INTENSE DAY, WITH MORE PRAYERS ANSWERED

Mis­sions is spelled WORK and this week has been no exception.
With Eric in Pem­ba for 2 days with our out­go­ing vis­i­tors, the work load was non-stop for those of us at the base.

My big chal­lenge on Mon­day was that the maize mill wore out the grind­ing shaft and parts are not avail­able to buy.
Since we mill over 1.5 tons a week to feed 350+ orphans every Thurs­day, our corn had to be quick­ly tak­en to a pub­lic mill.
As Eric was prepar­ing to leave for his Pem­ba trip at noon on Mon­day, his mechan­i­cal genius kicked in, pro­vid­ing a solution.
He took the worn out mill part to a marine machine shop at the port in Pem­ba where all the ships are repaired.
They hope to rebuild the part and have it for us this Wed. when Eric returns to Pem­ba to fetch Dale Mein­derts­ma, arriv­ing from Michigan.

PRAY FOR DALE’S TRIP AS HE FLIES OUT MONDAY, JULY 16TH FOR SOUTH AFRICA.

FRIDAY A VERY WILD DAY
We were noti­fied on Thurs­day after­noon that a SECOND inspec­tion team was in town to con­tin­ue the inspec­tions that team #1 didn’t finish.
This includ­ed us.  Thurs­day night we went to war in the heav­en­lies with prayer, ask­ing the Lord to divert these inspec­tors from Balama.

Stress#1:  6a.m. to 8a.m. found us in a “dust­ing and de=cobwebbing” fren­zy in prepa­ra­tion for a “sur­prise” inspection.
We were told that after a “heat­ed dis­cus­sion” the inspec­tors decid­ed to go else­where, omit­ting Bala­ma from their list.
No doubts that there was divine inter­ven­tion on this one! PHEW! Thank you Jesus!

Stress #2  My goat man­agers called at 6:30a.m. to tell me that a Spit­ting Cobra bit one of my moth­er goats while she slept in the barn Thurs­day night.   The snake tract was very clear in the dirt but the cul­prit wasn’t found.   After 2 days, she is look­ing healthy, although limp­ing on 3 legs. All looks good for her sur­vival. My pas­tors laid hands on her and prayed for her.  God saves ani­mals too!

Stress #3:  Our Con­struc­tion Man­ag­er came to Eric and I ask­ing us to remove a drunk bricklayer’s assis­tant from our work site who refused to go home.  This work­er had hid­den his druken­ness at morn­ing devo­tions, so none of my top staff real­ized he was drunk until the team start­ed work.  Deal­ing with a stub­born, vio­lent drunk is nev­er a pleas­ant ordeal.  The vil­lage chief was present, so he was dis­missed legal­ly.  After 20 min­utes of lis­ten­ing to his crazy rav­ings while he slow­ly stripped off his uni­form and threw it at us, he final­ly left and work con­tin­ued.    Life is nev­er easy when deal­ing with the unsaved, no mat­ter where you live.

Stress #4:  At noon Fri­day,  my favourite baby goat died very rapid­ly after lick­ing a poi­so­nous bug while out with the herd.  (Human babies are not the only ones who put every­thing in their mouth.)  These  poi­so­nous bugs are only found on the grass dur­ing the “morn­ing dew” time and leave as soon as the grass dries up.  Our herders only take the goats out after the grass is dry to avoid this risk.
No one can explain why this 1 bug didn’t hiber­nate once the grass dried up.  This lit­tle female had a rough 3 weeks of life as her mother’s milk wasn’t enough to sus­tain her.  I’d made sev­er­al trips last week­end to give her addi­tion­al milk for­mu­la via a syringe, as she wasn’t able to grasp a “human” baby bot­tle, which was all I had to feed her with.  She had regained her strength this week as the mother’s milk had final­ly come through.  This lit­tle one RAN beside her moth­er that morn­ing as they left the cor­ral (she was always car­ried before).
Curios­i­ty and a freak inci­dent caused her demise, mak­ing all of us very sad.

This has been my week and now I’m off to the Nama­ra church in a few minutes.
Our inter­net keeps kick­ing me off and is non-exis­tend in the after­noons, so I will send an addi­tion­al blog on church hap­pen­ings lat­er today if possible.
Thank you for all your prayers and for shar­ing your love with our kids through your love gifts.
Bless­ings, BBB and the Bala­ma team