MORE GOATS AND MANY MORE ON THEIR WAY
 
On Sat­ur­day I went out to see the goats and inspect the new cor­ral we just built for the 4 “teenage” boy goats who now think they are ready to be Daddies.
They keep chas­ing the lit­tle girl goats, so it was time to give every­one a rest by keep­ing them apart dur­ing the lunch break.
Just as I arrived, 3 goats were born and they were ALL GIRLS!  Yippee and Praise the Lord!
One set of twins from the goats in barn Num­ber 1 which is where all the indi­vid­ual donor’s goats live, and one sin­gle birth from Barn No. 2, which is the But­ler FUMC barn.  All 3 are healthy and were up suck­ing before I left the scene.  The lat­est But­ler FUMC twin boys were in our hol­low tree, play­ing their ver­sion of “king of the moun­tain”.  All is well on the “goat scene”.
 
I have to tell you that last week, one of the 3 week old boy goats got real­ly upset when one of the teenage boy goats tried to mate his Mom.
If I’d had a video of the per­for­mance of that 3 week old, it would have made World’s Fun­ni­est Videos for sure!  He had all of us in stitch­es dur­ing his 60 sec­ond per­for­mance to pro­tect his Mom.
The lit­tle guy lit­er­al­ly ran from front to back of the old­er boy like a fast mov­ing pup­py can nip and bite and dodge out of the way before a big­ger dog can catch it.  He had that big­ger goat run­ning in cir­cles try­ing to defend him­self.  Need­less to say, the old­er goat left his moth­er alone from then on!
Baby goats 1, Teenagers 0.
 
 
DONATED CORN WILL POUR FROM OUR BARNS THIS WEEK
  On Tues­day, both trucks and one Land Cruis­er will roll out of our gates filled to the brim with corn and beans for the hun­gry kids in Namuno.
We plan 3 days of mas­sive dis­tri­b­u­tions this week, and 3 next week in order to get ALL THE FOOD to these chil­dren before the rainy sea­son starts in November.
Had a small rain yes­ter­day, so took that as a warn­ing to “get hopping”!
In these 6 days over 50 TONS of corn and 12 TONS of beans will be dis­trib­uted to the Namuno children.
Each child will also receive soap and iodized salt.
These are YOUR LOVE GIFTS at work.
Thank you for giv­ing so that these kids might live to hear about Jesus.
Our 2 evan­ge­lists are work­ing hard to bring the gospel to these chil­dren by attract­ing a crowd with a soc­cer ball.
Two church­es have already been start­ed in the last 30 days!
 
NAMUNO CHURCH SCENE
  The crowd is grow­ing as we had over 100 Sun­day School chil­dren and about 40 teens and adults today.
Lit­tle 3 year old Gil­da, a child who has brain dam­age and par­tial paral­y­sis on her left side as a result of hav­ing cere­bral malar­ia as a 2 year old, was seen by our Bala­ma Doc­tor last week.  He pre­scribed some med­i­cine that I was able to buy in Pem­ba to help con­trol her minor seizures that are a result of her brain dam­age.  After 1 week on the meds, Gilda’s Mom reports that she had NO seizures this week at all!  Gil­da was super alert and seemed very con­tent to be in church today.  Nor­mal­ly she is very rest­less.  It’s won­der­ful to see how such a small thing as get­ting a pre­scrip­tion filled for a sin­gle Mom can make a dif­fer­ence in 2 people’s lives. 
Why no major mir­a­cle sto­ries for sev­er­al weeks?
Cause most of the group are HEALTHY thanks to Jesus and no mir­a­cles are need­ed at the moment.
The long lines for prayer for the sick are down to only 4 or 5 people!
I chal­lenged every­one to bring a friend to church next week.
So all is going very well this side.
 
May God’s Bless­ings be heaped on all of you this week!
 
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Gang
 
 
 
 
 
 

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog, Oct. 7, 2012
Date: Octo­ber 7, 2012 7:25:23 AM CDT

BUSH BUNNY BUGGY MAKING THE ROUNDS
8 NEW BABY GOATS THIS WEEK!

