missionary update

From: Brenda Lange , " Bush Bunny Brenda "
Date: October 9, 2011 6:25:06 AM CDT
Subject: Blog, Oct. 9th, 2011

MASSIVE RAIN AND COLD WINDS HITS MOZAMBIQUE

FIRST, let me say that NO ONE living in northern Mozambique has ever seen RAIN in October.
Known as the hottest and driest month of the year, what happened this week has never been recorded before!

Thursday, heavy rain and cold winds hit Balama at 3a.m.
We had a sporadic rain in Sept. but it didn’t last 1 hour, and we expected the same from this Antarctic front. WRONG!
It continued until 12:30 p.m. Temperatures dropped from 95 F to 58 F with this front and stayed that way for 3 days! We had just packed away our sweatshirts, so had to dig them out again!
Antarctica is having some real nasty storms for sure.
This helped us to drive home our message of “Apocalypse” to our new believers.
They now realize what we mean about God “shaking the world” before Jesus returns.

Kwe Kwe Church suffered the biggest blow, as the 7 hour rain mixed with estimated 25 to 40 mph winds on Thursday night, knocked over the mud brick walls of this freshly constructed building.
The carpenters had almost finished the roof’s frame when the storm hit. At dawn on Friday morning, the carpenters called to tell us the news, and wanting to know what they should do.
I told them to complete the roof, so the church members could rebuild “under” the roof. We have no idea if this will happen again, so we are taking no risk. The cool temperatures during August and Sept. warned us that the Rainy Season would start EARLY in November this year, but NO ONE expected a heavy rain on Oct. 6th!

Pastor Alberto, our Evangelist, is out there today to assess the damage, as well as encourage the members to rebuild what they can with the bricks that didn’t break when the walls fell in. Adobe brick has it’s draw backs, and this is one of them. That’s why we only build in the hot and dry months of Aug./Sept./ and Oct.
Mud brick, that has totally dried, will handle a storm such as this without a problem.
The End Times are upon us and we know that nothing will ever be as it was before.

OUR MOTTO after this week is:
Expect the unexpected, and be ready to flex to whatever comes upon you.


TRACTOR REPAIRS
The good news:
PTL that Eric found a marine repair shop at the Pemba port with a 100 TON press that could do the needed “pulling” of our tractor’s wheel hub.
Eric got home from South Africa with the part, but then found out the hard way that his “pulling equipment” couldn’t pull out the “guts” from the wheel hub to replace the leaking seal.
(Construction is moving very slowly with our tractor down for 2 weeks now, so needless to say, de Bunny has been a bit frustrated!)
. Our 1 ton pick-ups are the only transportation for bricks, sand, and rocks right now.

The bad news:
The wheel bearing was gone as well as the seal! YIKES!
Pemba’s cell phones were not working well that day, so literally 50 phone calls later, a mechanic shop with an educated mechanic, was able to help Eric find the needed wheel bearing in Maputo (1000 miles to the south). It would be flown up in a few days, so he returned to Balama.

The good news:
We just got word a few minutes ago (Sunday, Oct. 9), that the wheel bearing arrived on yesterday’s flight from Maputo, so Eric can pick it up tomorrow morning. PTL!!!!

Hopefully, this means by Wed. we will have a working tractor again!
That makes for a HOPPY BUNNY. J

BLESSINGS TO ALL OF YOU!
Bush Bunny Brenda and the Balama Team