June 29th, 2023

And just like that June, 2023 is tucked away in the filing cabinet.

Three new babies came to us this month and eight babies have flown the nest at Neema Village.

Last year a newborn baby girl had been abandoned at the local hospital and was brought to Neema Village. She was so tiny it must have scared the mother, and she just walked out of the hospital and never came back.

From a rough start baby Selah has had a few challenges but this week her forever family was finally able to take her home. We are so happy for you baby girl.

One month old Grace came in after dark from a remote Maasai village. Her mommy died during her birth. Mom was 22 years old, having her first baby and she just bled to death. This is so beyond sad. Baby Grace born May 19, 2023, will never know her mom but she will know Love at Neema Village. We pray she can be reunited with her family soon.

Little cutie pie Michael is one of our MAP mom’s babies. Mom is struggling with alcohol addiction and we have enrolled her in Pippi House for a year. Baby Michael will stay at Neema until mom is clean and sober.

We love our mountain as she stands watch over the babies at Neema Village and occasionally lifts her cloudy skirts to give us a peek of the grandeur that is Africa.

People from all over the world fly into Arusha to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and this summer the Burkhalter family came to test their skill and stamina on an eight-day charity climb for Neema Village. Only a tiny portion of people on the planet would attempt or accomplish this grueling feat and we watched in a bit of awe as they strapped everything they would need to survive for eight days on their backs and headed off to begin the climb.

They said they froze, they slid in dust and rock for hours, they pulled themselves up by their will, they collapsed at night too exhausted and cold to get up for a potty trip, plodding ever up and up, Poli Poli (slowly, slowly) with the top of the African world always just above the clouds. All this while their guides and porters seemed to skip up the mountain with the food, tents, water, potties, pots and pans, sleeping gear all on their heads to be waiting with a full camp set up and dinner on the fire when they finally trudged into camp.

They each had chosen a baby to climb for and when they began to wonder why in the world they were doing this, they would pull out the picture of their baby and remember what this baby has been through and then they knew they could make it. One of them had chosen little Max who was dropped in an open pit latrine and the bacteria had ruined his eye.

Mckenna, who has her pilots license had said I can’t wait to be above the clouds again. At 15,000 feet the clouds had slipped away and she was finally above the clouds.

Early Sunday morning our view of Kili from Neema Village with the sun just peaking out over the mountain was golden. I can only imagine how it must feel to see the world as God sees it from the top of this enormous continent of Africa.

And after eight impossible days, with only one sprained knee, they made it!  John, Mckenna, Aden and Nicole Burkhalter and friend Jacob Sparks, we are so proud of you and so grateful for the donations you raised from your friends and church family in Rusk, Texas. You are our Super Heroes!

A few hours before the Burkhalters were to fly home a new baby was brought to Neema Village. The baby had been abandoned in a field and we were thinking of a name for her when Mckenna walked by the isolation room and I knew then what the baby’s name would be. Angela, their mother, John’s wife had not gotten to come on the trip to climb Kili so I called the family into the isolation room and laid the baby in their arms. “Meet new baby Angela,” I said. When a grown man cries, everyone cries. It was a sweet moment.

May your day be filled with sweet moments and may you always see the world as God sees it.

“Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

www.neemavillage.org

May 31st, 2023

We have been back home in Africa a couple of weeks now and it always stuns us at how beautiful it all is, both the scenery and the people.

We were excited to see our big girl, Maria, and her little buddy Joeli. Maria is eight years old now and we think one of the sweetest humans on the planet! She loves the babies, is learning three different languages, loves to sing, loves every volunteer, is gorgeous in pink and makes straight As in school, almost.

Our granddaughter, Hope Taylor, graduated from OC in May and brought her roommates to Neema Village. They were able to participate in a Gift/Days For Girls project out in one of our furtherest Maasai villages. It was a perfect pink day for everyone!

Our Neema Village program for young girls is called Gift, which means “Girls Informed For Tomorrow.” A group of volunteers sat around the dinner table at Neema one night and dreamed up the Gift program.