Sam and I, as well as Pas­tor Fred and our guard, Mon­sur, made it back safe­ly from Pem­ba yes­ter­day. But the Bun­ny Bug­gy (as I call my Toy­ota Land Cruis­er) is a mobile med­ical clin­ic for both man and ani­mals.  As we sat down to sup­per, my cell phone rang.  Pas­tor Joaquin, our goat herd man­ag­er, report­ed that one of the But­ler Methodist goats with TWINS was show­ing weak­ness and refus­ing to eat.  So a quick bite of food, grab the night guard, and off I go at dusk to the goat barns in Rovu­ma vil­lage, 4 miles away.  Got there just as the sun was set­ting, so pulled out my pow­er­ful flash­light and went to work.  This new “Mom­my goat” was in dis­tress due to post­par­tum ane­mia pro­voked by stom­ach worms. Giv­ing birth trig­gers a response caus­ing any stom­ach worms present in her tum­my to mul­ti­ply rapid­ly, thus suck­ing all the goats blood, leav­ing her weak and unable to function.

 
A few cc’s of de-wormer liq­uid, and a Vit. B injec­tion has her look­ing right perky today.  Had a great time look­ing over all the goats today as we have 8 NEW BABIES this week (6 boys and 2 girls with TWO SETS OF TWINS).  I got pho­tos of most of them, as they are all part of the new herd that belongs to the But­ler, PA, FUMC Sun­day School Chil­dren.  All the Mom­my goats are very close to hav­ing their babies, so it is going to be a busy month for De Bun­ny and her Bun­ny Buggy!

The Bun­ny Bug­gy also helps out sick kids and the wid­ows that care for them. Today in Nama­ra, we helped over 100 kids get rid of their tum­my worms by giv­ing them one sim­ple lit­tle tablet cost­ing only a few cents. I vis­it­ed Zito who has a tooth ache and a new boil over his ribs which is very painful.  I gave him some med­i­cine to help decrease his pain, and we’ll get him in to see the doc­tor first thing this week.  He loves play­ing with the new RED MUSTANG HOTWHEELS CAR we gave him for learn­ing to walk with his crutch­es. Keep your prayers com­ing, as he still needs to gain strength, but these sick­ness­es are drain­ing his energy.

ANOTHER HEALING BEGINS IN NAMARA CHURCH

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: “Heal­ings” hap­pen over a peri­od of time (same as a wound heals) while “mir­a­cles” are com­plet­ed instantly.

Today, we had over 150 peo­ple attend the church ser­vice includ­ing 2 of the 3 vil­lage lead­ers. A grand­moth­er came with her 5 year old orphaned grand­daugh­ter, Christi­na.  Christi­na had cere­bral malar­ia about a year ago, and is now men­tal­ly slow because of it.  She lost her abil­i­ty to stand, walk, or speak after the malar­ia attack. Today, she received prayer, and imme­di­ate­ly began to STAND with only minor help. She was so excit­ed that she couldn’t stop gig­gling, and even tried to dance in place. She did man­age 2 steps for­ward before her laugh­ter became con­ta­gious and had every­one laugh­ing with her! Two of our orphan teenagers were with me today, and they shared EVA’s tes­ti­mo­ny to encour­age the grand­moth­er. Twelve year old EVA, a cere­bral pal­sy child who has lived with us since she was 2,  was much worse than Christi­na is now. When she came to us, Eva had 6 epilep­tic attacks a day, could not eat with­out help, and didn’t walk or talk.

WITH JESUS, noth­ing is impos­si­ble and after prayer, Eva start­ed get­ting bet­ter. After 6 months on med­ica­tion and with much prayer, Eva was sud­den­ly cured of her epilep­sy and NO LONGER NEEDED MEDICATIONS. EVA, now 12 years old,  dances down the aisle of our Bala­ma church SINGING as she leads in the children’s choir each Sun­day.  She speaks in bro­ken Por­tuguese AND Makua, and can help with sim­ple choirs around the house. This real­ly encour­aged Christina’s grand­moth­er, as Christi­na is a hand full, since she is nev­er still. Keep your prayers com­ing for Christi­na and her grand­moth­er, as we expect many won­der­ful reports on her progress in the com­ing weeks.

THANKS FOR ALL YOU DO TO HELP US MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THESE PEOPLE’S LIVES.

The 2 vil­lage chiefs are so, so hap­py at how we pray and help the peo­ple with what we have. This is YOUR LOVE GIFTS in action.

Bless­ings,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma gang

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog, Oct. 4, 2012
Date: Octo­ber 4, 2012 7:46:29 AM CDT
To:

HOLIDAY IN MOZ. GIVES THE TEAM A BREAK

After 140 TONS of Corn passed through our sack­ing chutes, all of us were ready to cel­e­brate! WE THANK YOU AGAIN as your love gifts cov­ered the cost of the corn, the pro­cess­ing, AND the trans­port to get it to the mal­nour­ished chil­dren lat­er his month.

