BUSH BUNNY BRENDA BLOG, JUNE 16, 2013

LIFE AFTER CORN BUYING DOES EXIST!

200 TONS of corn in the barn.

When the whole team is focused on corn buy­ing for 9 days straight, it can seem like an eter­ni­ty. For this Bun­ny, here’s my dai­ly time line: Get­ting up at 3:30a.m., get the office work done before weight teams arrive. 5a.m. our 2 trucks and weight teams (28 men) leave for the bush vil­lages where the corn co-op groups eager­ly await our arrival. I orga­nize break­fast and lunch for these teams as well as make sure they are fuelled, have drink­ing water, etc. Sort of like get­ting a mas­sive group of kids off to sum­mer camp each day.

5:30a.m. the mis­sion­ary team and I leave for the barns. 5:35a.m. singing, prayer, and an evan­gel­i­cal mes­sage is giv­en to the 65 work­ers (most who don’t know Christ). Got to have our spir­i­tu­al food so we can start out day. 6a.m. the work begins. The 65 man crew moves up to 500 sacks of corn/day, unload­ing the trucks, run­ning it through the sack­ing chutes, and stack­ing it 13 rows high (14 ft. or 5.5 meters) in our barns. It must be done PERFECTLY or that 100 ton moun­tain of corn WILL come tum­bling down. Our mis­sion­ary team oper­ate the chutes mak­ing sure all the bugs are erad­i­cat­ed before it goes into the sacks.

EACH of those 500 sacks (140 lbs. or 70kg) is lift­ed at least 6 times between the weigh­ing process and being stacked in our barn. That is one rea­son we need so many men, as that is an aver­age of pick­ing up 2,500 sacks in a 5 hours! (about 50 sacks/person so it’s not an over­load). But climb­ing a “lad­der” made of stacked corn to get it up to that 13th row IS A CHALLENGE for all of the men and is very tir­ing. I orga­nize extra men to help on the 2 days we have to “take it to the top”.

Lots of prayer goes on before each day’s work for pro­tec­tion from acci­dents. I per­son­al­ly saw 3 men fall off the “lad­der” try­ing to get the bags to the 13th row. NO ONE was harmed in these falls as the bags fell to the side instead of crush­ing bones. Our angels are “on guard” so that even the unbe­liev­ers go unharmed. I thanked JESUS every day as we com­plet­ed the work in record time, with no injuries.

FRIDAY YOUTH NIGHT OPENED LAST NIGHT

What we lov­ing call our “Dream Team”, con­sists of Emma Clif­ford, Danielle Van Zyl, and Melis­sa Olms­dahl. All these girls have youth min­istry expe­ri­ence. With Eric’s and Linda’s help they did a great job of orga­niz­ing their first “Youth Night”, show­ing the movie: THE CROSS AND THE SWITCHBLADE (in Por­tuguese). The church was packed out! We plan a 2nd Chris­t­ian movie next Fri­day to get draw more young peo­ple. After that, they will orga­nized games and evan­gel­i­cal pro­grams to help these teenagers find Christ and learn to walk accord­ing to the Bible.

P.S. Bre­anne Bram­mer returned to the USA on Wed. due to a diag­no­sis of “com­pli­cat­ed malar­ia”. She is now safe­ly back at her home. We wish her a speedy recovery.

MELISSA FLIES TO RSA TO OBTAIN PERMANENT RESIDENCY STATIS FOR MOZAMBIQUE

Melis­sa, 25 year old Youth Direc­tor from George, S. Africa, is top notch at work­ing with young peo­ple. She has com­mit­ted to a year and will return to us on July 17th, as it will take sev­er­al weeks to get her police clear­ance and oth­er required doc­u­ments in order. WELCOME ABOARD, Melissa!

DANIELLE AND MELISSA’S ENGLISH LESSONS HAS THEM SPEAKING MAKUA!

Nel­son teach­ing Makua and Por­tuguese to Emma, Melis­sa, and Danielle (sit­ting in our pro-school class­room) cause it has a black board.

Nel­son, my won­der­ful 16 year old orphan inter­preter, has now turned lan­guage teacher! Nel­son desires to fol­low in my foot­steps as a Preacher/nurse/interpreter. His first chal­lenge is to learn Eng­lish, so I asked the girls to teach him. The Lord impressed on Melis­sa that she must learn Makua. Next thing I hear, is that they are swap­ping lan­guages! All 3 “student/teachers” are learn­ing at a fast pace. Our meals are now a mix­ture of 4 lan­guages, mak­ing it a bar­rel of laughs. You’ll hear Eng­lish, Africaans, Por­tuguese, and Makua. But Emma and I don’t stop there, as we usu­al­ly throw in a bit of Tex­an when we sing the “HEE HAW TV THEME SONG”. Now the whole team knows it. Lin­da even does the HEE HAW shout with a fan­cy leg kick! P.S. Linda’s birth­day is June 22.

WHY LEARN MAKUA? Because it’s the local lan­guage spo­ken by EVERYONE in the vil­lages. What bet­ter way to teach the Word of God, than to learn it so you don’t depend on an inter­preter like I do. Both these young ladies and Emma, who speaks Span­ish, are also study­ing Por­tuguese from our com­put­er taught coarse.

BIBLE SCHOOL FOR THE MISSIONARIES

Our Inter­na­tion­al Vic­to­ry Bible School has been in ses­sion for sev­er­al years, teach­ing God’s Word to new con­verts in the vil­lages. This week our ener­getic young peo­ple have now start­ed an infor­mal Bible School via DVD for our mis­sion­ar­ies. Each per­son can take it at their own pace to enhance their under­stand­ing of God’s Word. THANK YOU VICTORY CHRISTIAN CENTER for pro­vid­ing us with these classes.

OUR DREAM TEAM IS DEFINENTLY AN ENERGETIC ONE!

They remind me of intel­lec­tu­al sponges, with the speed at which they are learn­ing. Emma and Danielle just com­plet­ed 30 days in Moz., and Melis­sa just joined us on June 1st! No grass grows under their feet for sure!

Danielle and I weighing Toto on our baby scale. He got in a dog fight and needed an injection (dosage by weight) and this was the only scale that would weigh him.

Love and Hugs,

Bush Bun­ny Brenda

Eric Dry

Lin­da Stanley

Emma Clif­ford

Danielle Van Zyl

Melis­sa Olmsdahl