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