We still have 120 sacks com­ing in on Mon­day to com­plete our emer­gency food stash, but that will only take 2 hours to process and put away. Our team will be in Mavala at the Man­go Tree church tomor­row, (Fri­day), dis­trib­ut­ing food to approx­i­mate­ly 400 orphans and widows.

Due to new Immi­gra­tion rules, Saman­tha and I will leave at 5 a.m. on a 4 hour dri­ve to  Pem­ba to renew her 30 day visa.  Immi­gra­tion now requires each vis­i­tor to take a dig­i­tal pho­to at their office in order to renew for anoth­er 30 days.  For those of you who aren’t aware of for­eign laws, most African coun­tries allow a per­son to vis­it up to 90 days on one visa stamp.  Mozam­bique is a bit dif­fer­ent in that they allow a per­son to stay up to 90 days, BUT their Pass­port must be re-stamped  at an Immi­gra­tion office in the near­est state cap­i­tal at the end of each 30 day peri­od. We will be back in Bala­ma on Sat­ur­day and plan a trip out to Nama­ra church on Sunday.

A big Thank You to Ruth Conaway for her gift of Tup­per­are. This is the first Tup­per­ware, ever, in Bala­ma. Thank you from the “smil­ing team”, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da, Saman­tha, Eric, and Leona.

A TOUCH OF RESPECT AND KINDNESS

At the emer­gency room of our Bala­ma hos­pi­tal this week, I was observ­ing the Doc­tor as he cleaned and applied a new ban­dage to Veronica’s “almost healed” burns on her left foot. Sud­den­ly a force­ful knock­ing on the ER door star­tled all of us.  (this is unusu­al as few peo­ple knock on doors in this cul­ture) A man quick­ly entered and whis­pered some­thing to one of the male nurs­es.  A woman walked through the door with a baby wrapped in a “caplana” (a col­or­ful piece of cot­ton cloth used as a wrap-around skirt for the woman). The 3 adults quick­ly walked to one of the obser­va­tion beds so the nurse could check the lit­tle one.  The male nurse came over and whis­pered to the Dr. that the baby had no vital signs.  The Dr. ordered him to check again, as he put the final wrap on Veronica’s foot.  As we left the ER 2 min­utes lat­er, I looked into the obser­va­tion room.  Tears came to my eyes as I watched the male nurse gen­tly wrap up the baby in the caplana and help the moth­er strap the deceased baby to her back.  They desired to leave with no one real­iz­ing the baby was dead. In this cul­ture, most moth­ers began to wail when a fam­i­ly mem­ber dies.  This woman was calm and silent as she tied her pre­cious lit­tle one to her back for the last time.  They would car­ry the baby to their vil­lage for bur­ial. With tears run­ning down his cheeks, the man walked out the door behind her, nev­er utter­ing a word. The kind­ness and respect shown to this fam­i­ly by the entire staff was tru­ly a pre­cious site.

It is sad to say that this type of sce­nario is far too com­mon in our area.  These peo­ple most like­ly came from a vil­lage some dis­tance away, hop­ing to obtain life­sav­ing med­i­cine for their crit­i­cal­ly ill baby.  Many make it to the hos­pi­tal in time, but for some babies, the dis­tance is just too great. By the time I could get Veron­i­ca out the door and into my pick-up, the cou­ple had dis­ap­peared into the crowd of peo­ple wait­ing for med­ical atten­tion. I prayed for that cou­ple, and know that some­how, God will touch that pre­cious fam­i­ly with His peace and love.

Thank you for your prayers for all of us!
Bless­ings in Christ,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma staff

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog, Sept. 30, 2012
Date: Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012 7:23:17 AM CDT

THE “LEAST OF THESE” LEARNING TO WALK WITH JESUS

I went to Nama­ra today, and had a blast teach­ing about 100 kids that “Jesus is the light of the world”. Blind fold­ing one lit­tle boy showed the kids that those who don’t have Jesus lose their way.  That the “spir­i­tu­al­ly blind” can’t find the path that leads to heav­en.  Our orphan dra­ma team did a skit show­ing how Jesus healed Bartemaus of blind­ness. We end­ed by hav­ing the kids shout out what they see as sin­ful behav­ior.  The cutest lit­tle 2 year old girl on the front row had all the adults rolling in laugh­ter, as she shout­ed out every answer the kids gave.  (The adults like Sun­day school so much, that they all show up an hour before church in order to watch my team teach the kids.)  It’s great, as it real­ly helps the adults learn the sim­plest things about Jesus that they might be too embar­rassed to ask in “big church”. We prayed for the sick, led one 8 year old girl to Christ, and saved a 2 day old baby who lost her moth­er yesterday.

