“All God’s Creatures Got a Home”

I have just spent the summer with a lizard, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. Michael was gone all summer helping with the building going on around Neema and I stayed in Texas to take care of our rent houses which as you know if you follow our story helps support us as we do Neema work.

Soon after Michael left, this lizard moved in.

I spent a few days chasing him around the office and finally decided he could stay since I couldn’t chase him out the back door. One morning I noticed he was sitting by my desk with his back to me but his head turned slightly so he could look around at me with one eye. I did the “shoo thing” a few mornings and then decided to be polite. “Hi little buddy, how are you?” I said. So began my long lizard summer. Most mornings he would come sit by my desk in the same spot, not moving even when I talked to him and then calmly move off to his home under the filing cabinet where I am sure he took up his day job as my own personal bug zapper.

I feel a tear almost glistening on my cheek as I tell you this, but yesterday, just two days after Michael returned and Little Buddy and I had had our last cup of coffee together he slithered over to the back door and waited for me to open the door. I am not kidding you, he sat there while I opened the door for him!  He really wasn’t much as far as lizards go but he was my lizard.

Michael on the other hand spent the summer helping build a home in Africa for  abandoned, orphaned and at risk babies called Neema House Arusha.

 Cement blocks, foundations, and stones are being moved all over this beautiful land. The widow’s home is coming along, one of the homes for the unadoptable babies has a foundation and the baby home is going up and the 22 feet deep septic system is being dug. It is all quite exciting.

We have just been renting for the last three years and it is time to move. We have had a host of great volunteers helping this summer and I know this is a dangerous thing to do but I want you to see some of their pictures. If  you came and volunteered this summer and I leave you out, it might be because YOU DIDN’T SEND ME A PICTURE!

Two important things I learned this summer, one is I’m not getting any younger and after 51 years with this man I want to spend what time I have left with him, not a lizard, so no more of this “you go to Africa and build and I’ll stay here and work on rent houses” thing!And I learned that if I had to I could survive in a prison camp – as long as I had a lizard!

Love and Blessings,

Dorris