Anna and Angel are certified instructors for the Days For Girls program which works to keep girls in school. Together with our GIFT program it is changing the lives of these young girls. They took volunteers out to the village and had a lot of fun teaching and doing a craft with the girls. Marquisette had designed a bracelet that keeps count of the days of the months for the girls. if we can keep them from getting pregnant before age 18 they will have a chance of a better life for themselves and their children.

About 150 girls showed up and they were each given a colorful bag with feminine, washable pads that they can carry to school. Many Maasai girls do not get to go to school and if they get to go, they are usually finished by around 12 or 14 when they are married off for the family’s bride price.

Much like this sweet little fourteen year old momma pictured above who came in to Neema this month with her new baby. Baby Moses was extremely malnourished, weighing only about three and half lbs at two weeks. This momma at age seven had been badly burned when her dress caught fire at the family cook fire in her home. She lost some fingers and her breasts were so badly burned she had no milk for the baby.

The baby is all skin and bones but with our round the clock nanny care he will soon be fat and happy.

After a warm bath and clean clothes baby Moses looked much better. He took a bottle and went right to sleep. The nannies have him on an every two hour feeding schedule. He will be a big healthy boy someday and his momma has agreed to come in from the village often to see him before she takes him back home.

Another new baby this month is Shadrack whose mom brought him to the police station and left him. She has the sickness and said, “life is just too hard and I can’t go on.” Kim asked her to come to Neema with the baby and we would try to help her but she walked out without even looking back at her sweet baby boy.

One of our Bibis, grandmothers, came in for a week of Save The Mothers training. She had a blinding cataract.

Neema helped her with the surgery and now she cannot stop blessing Neema Village for her beautiful clear eye.

Daniel, our Mothering Center guard, is finally out of the hospital and back out at his village. He had a blocked colon and had emergency surgery to remove part of his colon, a horrible surgery which is usually a death sentence here. Kim took volunteers out to Joshua’s village to take him home and a large crowd of family and friends came out to welcome him home and thank Neema Village for helping save the life of this young man.

Elijah, the young boy who was almost starved when nurse Ally saw him in the village was brought into town to see how we could help him.

This is Elijah after a few weeks of TLC. Amazing, isn’t it. Doesn’t look like the same boy. Thank you Ally for seeing him and not being able to leave him without trying to do something to help him. i’m pretty sure it is what Jesus would have done.

Elijah’s mother is very poor and did not have enough food for her family. She has been set up in a MAP rice business which will hopefully support the family so Elijah can continue to have good food when he goes home.

There have been a lot of baptisms at Neema this year as MAP moms have made decisions to become Jesus followers and one of them was a sweet volunteer from Colorado. Ella Carroll, we are so happy and proud of you.

It is still a full house at Neema Village with 67 babies in house. Two adoptions are pending and four little ones are going into foster care and boarding school soon. Remember Neema does not do adoptions. You have to live in Tanzania for three years to adopt and Social Welfare handles all adoptions so don’t let some shyster lawyer tell you differently.

The babies are warm and happy thanks to you who love and support this work.

James 1:27 “True religion is to care of the widows and orphans…”

Bless you for being a part of that.

Michael and Dorris Fortson

www.neemavillage.org

May 16th, 2023

I would have given up about a year ago but not Michael. We had been trying to drill for water to help the Maasai people for over two years and every time we got set up to drill out at a village a different part of the rig would break down. But Michael has been determined to see this project through.

We had heard horror stories of Maasai women walking for miles for clean water, standing or sleeping all night in lines at the government spigot only to have the water turned off before it was their turn to fill the bucket.

Many women get their water from streams just like this Typhoid infested one below. We were anxious to be able to bring them pure, clean water.

Bringing water to the women in a Maasai village means more time to care for their children, it means more time to grow better food, it means cleaner, healthier babies, it means children going to school with clean uniforms, it means time to work a business to better the lives of their families. It means everything.

It means lovely, healthy food like Neema’s below!

Young girls start early learning to carry firewood and water on their heads.   These young girls do not go to school, they must go for water and wood. One of the biggest investments we can do in this big continent of Africa is get young girls in school!