DOING WHAT JESUS WOULD DO

 
I’ve taught this con­cept to the Nama­ra church mem­bers from day one, and they have respond­ed with more love towards oth­ers in their vil­lage than in ANY oth­er church I’ve ever start­ed.  One of the women lead­ers left her fam­i­ly last week to care for a moth­er who got sick dur­ing the last days before her deliv­ery.  Mov­ing in with the fam­i­ly of the sick woman, she cared for her and helped bring the lit­tle girl into this world (this is the 2 day old that was orphaned yes­ter­day).  But the moth­er passed on with­in 24 hours, leav­ing the baby with no milk.  Sev­er­al neigh­bor women who are nurs­ing their own babies, helped  keep the baby alive by shar­ing what breast milk they had.  Today, this lit­tle girl (unnamed) was in church with her aunt and grand­moth­er who will care for her.  I brought them to Bala­ma after church, out­fit­ted them with baby for­mu­la, and all the “fix­ings” need­ed to care for the baby.  I sur­prised them with 4 sets of baby cloths as the aunt has a 2 month old baby who was also naked.  They were most grate­ful, as they waved and head­ed for Nama­ra by bicy­cle with the infant secure­ly strapped to the aunt’s back.

When I trav­el, many peo­ple ask me why I don’t retire, because they feel I’ve “put in my time” for Jesus.  (The aver­age career mis­sion­ary is only 8 years at this time).
That trig­gers many mem­o­ries, one of which will be the face of that baby girl when she “guz­zled” her first bot­tle of for­mu­la, burped in hap­py con­tent­ment, and prompt­ly fell asleep on her aunt’s shoul­der.  I have over 12,000 rea­sons why I won’t retire, and over 3,350 of them are eat­ing today because of what YOU  pro­vid­ed for them.  There is NOTHING the mod­ern world holds that can match what my heart feels after help­ing save a life. As for this Bush Bun­ny, I’ll keep hop­ping down the bush trails as long as Jesus allows me too.

Sun­days are nev­er pre­dictable for me.  I go into the bush armed with what I have so I can treat what­ev­er dis­eases I come across.  Many times, it’s just han­dling the lit­tle things, as I dewormed every child who came with a par­ent to church today.  When we dis­missed the Sun­day school kids, we told them to fetch a par­ent if they want­ed to get rid of their worms. Sad to say but only two moth­ers cared enough to bring their entire fam­i­ly of kids.  Next week, we hope that those 2 moth­ers will join us, and that the word will get around that I’ll have my bot­tle of “worm killer” with me.    Noth­ing earth shat­ter­ing about any­thing I did today, but I find it reward­ing to know that those kids will now get the full ben­e­fit of what they eat.  YOUR GIFTS pro­vid­ed these tablets, so you tru­ly are a “part­ner” with me in what we do here each day . FYI: Bless­ings Inter­na­tion­al in Tul­sa, is the “go to place” if you are a mis­sion­ary with a need for med­i­cines in your work.

ZITO is still exer­cis­ing but his good leg is still a bit wob­bly when he tries to walk with his crutch­es.  We gave him lots of encour­age­ment to keep work­ing on it when I showed him his new red Hot­wheel sports car!  That put a big smile on his face!

Veron­i­ca, the women with the burned foot, has only 3 toes not healed yet.  We hope to have her up walk­ing with­in 10 days.

Leona and Saman­tha are now part of Eric’s “fan club”.  Eric spent Sat­ur­day morn­ing mount­ing a 5 inch square “com­put­er fan” over the bed of each of these won­der­ful ladies.  Sam also got a 12 volt read­ing light at the head of her bed (Leona already had one).  So both are VERY hap­py as they slept much cool­er last night.  These tiny fans hard­ly pull any­thing off a car bat­tery, so can be used most of the night if need­ed.  It’s get­ting HOT (as I sit her in mid­day heat, sweat­ing to write this letter).

Tune in next week, as we face 2–3 more days of corn weigh­ing and stack­ing, as well as a food dis­tri­b­u­tion this Fri­day in Mavala. Thanks for your prayers and ALL THE HELP in pro­vid­ing the CORN that will feed over 1,500 kids in the next few months. Words hard­ly seem ade­quate for what I feel about how gra­cious­ly you gave so these kids might live. God’s many Bless­ings to EACH OF YOU!

Love in Christ,
Bush Bun­ny Brenda

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog, Sept. 25, 2012
Date: Sep­tem­ber 25, 2012 7:54:00 AM CDT

BUNNY AND THE 7 FOOT MAMBA!

