­ing sheets, and bags of cement.  All that has to be hauled in from 30 miles away.
In fact, our 6 ton truck took a load of food to Meluco’s orphans yes­ter­day, and on their return will buy 5 tons of cement that must be unloaded this after­noon into our warehouse.
 
Noth­ing comes easy out here.
Once the dorm is fin­ished we will have to start build­ing the 5 new fos­ter homes.
I’ll tell you more about that once the dorm con­struc­tion is completed.
 
SECOND REGULATION:  Each large orphan pro­gram must hire a grad­u­ate of the Social Ser­vice School in Maputo to help super­vise the orphans.
  Nilza, our 21 year old new grad­u­ate will be arriv­ing TONIGHT from Maputo.
Cape­na, my office man­ag­er, left at 4:30a.m. today to fetch her at the Pem­ba airport.
We are cur­rent­ly orga­niz­ing a house for her too.  In the mean­time, she will stay with Domini­ca, our Woman’s Pastor.
Going from Maputo city to a mud hut will be a cul­ture shock for her.
We all hope she can make the adjustments.
 
CHURCH UPDATE:
1.      ROOF COMPLETED for Kop­wee­to Church (donat­ed by Rebec­ca Har­ris’ and sup­port­ers from Rock Island, TX area). THANK YOU to all who sup­port­ed Rebec­ca and helped her make this roof pos­si­ble.  The church mem­bers are VERY excit­ed to have a good roof to pro­tect the new church they built.
2.     DONOR of Kwe Kwe church walls, Bette Everett, of Cypress, TX. THANK YOU for mak­ing it pos­si­ble for these new Chris­tians to have “strong walls” for their church.   Pas­tor Alber­to went to Kwe Kwe today on his motor­bike to teach God’s Word and orga­nize a brick lay­er to fin­ish the church walls this week.   I just received the 4X4 roof­ing beams yes­ter­day, so our car­pen­ter team will be going out by the end of Sept. to put on the roof.
3.     Pequar­ia, the lit­tle church I per­son­al­ly dis­ci­ple, is hard at work mak­ing bricks so they can build a small church.  The old build­ing we meet in will not last through this rainy sea­son as the roof is already “sway­back”, and is being held up by one tree trunk.  The walls are full of ter­mites, as they ate the bam­boo and fence posts used to hold up the mud plas­ter.  I’ve con­vinced them that it is bet­ter to meet in the shade out­side their present church for now.
4.      Nac­ca­ca Church has hit per­se­cu­tion from the vil­lage chief who stopped a meet­ing last week claim­ing we are ille­gal­ly there.  Reli­gious Affairs has been noti­fied and this should be cleared up this week. The gov­ern­ment rec­og­nizes us as a reg­is­tered church and will send the police if nec­es­sary to inform the vil­lage lead­ers of this fact, as they are in the wrong try­ing to stop us from meet­ing in their village.
 
MIRACULOUS RECOVERY FROM MALARIA!
Sam Lyles start­ed with a high fever on Wed. evening fol­lowed by all the oth­er symp­toms of malaria.
Prayer fol­lowed imme­di­ate­ly by treat­ment was the course of action.
Malar­ia is usu­al­ly quite drain­ing the first time some­one has it, which was the case the first 24 hours with Sam.
Sam’s words were, “I feel like I was hit by a truck.” (which is exact­ly what it feels like).  You become weak as a new born kit­ten, no appetite, and have a severe headache if you sit up at all.
Yet 24 hours after the onset, Sam is out of bed, walks the 100 yards to my house, and EATS with us.
THAT, my friends is the pow­er of Jesus’ heal­ing pow­er, cause it is NOT ORDINARY.
We PTL for Sam’s quick recovery.
 
The Lord’s Bless­ings on all you put your hands too in the week ahead.
Love in Christ,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Team