Since the drilling rig was given to us from a group in Nacogdoches, Texas and had come from Little Beaver in Livingston, Texas, machine parts had to be ordered from the U.S. and shipped to Tanzania. The last part to break down and need replaced was the motor which finally arrived in February this year.

In April the drilling team arrived from Dar. We had to use the down hole hammer to get through the rock but it punched right through and we have now hit water at three wells! .

Our Dar drilling team with Michael and I at our first unsuccessful well two years ago.

Thank you to all of you who have stuck with us through all of this and prayed for success in this newest Neema Village project.  Bringing water to thirsty people.

Our babies at Neema Village love water, too!

God is Indeed Good!

To donate to Neema’s Tanzania Water Project go to our website www.neemavillage.org and click on the donate button. Put “Outreach” on the purpose line.

John 4:14

May 11th, 2023

April, 2023 brought three new babies to Neema Village. On April first a new born was left under a banana tree in Arusha. Social Welfare brought the baby to Neema and we named her Lanie after one of our frequent beloved volunteers. I kind of liked Hannah Banana but Lanie won out.

Lanie is precious and beautiful and we are sure God has already planned her new mom and dad. One day Lanie will have a new family and never be abandoned again.  Making new families, it’s what Neema does best.

On April 20th Kim wrote: “It was a busy day at Neema Village with two more new babies coming through the doors at the same time. A little abandoned baby boy was left at the government hospital soon after birth. William Buie, (Buie) volunteering from Arizona, brought baby Bruce home to Neema.

“My heart breaks for his mother, Kim said, and what must have happened to her that she had to make such a difficult decision to just walk away from such a precious, newborn baby.”

The nannies voted to name him Bruce after their favorite Uncle Bruce White. Maria loves Uncle Bruce and is already in love with baby Bruce.” (That is baby Sarah with Bruce)

We love what Heather Kloss had to say: “We went to pick up a little abandoned baby at the hospital today. Such a sweetheart. As I carried him from the hospital building to the car, I couldn’t help but think about how he was left alone in devastation. Yet, now he is coming to Neema, where he will be loved and cared for. It reminded me of how we come from a place of devastation and hopelessness without Jesus, and then he comes and carries us into salvation and love and hope. My heart felt a glimpse of what God must feel when we go from darkness to light, from hopelessness to hope in Him. I hope Neema can find his mommy, help her, and share the Living Hope with her, too.”

The second baby, above, Lamnyake, brought in today, made the long journey from Maasai land to Neema after his mother died during his birth out in a remote Maasai village.

This village has not been reached with one of our Save The Mothers Safe Birthing Training sessions yet. We must work harder and faster! The baby’s Maasai grandmother and aunt accompanied him to Neema.

Kim reassured them that Lamnyake would be well loved and cared for until he could return to his village and his family, hopefully before age two.

With 64 babies on campus, please pray for our very busy nannies!

Last week Kim and our crew with Ole Bob, the truck, went out to Maasai land to deliver food and take pictures of our two producing water wells. Did you know we drilled and finally hit water?!!  Michael thinks these two water wells will give about 5,000 liters per hour of good clean water. Hallelujah!

On this trip they were delivering rice, beans and corn to the village when one of the volunteers saw someone she knew she had to help.

Ally Lane is a nurse from Illinois and while in the village she noticed a mentally challenged young man, malnourished, dirty, ragged and torn. It broke her heart and Ally knew she had to help. So, they brought twenty-year-old Elijah to Neema Village and took him to the doctor.

The Doctor said Elijah was starving and he was in need of a good bath. Our workers, Baraka and Godlisten, took Elijah to the shop bathroom at Neema, clipped his nails, cut his hair and gave him a bath. Ally and Heaven Light went to the store and bought clothes for Elijah.

Then they called Social Welfare. Unfortunately, there is no place for twenty-year-old mentally challenged people here, so Ally has agreed to pay for foster care while Elijah is being fed good food and brought back to physical health.  Then Grandmother, who loves Elijah, will take him back home to the Maasai village, but she does not have money to give him the food he needs.  So, Aly will sponsor Grandmother with a rice business. We can buy a 100 kg bag of rice for her for a few months. She can break that up into smaller bowls and double her money. If she will put some money back each month then she can begin to buy her own bags of rice. Wallah! A New Rice business is born!