Our team of 4 mis­sion­ar­ies sat down to lunch on my veran­da today. The crows were putting up a hor­ri­ble rack­et out­side so I decid­ed to go out and throw a rock at them. That rock was nev­er thrown– I COULDN’T GET TO IT! As I opened the door and stepped out,  a 7 foot black mam­ba was sit­ting right in front of my rock pile about 3 meters (10 feet away).
From its tracks, it was clear the mam­ba had just passed in front of THAT SAME DOOR, and was on its way into my front yard where the birds were. THAT is why the crows  were scream­ing so loud­ly! I most cer­tain­ly be pay­ing more atten­tion to the kind of bird calls I hear from now on!

The star­tled Mam­ba was ris­ing to strike as I came out of the door, and this old Jr. Olympic ath­lete did an instinc­tive 180 spin back into the house, slam­ming the door, and yelling for the guard, all in one move­ment! My guard knows that kind of yell means a snake, so he came run­ning, armed with a strong 12 foot (4 meter) bam­boo pole. Eric and I couldn’t see the snake as it was against the house wall, and we didn’t DARE open the door until we had eyes on that side to tell us all was clear. Once the guard arrived and couldn’t find the snake, we took our weapons and went out to help him search for it. But it’s tracks dis­ap­peared at my King­cab pick­up tire.  We fig­ured he was in the frame of the car some­where. Eric was brave enough to get into the car and move it out of the car port as we watched for move­ment from under­neath. He let it run and when noth­ing hap­pened, he took the truck for a ride around our 40 acres to try and shake it loose.

The snake was nev­er seen again, and we didn’t get too close to the car to try and find it either. So this time, I have to admit that he lives to come back anoth­er day. So now we are on “full alert” when open­ing any doors, and keep­ing a sharp eye out every­where we go. Our prayer is that our angels keep him out of our liv­ing area!

De Bun­ny lives to tell yet anoth­er snake sto­ry! When they get away, it cer­tain­ly makes my skin crawl for a while. Just glad I didn’t open the door when he was in front of it.

Bless­ings,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Mozambique

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog, Sept. 24, 2012
Date: Sep­tem­ber 24, 2012 7:52:55 AM CDT

MORE GOATS!
Two more Mom­my goats had babies this week­end and we final­ly got a GIRL!

The 2nd baby was a boy.  To keep a breed­ing herd going, we need more girls. I’m glad we sold Appaloosa, cause it seems he only makes boys.

LEONA DOWN WITH MALARIA OVER THE WEEKEND
Thanks to Eric and Samanatha, we had 2 healthy cooks for over the week­end. Eric and Sam made roast chick­en with mashed pota­toes for the 2 of us sick­ies. Impor­tant to keep to a bland diet when tum­mies aren’t too keen on fried or spicy foods.

I’m final­ly back to my “nor­mal bun­ny hop” and Leona is much stronger today, as it is her 3rd day of treat­ment. Tomor­row is a hol­i­day, so we expect to be back to full strength at the corn barns on Wed. Keep them “mealies” rolling is our cry! Got­ta get them sacked and stacked as we have more food dis­tri­b­u­tions coming.

Cape­na, my office man­ag­er, just got in from Namuno Dis­trict where he began orga­niz­ing the next food dis­tri­b­u­tions. He spoke to both Pas­tors to see how the last 2 Sun­days went. Pas­tor Annefe (Ah-nah-fee) in Shimweely has 39 peo­ple attend last Sun­day at his first meet­ing. Pas­tor Ali has 28 peo­ple attend at his home in Namuno town and will start work­ing with the 3 vil­lages this week. So all is mov­ing for­ward as these men “break new ground” for Jesus!

ZITO is walk­ing with his crutch­es for short dis­tances.  I made the chal­lenge, so now have to come up with a toy by this Sun­day for his reward in dis­tance crutch walking!

All is well this side.
Blessings,
Bush Bun­ny Brenda

From: “Bren­da Lange”
Sub­ject: Blog, Sept. 22, 2012

BEEN A CORNY WEEK!
Our team of mis­sion­ar­ies and local helpers weighed, hauled, process, sacked, and stacked over 43.5 TONS (621 sacks) of corn this last week.  Thurs­day and Fri­day, our 2 trucks, 2 land cruis­ers, and trac­tor hauled anoth­er 641 sacks of corn (49 tons worth) that we will sacked and stacked start­ing Mon­day. Tues­day is a hol­i­day for Mozam­bique, so we hope to have the corn job fin­ished by Thurs­day if all goes as planned. This will fill our barns with what is need­ed to feed the 1,450+ chil­dren in Namuno, PLUS give us what we need to feed the Bala­ma and Melu­co orphans from Feb­ru­ary to May.

