Bush Beat Blog   FROM “BUSH BUNNY BRENDA” DATE: JANUARY 15, 2016 RAINS CONTINUE TO POUR DOWN, BUT WIDOW’S ROOF BACK ON! Non-stop rains may slow us down, but my car­pen­ters and brick lay­ers worked long hours in the rain this week to get the new roof secured in place. Repairs con­tin­ue on the 4 hous­es that had dam­age to out­er walls.  Still to be re-roofed is the con­struc­tion stor­age ware­house, which is leak­ing, but stay­ing in place with heavy bricks.  Thanks to a great friend in Bro­ken Arrow, OK, we were able to buy the tin sheets and bags of cement need­ed for all this work. Thank you for all your prayers dur­ing this time of tri­al, for old “smut­ty face” (dev­il) is not lik­ing all the evan­gel­i­cal work we are doing. Even in the RAINY SEASON, we are reach­ing over 5,000 chil­dren a WEEK with the Gospel and dis­ci­ple­ship train­ing via the AWANA program. BLACK MAMBA PAYS BUNNY A VISIT  (Praise report, angels watch­ing over me.) When the roof attack didn’t stop us, “smut­ty face” sent me a 30 cm (1 foot) long, shiny baby black mam­ba to vis­it me in my bed­room!  That was the only size that could slip under the screen door into my room.  (That ¼”/1cm space has now been closed off!) I woke up Tues­day at 4a.m., rolled out of bed with my flash­light, and imme­di­ate­ly spot­ted the lit­tle crit­ter under a box at the head of my bed.  My trusty machete (pan­ga) was with­in easy reach, so with 6 very fast and accu­rate WHACKS, that lit­tle crit­ter was in 6 pieces!  I then crushed his head with the point of the blade (that’s Bib­li­cal yah know!), scooped it up in my dust pan, and gave my guard a heart attack when I opened the front door and hand­ed it to him to throw away. Poor guy liked to have jumped out of his skin.  No Mozam­bi­can likes to get that close to a snake, but when I con­vinced him it was super dead, he agreed to dump it in our garbage pit.  AND NO, I didn’t both­er to take a pho­to of the dead snake.  At 4 in the morn­ing, I just want­ed it out of my house! Need­less to say, I was PRAISING THE LORD for reveal­ing the snake, and keep­ing it from crawl­ing into bed with me!  I also asked the Holy Spir­it to REVEAL any oth­ers that might be lurk­ing in my house.  None have shown their head, so I feel sure that was the only one that got in. LACK OF KNOWLEDGE WILL KILL YOU Sad­ly, 3 of Pas­tor Alberto’s fam­i­ly were elec­tro­cut­ed in Pem­ba in the same storm that tore up our build­ings on Fri­day night.  The house of his niece and her 2 young boys was wired for elec­tric­i­ty with UNINSULATED WIRE.  The high winds blew the wire onto the TIN ROOF of the house, elec­tri­fy­ing every­thing.  The moth­er was hit first.  Her 2 young chil­dren were elec­tro­cut­ed when they grabbed her as she began to con­vulse.  A neigh­bor man was also elec­tro­cut­ed when he tried to pull the chil­dren off their moth­er.  Many peo­ple wire their hous­es with what­ev­er type wire they can find.  All of Mozam­bique is on 220 volt pow­er, leav­ing no room for mis­takes if you touch an open wire.  A sad reminder why safe­ty rules for build­ing mate­ri­als are a must.  Pas­tor Alber­to per­formed the funer­als, and is now on his way back to con­tin­ue train­ing up Pas­tors in Namuno District. NEW YEARS PARTY A SUCCESS FOR 150+ ORPHANS/WIDOWS   The pho­tos tell it all, but games, great food (2 goats and 120 lbs of rice), and lot of cook­ies, can­dy, and bal­loons made a great New Year’s par­ty for our children. NEW NYLON SWING SEATS DONATED BY CHILDREN FROM EVAN’S, LOUISIANNA GOOD NEWS CLUB You can tell from Dixon’s face, that he tru­ly feels secure in the new swing seats.  Much safer than the wood­en seats we pre­vi­ous­ly had, these nylon “snug­gy” swings won’t hurt as bad if a child gets hit by them.  THANK YOU to the ele­men­tary school chil­dren in EVANS, LA for this won­der­ful gift! WIDOW’S RECEIVE NEW HOES AND MACHETTES FOR NEW YEARS Thanks to sev­er­al donors in the USA and RSA, we were able to bless 700 vil­lage wid­ows who care for orphans, with a new hoe and machete. I couldn’t pass up this pho­to of baby DANIEL as he laid claim to the hoe we gave his fos­ter moth­er.  That lit­tle face tru­ly says “It’s MINE!” My entire staff and our res­i­dent orphans all send our sin­cere thanks to each of you read­ing this, for with­out your help, we could not bless an end­less mass of chil­dren with a new life through Jesus Christ.  Each of you are a piece of God’s puz­zle, and because you do your part, we can do ours. THANK YOU, SO, SO MUCH Bless­ings, and a BIG BUNNY HUG, Bush Bun­ny Bren­da Lange