From: “Brenda Lange” Subject: Blog, July 6

HEY YALL!

This week has been a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty that has kept us hop­ping from pre-dawn till dusk. 

HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL COURT GETTING A FACE LIFT FOR TEN DAYS

our 26 man con­struc­tion team chipped away with ham­mers and chis­els at HALF the school’s 70 YEAR OLD BASKEBALL COURT, remov­ing the top 2 inch­es of con­crete. Hard, gru­elling work for sure. The new cement sur­fac­ing began yes­ter­day, with our team lay­ing 6 ft. X 15 ft. (2m X 4m) sec­tions BY HAND with the cement being HAND MIXED in small quan­ti­ties to keep it fresh and wet. We only have funds to com­plete HALF THE COURT and the 2 goal posts (total cost of just over $3,500). The oth­er half will have to wait for anoth­er day, as our team has to get back to build­ing the final orphan com­plex we start­ed in April. We hope to have the Half Court Sur­face com­plet­ed by July 12th. MY SPECIAL THANKS TO ERIC DRY for cus­tom build­ing the met­al goal post sup­ports and weld­ing them into place. We hope the con­crete and met­al goals will be tough enough to han­dle the intense usage, as over 500 kids work out on this court weekly. 

THE LASTEST STYLE IN BACKPACKS

First let me say that this is NOT, I repeat NOT, one of our goats! OUR goats ride in style in the back of a pick-up truck when being moved for any rea­son. But Eric thought all of you would get a gig­gle out of this unique trans­porta­tion method invent­ed by a local African.

We call it the “GOAT BAAACKPACK”. 

BUSH BUNNY TO VISIT NEWEST BUSH CHURCH TOMORROW

I’ll be head­ing out to Mopone at 7a.m. Sun­day to meet our newest Believ­ers and pre­pare them for the Jesus Film show­ing com­ing up June 20th. This vil­lage of 5,000 has NEVER SEEN A FILM OF ANY KIND, so this is a real­ly big thing to all of them. I’ve always want­ed to a be a pio­neer, and Jesus gave me the desire of my heart. Tak­ing HIS MESSAGE of love and sal­va­tion to these remote areas is the icing on the cake! MICHIGAN’S “GO” TEAM COMING JULY 17 Dale Mein­derts­ma and Sal­ly Dyke­ma, both expe­ri­enced short term mis­sion­ar­ies, are return­ing for the THIRD TIME for anoth­er evan­ge­lis­tic vis­it to enhance the train­ing of our Pas­tors as well as the new con­verts at Mopone vil­lage. Both of them are a “bar­rel of laughs”, and we look for­ward to their 10 day visit. 

AWANA TEAM COMING

Our team painter and I spent over 3 hours at our mis­sion station’s bas­ket­ball court today mark­ing off the “games pat­tern” for the AWANA TEAM that is com­ing July 31st. Lar­ry Friend, the Inter­na­tion­al Direc­tor of AWANA, is com­ing per­son­al­ly to train up 10 of our Youth Lead­ers. Scrip­ture mem­o­ry for chil­dren is the object of the pro­grams with a bar­rel of FUN thrown in via the AWANA games on the bas­ket­ball court. The HUGE, 37 ft. square game pat­tern is paint­ed in FOUR COLORS so that teams of kids can com­pete against each oth­er in many types of games. This will give us a way to attract the 6 to 12 year olds who are a bit small for shoot­ing bas­kets into the reg­u­la­tion hoops. Our Sports Evan­ge­lism pro­gram is grow­ing rapid­ly with Emma Clifford’s per­sis­tence. Her Dad is a High School Bas­ket­ball coach in the USA, and Emma is a 6 FOOT NATURAL! Every­where we go, we hear kids yelling “EMMA!” They love her and now call ALL OF US, EMMA! Until next week!

Bless­ings and Hugs, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da and the Bala­ma Team
Eric Dry
Lin­da Stanley
Emma Clifford
Danielle Van Zyl