Finally one more piece of good news, Daniel is getting out of the Hospital! After 4 weeks in the hospital, major surgery to remove part of his colon, and almost dying from fluid in his lungs, Daniel is well and coming home.  Thank you for your prayers.

Jacobo’s little brother, Daniel had been a guard at Neema Village for just a few months when he became sick. Jacobo is the father of Joshua, one of our very first babies at Neema and a favorite village for most of our volunteers to visit. When Daniel first became sick we took him to the emergency room where they recommended that he have immediate surgery. Instead, he was taken to the local Maasai doctor for a week. When he was finally brought back in to town, he was comatose and close to death. They did emergency surgery the next day but did not think he would survive the surgery.

Praise God, He has the last word!! Thank you for all your prayers for Daniel. And for the successful water wells and for the nannies and all the babies and workers at Neema Village.

It has been a good month at Neema Village.

Michael and I have been in Toronto with Vern and Mary Fernandes seeing Niagara Falls and attending an incredible fund raiser for Neema Village. Love Canada!

* New instructions from the Bookkeeper and Auditor.

If you want to help with Daniel’s medical bill, MAP businesses or sponsoring babies or drilling for water or school children or delivering food to the hungry or Save The Mothers check out the new donation categories on our website.

www.neemavillage.org

May 4th, 2023

I have been holding this story for a few months, trying to decide if I can print it. All our MAP moms have a tragic story but sometimes it is just hard to write them and hard to read. It is easier to read about puppies found in a trash can.

But I can’t let it go and I think you need to hear it. If it helps it does have a happy ending.

One of our lead nannies at Neema Village, was walking home recently when she saw an old friend from her primary school days on the street. Her friend was begging for help from anyone who would listen. She had been beaten up, cut and badly bruised and had a two year old with her and a four day old baby on her back. After talking with her friend, our nanny called Anna, the MAP Director at Neema Village.

The next day Anna and a couple of volunteers went to the house to see her. It was not much of a house, one room mud, just big enough for a double bed given to her by the people who owned the house and a thin foam mattress given by a neighbor. Since she had no money, the neighbor was also giving her food, a little dagaa (dried minnows) and corn meal. But the house was soon to be torn down so the little family would be homeless again.

We will call her Imani. She is 34 years old and had two children with her, she had left her three little boys out in the village. The baby was only a few days old. Her husband had left her and Imani had been working the streets to buy food for the family.

Street beggars are fairly common here since there are no government programs to help the poor.

Imani’s family was hungry so she agreed to carry drugs by swallowing them in a bag and walking across the border into another country in Africa.

On one of the trips, she and her friend were caught and the friend was shot and killed. The police threw her and the body of her friend into the back of a truck and took her to prison. It was a horrible ride, she told Anna, with her friend dead, blood everywhere, bouncing in the back of the truck with her.  In prison, in a foreign country, she had not realized she was pregnant again and after having the baby a kind policewoman tried to help her by getting her a ride back home with a driver hauling corn across the border. The driver asked for sex and she begged that she had a new baby and could not. She was raped anyway.

As she talked to Anna she was crying, “I’ve learned a lot and I really want to change my life, I just do not know where to start.” She didn’t want Anna to leave and was begging her to please come back.

Imani had no idea she had just come in contact with the One Power who could actually change her life!

We moved Imani into the MAP houses at Neema Village and she began meeting with other women who have been through abuse, and abandonment and had made really bad choices. She started classes; sewing, English, Bible, women’s rights, counseling seminars and twice a week she joined a Bible based group therapy session with the other women. (Imani has the red scarf on)

She began coming to church at Neema and one afternoon Kelle Samsill spent a couple of hours talking about Jesus and the power to have a new life and how to become a Christian. Imani knew that was what she had been looking for. She was a Muslim and one glorious Sunday morning Imani decided to announce to the world she is now a Jesus Follower by being baptized.  As we were walking back to the baby home Imani suddenly fell on her knees, held her arms up to the sky and thanked God for her new life.