SEPTEMBER CORN is much dri­er than the June corn, and stores bet­ter through the rainy sea­son.  We start­ed a new pro­gram this year where we buy June corn to meet our orphan’s food needs through Jan­u­ary.  We then fetch “super dry corn” in Sept. to feed the orphans  dur­ing the rainy sea­son. Twelve Pas­tors were spe­cial­ly con­tract­ed in May to leave their corn to dry in their fields until August.   That way we are guar­an­teed that the corn we need will be there in August and not sold for export.  We are VERY GRATEFUL to the Pas­tors and fam­i­lies from oth­er church­es who came for­ward with Sept. corn for the Namuno orphans.  With­out their help, the 1000 sacks of extra corn need­ed at this time might not have been available.

YOUR LOVE GIFTS OPENED THE DOOR FOR THE PURCHASE OF THIS LIFE SAVING CORN.
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO GAVE SO THAT THESE KIDS MIGHT LIVE.

BUSH BUNNY WAS DOWN WITH MALARIA LAST 2 DAYS
Thurs­day after­noon, de Bun­ny began to feel weak and nau­se­at­ed.  Think­ing I was just super tired after the heavy work of bring­ing in the corn, I told the team that I was real­ly tired and hit the bed ear­li­er than usu­al.  About dark, I real­ized it was malar­ia and start­ed the 3 day treat­ment.   I had to call off the corn pro­cess­ing for Fri­day, as the work load is very heavy for all the mis­sion­ar­ies since we are work­ing with only 4 lead­ers instead of 7 as in June. But after 36 hours of rest, my strength is return­ing, and I expect to be at full speed for Monday’s work day. Some of you knew of my ill­ness and I thank you for your prayers. God is AWESOME and I’m always amazed at how fast I get over the malaria.

PASTOR FRANCOIS ESTERHUIZEN VISITS FROM SOUTH AFRICA
Eric’s church allowed Pas­tor Fran­cois to accom­pa­ny Eric on the 5 day dri­ve from South Africa to our base this last week.  They arrived on Mon­day (17th) at 1pm, with plen­ty of time to unload the major items from the trail­er that same day.  It takes 2 days to get the trail­er items unloaded, sort­ed, and stored, so thanks to the help of the 5 mis­sion­ar­ies present­ly with us, most of the sup­plies were orga­nized by Tues­day after­noon. Pas­tor Fran­cois encour­aged our men with short Bible lessons at sev­er­al of our morn­ing devo­tions, as well as assist in weigh­ing the corn sacks.  He won the respect of the men as he assist­ed in unload­ing one of the trucks, car­ry­ing bags of corn to the weight scales. After sup­per each evening, Pas­tor Fran­cois closed our day by encour­ag­ing us with words of wis­dom from God’s word.  It is always nice when vis­i­tors feed us spir­i­tu­al­ly as well as help out phys­i­cal­ly. Pas­tor Fran­cois is fly­ing out of Pem­ba today as I write this.  This is his 2nd vis­it to us, and we hope he will return again very soon.

God’s Bless­ings to all of you!
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma gang

From: brenda@orphansunlimited.org
Date: Sep­tem­ber 16, 2012 4:19:25 AM CDT

FACE BOOK FOR ORPHANS UNLIMITED

For all you Face Book lovers out there, we have opened a page where I can
jot the every­day “up close and per­son­al” stuff you’d like to know about
our team of “Jesus Freaks” here in the bush of Africa.

So if you want to get in on the “inside sto­ry”, join us at
www.facebook.com/orphansunlimited

NOTE: My per­son­al Face­Book page that many of you keep writ­ing too is no
longer in use. Please ask to be our friend on our new Orphans Unlimited
Face Book page.

BUTLER FUMC’S FIRST BABY GOAT IS BORN
Lit­tle App, a male, black and white spot­ted in col­or, was born a bit
wob­bly legged on Sept. 13th. No doubt that his Dad­dy was the Appalossa
male we sold off recent­ly. At one hour of age, Lit­tle App was a bit
con­fused about where to find the milk, so Mama Bren­da had to show him the
faucet. Once he got the hang of it, he was eat­ing with gus­to! On
Sat­ur­day, I found him sound a sleep, curled up next to his moth­er in his
birthing stall at our FUMC barn. On Mon­day, he’ll be car­ried out to where
the goats feed, so his Mama can rejoin the herd.
There are sev­er­al oth­er females about to “bin­go” which were pur­chased by
the FUMC Sun­day school kids.
So FUMC Kids–get ready, cause your herd is about to double!

