Shabani and the Ephalunt
So much of what our little Neemaites at Neema Baby Home do and say reminds me of our children when they were little. Shabani loves to sing the Noah built the Ark song and get the “Ephalunt” into the Ark. So cute and exactly how one of our boys used to pronounce the word elephant. We are back in the States for a few months and missing each one of those little forty eight bright eyed babies.
We had high hopes of moving to the new baby home this trip but that was not to be. There is lots of work going on out at the new property, the widows home and shop are finished, the Montana House has a beautiful green roof now, the baby home is getting the roof on this week, the ground is being levelled for the UCare home, the laundry room is going up and retaining walls are holding up the mountain around the building sites. 
It is a beehive of activity around the place, but it will more likely be June before we can move in now. I might add that we are building on faith since most of these buildings are not completely paid for yet so if you want to help go to www.neemavillage.org.
When you realize that almost all of the work is being done with handmade tools, ladders, scaffolds, etc, it is amazing that so much has been accomplished since last summer.
As we walk through the big hall down the middle of the new baby home, we see the homemade thrown together ladders and scaffolds and outside the African hoes that are being used to level the mountain side for a building site, metal rafters being cut by hand saw and wielded together on the property, 25 feet deep septic tanks dug by hand. It is truly amazing. What would take a tractor a couple of hours to level for a building site, takes a group of men days to level with an African h oe. It is always humbling for us to see how hard these men and women work.
One of the most exciting things to happen this trip was the water well and finally getting the pipes laid from the well down in the banana grove up to the top of the property and into the holding tanks so it can flow down into the new buildings. We had some great groups of volunteers this trip, I’ll not start naming them for fear I will leave one of those awesome groups out but the Montana Women getting the water pump put in at the
triplets’s house had to be on the top of the list of fun things we did this trip. The little triplet girls who came to Neema as tiny newborns were able to return to their home when they turned two years old last year. The family was not growing crops because of lack of water but there was a beautiful river just below their property so the Montana women bought a water pump which will now bring the water from the river up to the field. The dad will also be able to use the water pump to make extra money by pumping water for his neighbors.
As part of the new Mothering Center coming soon to Neema, plans to start a program called MAP “Mothers Against Poverty” designing micro finance business plans to help women be able to keep their babies is already underway. Loaning one of the treadle sewing machines pictured above to a young entrepreneur was just the beginning of that program. She hopes to be able to make enough money to buy her own treadle machine by the end of the year and will then return the machine so the next mom can use it.
We had some neat bible classes taught by different volunteer groups this trip. Joycie is quite proud of her stained glass cross she made in one of Kim’s classes.
Sweet baby girl Doris got to return home in March which makes 20 of our babies who have now been able to return home. We have also had seventeen adoptions. (Neema does not take money for adoptions.) It has never been our plan to keep these babies, no baby belongs in an orphanage, so as soon as these little ones are stable and someone has been found to care for them at home then they return home. It is always a big party day for us when one of the babies goes home. I must say we will especially miss this little wrinkle nose, smiley girl we have had since the day of her birth.
Lots of new babies came to Neema on this trip, five of them were preemies all under five pounds weight. Three of the babies were in the hospital at the same time. Rusty, an abandoned baby, was about seven weeks old when he came to Neema in February and Carol Ann a little abandoned baby girl came the first of March. 
We are home in the States now for a couple of months and are available to tell what God is doing with this incredible Neema (Grace) Story of abandoned, orphaned and at risk babies in Africa to your church, a class, lions club or just a coffee group. Drop us an email and we’ll pack a bag. [email protected]