There is much more to the story of Imani, faith is not always easy but she is growing. She has graduated out of the MAP house now and began her small business selling items like soap, salt and cokes. She returns to Neema for seminars where one day hopefully she will tell her story to encourage other young women coming in for help.

I love this!! Imani with her new MAP business. May God richly bless you if you have been supporting the MAP (Mothers Against Poverty) program through “Outreach” at Neema Village! It is amazing to see Hope come alive for these women!

There are classes everyday in the new Preslar Mothering Center. Women like Imani. who have been marginalized from society, kicked out, told they were unworthy and unloved are coming to know and accept Jesus and are being baptized. Lives are being changed. It is pretty exciting to watch God work at Neema Village!

Yes, God is still in the business of changing lives!

Love,

Dorris and Michael

www.neemavillage.org

April 1st, 2023

Five of our Fort Worth Christian girls volunteering at Neema Village this month went with Kelle Samsill, a Neema board member, and Anna Kimambo, our MAP Director, to visit a grandmother with her granddaughter. We had heard from Social Welfare that this poor grandmother needed help.

It was amazing how happy this widow woman was with her special needs granddaughter. The grandmother and girl could not stop smiling!

They were living in a mud hut with no electricity, no running water, no inside toilet, no car, no family, no medical help, and especially no government or non profit help to support the little family and they couldn’t stop smiling!

Going up into the mountains in Maasai country, the FWC group had to park the car and walk in over a foot path that gets pretty slippery in the rains, through a gully and up into the dirt swept yard of the mud hut.

Janet, the little special needs granddaughter was eighteen years old. Grandmother asked if any of the girls in the FWC group were that age. Kelle said they all were seventeen and eighteen years old, just the same age as Janet. The girls may have been in a bit of a shock.

As she held her, Kelle was surprised at how tiny Janet was, During her bath you could see there was not much to her little eighteen year old body.

The girls listened as grandmother talked about her life caring for her granddaughter. She didn’t complain or accuse anyone and she was not angry at what life had given her. She just seemed full of joy at being able to take care of Janet.

She wasn’t asking for a hand out but she had heard that Neema helps mothers and widows with small businesses. Anna gave her some money so she could buy a little food and then Kelle and Anna worked out a plan for a goat business for her. You don’t have to do a lot of hard work for goats, just feed them and watch them have babies so you can sell them. It sounds like the perfect business for this busy grandmother.

So, this week Kelle and Anna loaded up the cars with goats and volunteers to get grandmother started in her goat business.

Ally, Melanie, Nancy, Elaine and the goats went with Kelle to meet Janet.

This funny little goat below seems to be saying, “Is this my new home?”

We were so grateful to be able to help this sweet family.

Martha ran away from her Maasai village at night. Her father had died and the village elders wanted her to marry an old man who already had other wives. She walked to the highway about three hours at night to get to the main road where she hitched a ride with strangers to town. I cannot imagine how brave you have to be to do this! There are hyenas out there! In town Martha heard about a place that helped girls who ran away from early marriage and FGM. It was the sweet little church orphanage down the road from Neema Village.

The girls from the orphanage come to Neema Village on Fridays to sew and that is where we met Martha. She quickly became a leader in the group, leading the Maasai songs and the girls in prayer before they begin to sew. Dora the sewing instructor says she is a very good seamstress. After finishing the course, Martha received her own sewing machine from Neema Village.

Now she is ready to start a sewing business out in another Maasai Village. She has learned to make school uniforms. All school children wear uniforms here. To get her started we will buy her 3 bolts of fabric, good scissors, thread, other notions and a chair. She will also need rent for six months and money for food for six months. She is young and energetic and will do very well. If you want to help women like Martha please go to the Neema Village website www.neemavillage.org

We just finished our 17th Save The Mothers session helping twelve very brave grandmothers learn how to save mothers during childbirth.

I have to tell you after a week of working with these brave, smiling, lion hearted women I have begun to wonder if maybe we are not the ones who are in need of help!

Be Blessed dear ones,

Dorris and Michael

www.neemavillage.org

March 16th, 2023

I know that sounds backwards but it is really what happened. For this little one it was an end to a pretty sad existence when Social Welfare brought her to Neema Village.