VERONICA VISITS NAMARA CHURCH

Veron­i­ca is the woman who burned her foot in her cook­fire (los­ing more
than half the skin off the bot­tom of her left foot). After 3 weeks of
intense treat­ment, it is 70% healed. This in itself is a mir­a­cle and even
the Bala­ma Dr. says so, as he’s per­son­al­ly doing the dai­ly dressing
changes and treat­ments for her. Prayer and life sav­ing “Sil­vadene”
oint­ment brought over from the USA has helped accel­er­ate her healing.

Today I put a rope bed in the back of my pick-up and off we went to Namara
church after a 6:30 a.m. hos­pi­tal treat­ment time for her foot.
The church mem­bers and her fam­i­ly were glad to see her and it greatly
boost­ed her moral.
Thanks for all your prayers for her. She should be walk­ing by the end of
the month.

ZITO’S ABCESSES HEALED!
Thanks to prayer and MELALUCA (tea tree) oil, Zito’s numer­ous abcesses
are all healed! He’s strug­gling to walk with the crutch­es because his
good leg needs more exer­cise. So he and I did a set of exercises
togeth­er after church, and I set a 50 yard/meter goal for him to
accom­plish by the end of the month. I promised him if he did it that
I’d reward him with a nice toy. THAT brought a smile to his face! He’s
a deter­mined lit­tle boy who just needs some­one to be his “train­er” and
encourager.

TODAY THERE WERE NO SICK KIDS IN CHURCH
This is a first, as the kids have grabbed onto God’s Word and are
total­ly healthy. The Sun­day School is grow­ing as over 100 kids flowed
in to hear DAVID AND GOLIATH’s sto­ry today. I showed them how to be a
“DAVID” in their every­day walk with Jesus.

The adults were taught how to use God’s spir­i­tu­al “weapons of war­fare” to
keep their fam­i­lies safe from sick­ness and oth­er problems.
WORD OF GOD
NAME OF JESUS
BLOOD OF JESUS
PRAISE AND WORSHIP
When they left, all of them knew their author­i­ty in Christ and were
chal­lenged to bring their friends next week.

Remem­ber us in prayer this week as we start the corn buy­ing with the gifts
you’ve sent for the Namuno chil­dren. Will be a busy 2 weeks for sure!

Love and Hugs,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Balama

JESUS FEEDS THE MULTITUDES
And the Bala­ma Team now knows how tired the 12 dis­ci­ples were afterwards!

NEW RECORD SET FOR TONS OF FOOD DISTRIBUTED IN 4 DAYS (6 locations)

(After­wards it was drop and flop time for the entire team!)
It took both trucks (6 ton and 7 ton), 2 Land Cruis­ers, and the trac­tor to
accom­plish all this as on Thurs­day and Fri­day we were in 2 distant
loca­tions both days.

The Bala­ma to Namuno “dirt bush track” (they call it a road) is rough
going for large trucks.
Reduced weight loads were required to pre­vent dam­age to the trucks, as the
32 mile trek took over 2 hours each way. Only 1 vil­lage could be served
each day due to the dis­tance involved.
Remem­ber, all our load­ing and unload­ing is done by a team of 16 very
strong men.
No fork lifts needed!

NAMUNO DISTRICT (coun­ty): (Tues., Wed., Thurs.)
18 TONS OF CORN (300 sacks at 120 lbs. (60kg) each)
4 TONS OF BEANS (57 sacks at 140 lbs. (70kg) each)

TOTAL SERVED:
979 kids in 300 fam­i­lies at 3 large vil­lages destroyed by the tornados.

On Mon­day (Sept. 17), the Namuno coun­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion will con­clude with 2
small­er villages.
192 chil­dren and 50 par­ents will be blessed with 3 TONS of corn and 1 TON
of beans.

BALAMA COUNTY: (Thurs. and Friday)
10.6 TONS OF CORN
2.5 TONS OF BEANS

Thurs­day: 300+ orphans and wid­ows were served at our base in Balama.
FRIDAY: 658 orphans and wid­ows served in 2 loca­tions in the Kwe Kwe area
of Balama.

MY FRIENDS, YOUR LOVE GIFTS ARE HARD AT WORK!

EVANGELISM AND CHURCH PLANTING TO BEGIN IN ALL 5 NAMUNO VILLAGES

The Lord has blessed us with 2 Pas­tors in Namuno who were each given
bicy­cles and back packs with soc­cer balls and pumps, Bibles, and tracts on
Thurs­day this week. Both are grad­u­ates of Bible School.

