Once A Neema Baby,

Always A Neema Baby

You could see daylight through the walls. It was not a safe house for Grandmother or Shabani to come home to from boarding school for three months a year. 

If you follow Neema Village you will remember little abandoned baby Shabani who went home to live with his grandmother a few years ago. His mom had been just sixteen when she left him on the street and the police caught her and took her off to jail. Like the Moses story, she had been watching to see who would pick him up. 

When Grandmother came to Neema Village in December, we had given her a mattress and she had somehow gotten that home on a bus. But a niece with her new baby had moved in to live with Grandmother and she had the bed while grandmother still slept on the floor. 

Shabani’s name had been changed to Jackson when Grandmother decided he could be raised Christian since he had started life in a Christian home at Neema village. We were thrilled about that and especially when Grandmother herself became a Christian and changed her name to Neema.

There would be no way to “shore it up,” we would have to build a new house with a a good foundation. It won’t be expensive just a rock foundation, cement block walls and a tin roof. At Neema we will wield two metal windows and a door for the house and carry those out to the building site. 

But it will mean a couple of our builders going that far out to the village to stay for a few weeks to get the work done.  They will need a place to stay, a rented truck to carry the building materials and to travel back and forth to town and they will need food while they work. With out a Holiday Inn in Africa these kinds of problems are never easy but with God’s help we can do this!

It’s for our baby Jackson, and as you know “Once a Neema Baby, Always a Neema Baby.” Shabani has always been special to our family, our daughter Kim White’s son Tanner had climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro to raise support for Shabani a few years ago.

A big Thank You to the crew who traveled out to the village to check on Grandmother’s house, Marion Lamoriniere, Kelle Samsill, Kim White, Ashley Berlin and Emily Moshi.