Baby Kelle was covered in bug bites, her skin was red and crusty and I remember she didn’t cry a lot then.  I guess, like all abandoned babies, she had learned crying didn’t work, so why bother.

Kelle was about 3 months old when she came to Neema Village. Her mom had abandoned her in the house while she went out to work the streets.  A neighbor took the baby to the hospital because she was dehydrated and so weak she could not open her eyes. It took weeks to clear the baby’s damaged skin and much longer to heal the scars of abandonment.

But Kelle grew and became a sweet little girl. Always a bit afraid of visitors and shy around most people, she would hide behind us and cry when visitors came to see her. We had prayed someone would overlook that and she would find a Forever Family soon.

God is Good and at two years old he sent just the right family for Kelle.

Jamila and her husband had had one child, a girl named Lightness, who on the day she was to be promoted to bank manager found she had an enlarged heart and soon passed away. The parents were devastated. Dad said it was like a light had gone out of their home.

But they had their daughter’s teenage girl to raise and, on the day all three came to Neema to see about adopting a child, Kelle was brought out to see them. Would she scream and cry like usual when she met strangers? Thank God, not this time, to our surprise she crawled up in a lap and made herself at home. It was love at first sight.

In just a few days the family came to take Kelle home. They changed her name from Kelle to Lightness and dad, with a bright smile, said because a light had come on in their home again. So it was the end of a tragic start and the beginning of a new life for LIghtness.

Yesterday we were invited to their home. We don’t often get to see the new life of our adopted babies so we were pretty excited. They wanted us to see how good she was doing and dad gave us the ok to post so you could see. Marquisette, Heavenlight, Kelle, Aly Lane and Ashley loved their beautiful home and sweet smiles.

Kelle O’ Pry Samsill, baby Kelle’s namesake, had brought a sweetheart cake, lollypops, and toys and stickers.

This time baby Kelle hid behind her new mom’s skirts and didn’t want to come out to see us. It was a really good sign.

She eventually came out for the cake and after her second piece she was letting Kelle show her the stickers.

After a prayer of blessing and protection for their home, we left with full, happy hearts. Once again what evil had meant for death, God had meant for Life.

May the light and love of Lightness and her new family bring you joy in your family, too..

Saving babies one at a time at Neema Village

Dorris and Michael Fortson

www.neemavillage.org

March 3rd, 2023

With lots of volunteers this month and the grand opening of the new Mothering Center we have neglected to tell you about new babies at Neema Village. We usually average two new babies a month. December was our largest month ever with nine new babies. This month we had four new babies all precious and beautiful. Currently there are 65 babies at Neema with one pending adoption. (Remember Neema Village does not do adoptions, Social Welfare handles all legal adoptions in Tanzania.)

Baby Jackson’s very young father realized after one month that he was not able to care for his baby after the death of his wife due to malaria.

The father works in Dar and lives very far away, so they traveled a long way to bring the baby to Neema Village. We will be looking for a family member who can care for little Jackson in a family home. It has always been our belief that no baby belongs in an orphanage.

Jackson weighed 3.5 kg at one month old. He is sweet and precious and we love him already. It is so sad that people still die of a disease that is so treatable like malaria.

We have been waiting a few months to post about this baby. Sometimes their stories are so convoluted it is hard to tell you what actually happened. to them. Neighbors had reported to Social Welfare that an old woman had been caring for a newborn and was not taking good care of the baby.

The woman said a couple had paid her to keep their newborn baby. But when the couple was contacted in a town about 12 hours away, the mother said it was not her baby but that she had used a surrogate. Hmmm… Not sure how that works here in Africa. I think it is called a mistress. A police investigation is going on and DNA testing has been done. Didn’t know they could do that here either?

Triplets are very common here in Africa. We have had 17 sets and one set of quads! The latest are three sweet little Maasai girls. Their Maasai mom did not have enough milk for all three babies. Due to lack of rain this year there has been very little food out in the villages. The mom brought her three little bundles in and we have kept her for two months trying to build her up with good food so she would have enough milk. But Mom needs to return home now so she has taken the biggest baby and has promised to come in every month to see the other two babies.