Pas­tor Annife (Ah-nah-fee) who lives in the remote Shamweely vil­lage, will
work in 2 vil­lages. He’s already been work­ing 3 weeks and has a small
group of beleivers attend­ing his shade tree Bible studies.

Pas­tor Ali, young man with lots of ener­gy, will “break ground” in the 3
larg­er vil­lages by play­ing games and hav­ing short soc­cer prac­tices for the
chil­dren as they regain their strength. These 3 vil­lages have no idea who
Jesus is. True pio­neer­ing work that will take some time and much energy.

Pray for these men as they both have much work ahead to reveal Jesus to
these people.

ERIC ON 5 DAY DRIVE FROM SOUTH AFRICA
(About 1,000 miles (3,000km) on dirt and tar roads with more than a few
holes!)

Sched­uled to arrive on Mon­day, Sept. 17, Eric and his Pas­tor Fran­cois, are
pulling a large trail­er filled with 8 suit­cas­es of dona­tions to the
chil­dren, plus many sup­plies impos­si­ble to buy in Mozambique.
A busy week ahead as we con­tin­ue to dis­trib­ute food and unload, sort, and
orga­nize all that Eric brings us.

PREVENTING MORE ORPHANS IS OUR GOAL
We great­ly appre­ci­ate ALL the love gifts that have come in so far to help
us to res­cue the 1,447 chil­dren and the par­ent car­ing for them.
Plans are in progress to buy the corn this com­ing week.
Food drops are being orga­nized for Oct. and Nov. (giv­ing seed) so these
350 fam­i­lies can plant their fields and once again be inde­pen­dent farmers.
Our rainy sea­son (plant­i­ng time) begins in late November.

THANK YOU for your gen­er­ous Jesus hearts!
Todate, we’ve received love gifts suf­fi­cient to buy and dis­trib­ute another
1000 sacks of corn to these kids. Pray for our strength and safe­ty as we
“hit the bush” to weigh, load, and haul it in this week. We have an
acci­dent free record and we want to keep it that way!

LOVE AND HUGS,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Team

The orga­ni­za­tion­al part of the res­cue will be com­plet­ed tomor­row, as our team will coor­di­nate the last 2 vil­lages need­ing food.

On Tues­day, the largest vil­lage with 545 bad­ly mal­nour­ished chil­dren and wid­ows will be giv­en corn, beans, soap, and salt. We plan to serve the 3 largest vil­lages by Thurs­day, as we have a food hand­out to our orphans in Kwe Kwe on Friday.

The 2 small­er vil­lages will be giv­en food next Mon­day. It will be a busy week, no doubt.

So pray for both our food teams as we will load BOTH TRUCKS to make the food hand­outs this week. With 100 bags (7 tons) of corn and 3 tons of beans going to each vil­lage, we can only serve one loca­tion each day.

I’ll be get­ting pho­tos and send­ing those along as soon as Eric gets back from South Africa on Sept. 18th.

MY SUNDAY MORNING was spent get­ting Veron­i­ca, the woman who burned her foot, treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal. Her appoint­ment with the Doc in the ER was 8a.m., but when we arrived, they were out of ster­ile ban­dages. I was asked to return at 10a.m. with her for treatment.

Veron­i­ca’s foot is heal­ing well, with only the toes and a small part of
her foot still in need of heal­ing. Thanks to Samanatha Barn­hardt, who arrived yes­ter­day from But­ler, PA, we received the MUCH NEEDED Sil­vadene Oint­ment that has helped her burns heal
so quick­ly (my sup­ply was almost gone). My sec­re­tary, and all around “girl Fri­day”, Lin­da Fer­gu­son, is the behind the scenes per­son who makes all these pur­chas­es, and gets them to who­ev­er is trav­el­ing our way. I give my heart felt THANKS to both Sam and Lin­da and to YOU, who’s Love Gifts make all this possible.

Veron­i­ca’s sis­ter is back to help care for her for a few days, so we used the time to move them into one of our wid­ow’s hous­es since Veron­i­ca will stay per­ma­nent­ly with us. Her sis­ter is mar­ried and has a fam­i­ly so she can­not give her the sup­port she needs in Nama­ra. Veron­i­ca’s only lit­tle helper is her 5 year old daugh­ter, as her hus­band passed away sev­er­al years ago.

I look for­ward to hear­ing from many of you soon, as I know that sev­er­al church­es are pre­sent­ing our corn need to their members.
THANK YOU for your “Jesus Love” shown through your gen­er­ous giv­ing towards
His Children.

Love and Blessings,
Bush Bun­ny Bren­da in Mozambique