February 18th, 2023
Don’t you just love Good News! We do and we love sending you good news. There are Good things happening at Neema Village right now.
We are excited and happy… I think. Our little abandoned baby James’s mom came back and Social Welfare said he could return home with her. Gulp!
We had fallen in love with this sad little guy who had been found in a ditch a few weeks ago and we had been calling him James.
As I held him in my arms, he was hesitant at first, then I felt him lean toward her and I knew she was his mom. She said his name was Joseph and told us she had learned she has the sickness and was scared she would not be able to take care of him. We told her this baby is your gift from God please call us first if you think you cannot take care of him again.
We took her to the Preslar Mothering Center to meet Anna and get her enrolled in MAP. She will learn to read and write and hopefully she will learn how much God loves her and wants a better life for her.
She will be with other women just like herself and later she will be able to start a MAP business that will support her family.
Today we had earring making in the center and there was lots of singing and laughing.
It is good for us to see how these two Neema programs work together; an abandoned baby, mom returns, mom gets help, mom gets baby back and family is reunited!
We do pray for that. We know these babies need their moms.
Sweet baby Gillian got a new mom yesterday. She came to Neema Village only a few hours old after her mom just walked out of the hospital and abandoned her.
You have to live in Tanzania 3 years before you can adopt. Tanzania’s Social Welfare handles all adoptions. Neema Village does not do adoptions.
But we do love them!
Last week we had our first Save The Mothers program of the year. Sixteen Maasai traditional birthers spent a week with us at Neema Village. They had morning devotionals, classes all day and singing at night. It is always fun when we take volunteers to sing and dance with them. These old ladies can dance!! They each went home with a lot of gifts to help them in their work and they went home with a bible in Maasai. Most of them cannot read but maybe their grandkids can.
Maasai land missed the short rains this year and we were getting reports of children dying out in the villages. A mom with twins in Maria’s village was starving, she didn’t have enough milk for two babies and one of the twins died. They brought the poor mom and her little twin in to the hospital but then the mom died. One little twin is still in the hospital and hopefully will make it.
We knew we had to help so Michael left early this morning to make another food delivery. He said he was driving in dust powder a foot thick and the wind was so high he thought he was in a dust bowl.
There were easy 500 people waiting for them and it became pandemonium when they saw the food. He had taken $400 dollars worth of food this trip (Thank you Kathy Sherrill Strong and your Facebook friends) and Michael knew Jesus was going to have to multiply that food because there was no way it was going around to everyone!
Please don’t feel guilty if you had a good breakfast this morning. I did too. Just share when you can.
We have had some awesome volunteers this month and I cannot possibly name them all or I would leave one out. You know who you are and you know we luv ya!
Psalms 27:13. “I am confident I will still see the Goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.”
Michael and Dorris