The girls are cuddly, round faced Maasai babies and we love them to pieces. They look like our first set of triplets, Frankie and his sisters from eleven years ago.

Naleku and Nembris, the triplet girls, are growing fat and happy and will be big, healthy Maasai girls someday. Hopefully they can return home to their triplet sister at around nine months.

New MAP Mom Neema, (yes just like our name Neema Village) is heading home after two months learning to care for her special needs baby at our Rehabilitative Daycare. We will set her up in a small duka (shop) selling rice, beans, oil and ugali flour. Her husband is mentally challenged and is not able to work. Neema is the sole support for the family. She will do very well in her new business. If you want to help her with her business check out her page on our website under See MAP Moms.

We love the joy on these MAP mom’s faces as they head out to start a new life of hope and promise and in this case new shiny shoes!

God bless each of you who share with these babies and moms at Neema Village. You are what keeps it all going.

Love, Love,

Dorris and Michael Fortson

www.neemavillage.org

February 23rd, 2023

We had all been working hard to get it finished in time, painting, buying the furnishings, planning the meal, planting flowers, inviting guests and yesterday the Siku Kuu (Big Day) opening of the new Preslar Mothering Center on the campus of Neema Village in Tanzania, East Africa took place.

We love it! The building is beautiful but we are praying that what will happen in that wonderful place will be even more beautiful. Women who have been abandoned and abused will come to know that there is a man named Jesus and he has never once taken his eyes off them or abandoned them.

Ken and Joan Preslar came to help us open the building. We prayed that God would bless everything that will happen in this building and that it will all be to His Glory.

Marquisette and Kim led Ken and Joan over, eyes closed, until they came through the gate. Joan was crying, Kim and I were crying and Ken was standing in disbelief.

The building will house the MAP (Mothers Against Poverty) program, and The Save The Mothers programs at Neema Village. A sewing room, literacy room, computer room, kitchen, bathrooms with showers, offices for Anna and Mercy along with a large conference room all furnished with tables, chairs, kitchen and office equipment, screen and video projector, mics, sound equipment and so much more. Thank You Butterfield Foundation!

They had so much fun practicing the walk for the style show wearing the new dresses they had all made. A lot of hooting and hollering was going on!

We had invited the Regional Commissioner, who is directly under the President, to come help us open the center. Thank you to our good friend, Pastor Israel, from the little church down the street that rescues young girls from early marriage and FGM, this busy man actually came!

Of course we took him through the baby home first so he could see our precious babies.

Michael led the Commissioner over from the baby home to the new women’s center. He was very kind and gracious. We have found the higher up in government they are the nicer they are!

Some of our past birthers from the Save the Mothers programs came in for the day. There was a large crowd to welcome the commissioner with drums and singing.

Some of our co-op sewing groups from the Maasai village came in for the day. Queenie came as well with her young girls who sew school uniforms and raise bees for honey as their MAP businesses.

The best MAP businesses of the year received a certificate and bonus. There have been 109 women finish the MAP courses and set up businesses through Neema Village. Eight women who have finished the sewing course received sewing machines. Dora the teacher also received her own machine.

It was a fun day with lots of food and laughter. Michael spoke and our two directors Anna and Mercy had time to say a few words.

One of our hair dressers from Dar es Salaam came in for the big day. In her former life she had worked the street but knew she could not survive out there. We sent her to beauty school and now she works in a large salon in Dar.

God is still in the business of changing lives!

We cannot possibly say thank you enough to Ken and Joan Preslar for building this new Mothering Center. We pray that all the good that will take place in this buiilding will go on for generations to come as young African women come in and find hope and courage in their lives.

“When you lift a woman in Africa you not only change her world you change ours!”

Joan you can stop crying now sweetheart!

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

www.neemavillage.org

January 18th, 2023

After our Christmas break in Texas we arrived back in Africa on Thursday night and the Aggies For Christ from Texas A & M University arrived Friday Morning. That began a grand, rather breathless two weeks.

With Amy Miller and her two girls here as well, we had a full breakfast table again at Neema Village.

The breakfast Quiche always has spinach from our garden, eggs from Neema chickens and milk from Neema cows. God is good!

There is never a dull moment with the Aggies! I thought you might like to see what volunteering at Neema Village looks like through the eyes of these young people.
Aggies are always ready to jump in whether its painting tables and playground equipment, walking babies, moving chairs or holding babies in church.

Although Texas A & M University is no longer just an Agricultural and Mechanical University, there were some Ag and Pre-vet majors in the group this time. We love showing off our beautiful gardens and farm.  We use a drip system to water the gardens to conserve water.

GodListen is our farmer and with an agriculture degree from a local university he has made a huge difference in our vegetable production. We should have a bumper crop of coffee this year after GodListen bought blight resistant coffee plants.

For our squash, pumpkins, egg plants and carrots, he created a cold storage room, with walls made of coal and chicken wire and a water drip system to keep vegetables fresh longer. It’s pretty cool!

We water our gardens with a huge aerobic water system which cleans our sewer water just like we have at our house in Belton, Texas. I would imagine it is the only aerobic sewer system in Tanzania!

A few years ago we had a wedding at Neema Village. Rhiannon and Austin met as volunteers at Neema, fell in love here and later decided to come back to Neema to get married. It was one of the most fun days we have ever had in Africa! And instead of wedding gifts their guests bought a bio gas system for Neema.

Two of our houses on campus now cook with methane gas from cow pooh! Our vet, Dr. Ben described how that bio-gas system worked to some of the A & M students.

Dr. Ben takes care of our big Holstein milk cows and Missy our little Jersey cow who gives us butter. Did you know that cows do not have top teeth? Only bottom teeth and if you grind their food they live longer! Interesting huh!

Ben also showed the students our Rhode Island Reds who feed us about 80 to 100 eggs a day. And with 150 baby chicks raised every six weeks for meat we can supply the campus with fresh chicken at a much-reduced price from buying chicken in the stores.

The seven Aggie guys taught a men’s bible class at lunch, the students met with the MAP moms to encourage them, they sang with the nannies at night after the babies were all asleep and they played soccer with the local village boys. They had some time for fun at the local Maasai markets and toured a Maasai village and danced with the Maasai.

You can’t come to Africa and not see the animals so they took a day and toured the closest game park, Tarangire. The elephants will occasionally come right up to your car in that game park.

The Aggies come to serve and sometimes it is just plain hard work, right girls?

It’s a village and we raise a lot more than just babies around here, but babies are at the top of the food chain for us. They are what Neema Village is about and every program we do centers around the babies.

It is always hard to let the Aggies go.
We have lost count of how many students the Campus Ministers, Brian and Leslie Miller, have sent to Neema Village over the last few years but it’s a lot.

Hayden Liebl always leads the groups, getting them up for breakfast, directing traffic, doctoring the sick, making sure they get the jobs done, have some fun and always make it back in one piece.
They love well, work hard and are the hands and heart of Jesus whether in Arusha town or at Neema Village with the babies.
With young people like these our future is in good hands!
Neema means Grace and any good done is done by the Abundant Grace of God,
Michael and Dorris
www.neemavillage.org

December 15, 2022

Who will they grow up to be, these five little Christmas babies who came to Neema Village this month.  As we care for them, we think about who they will become some day now that their lives have been given back.

These little ones who have been thrown out, forgotten, abused, unloved, we wonder who they will become someday. How far can they go now? Whose lives will they change now that their lives have been changed? So much hope and possibility in their lives now.

When we look in the faces of these babies with such tragic stories, we have to wonder what this saving will mean. Could they grow up to be healers and helpers, will they work with the blind, the lame, the sick. Maybe they will become great leaders and help heal nations of hatred and greed. Maybe they will find cures for what ails us all. Maybe they will grow up to be teachers or preachers and help people seek goodness and most of all to seek Jesus?  Maybe they will just be good moms and dads who will love their own children.  As if that is not enough!

This time of year, as I think about all the babies at Neema Village, 62 of them in-house today, and all the possibilities of their futures, it reminds me of that beautiful song,

Did you know that this baby boy could someday help the blind? Maybe.