Four in and three out made for a busy month at Neema Village, our home for abandoned, orphaned and at risk babies in East Africa.
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This little girl was found crying on the side of a busy road. She had been there a good part of the day when people finally realized no one was watching or coming for her. She continued to cry, scream actually, for three or four days at Neema before she finally settled down. When these little ones are old enough to remember their mother it is so much harder for them. I just cannot imagine what they must go through before we get them.
We have estimated her age at just over a year since she is starting to walk. The nannies voted on the name Destiny and we gave her January 14, 2016 as her birthday. Hopefully God has a forever family out there for her and in the meantime we will love and care for her.

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This little newborn pictured on the right, was born on Feb 17, 2017. She was abandoned at the hospital. We were told the mother had threatened to take her to the river. Thank God she did not do that. I got to name her and chose the name Bethany. Bethany is beautiful and is such a good baby. I know that mothers everywhere love their babies and it must have been something very tragic to make this mother leave her baby. We are too busy loving and caring for these babies to take time to judge a mother who felt she had no other choice than to walk away from this beautiful little newborn. Neema is “A Place of Forgiveness and Hope.” Forgiveness for the moms and hope for the babies. Please say a prayer for that mom.

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One of our sweet volunteers from Billings, Montana got to go with Bekah to pick up baby Bethany. It was an experience Emily Broadbent will never forget. I love this picture of Emily smiling through her tears.

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Faith is about 20 months old. Her mother, suffering from substance abuse, has repeatedly abandoned her. She has an uncle who would take her but the current drought has left him barely able to feed his family.
The interesting thing that happened with this baby is that the uncle who lived all the way across town had been told about Neema but did not know how to get to us. Arusha is a very big city with 1.6 million people. The uncle got on a dala dala (the local transport system) to try to find us. He sat next to a lady and asked her if she knew how to get to a place called Neema Village. The lady was Orupa, one of our nannies who was on her way to work. Now how sweet is that!
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Faith is very lethargic and we have had her to the doctor to make sure there is nothing wrong. She was limp, not eating and lay on the floor with her face to the wall, even during song time when the other toddlers in the room were singing and dancing to “The wheels on the bus.” It was scary. Yesterday Bekah was able to get her to eat a little Ugali with some liquid vitamins so she seemed a bit more alert last night before bed. We have never seen a baby so despondent. It is very sad, please pray for little Faith.
*An update on Faith, we had to call her uncle who came today to see her. Faith clung to him and would not let go and the uncle decided to take her home. We will see if we can continue to help this little one.

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Born at 29 weeks gestation, tiny baby Joanne, named by the nannies, weighed 2.2 lbs when she was born on Dec 17, 2016. Both the father and mother are extremely ill with HIV and left the baby at the hospital. The hospital called and said she was finally big enough to come home to Neema. She is very precious and we will have to see what the future holds for this little one. We definitely need your help to care for all these new babies.

Bless you if you are already sponsoring a Neema baby. If not, why not? There is so much sadness in the world an abandoned baby should not be one of them.
Please go to our website www.neemavillage.org and click on the donate button. You can set up a monthly support of $30 a month as easy as pie.

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We have had three of our babies able to go home this month. Sweet boy Rusty got to go home to an auntie. His mother had left him with his father and the father had abandoned him. When the mother learned of this she told her sister that she had a baby at Neema Village and if she wanted him she should go get him. Rusty loves everybody and was just fine as he and his aunt pulled out of the drive at Neema. He was waving to us. The auntie has invited us to visit him anytime.
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Asha Bella’s mom died at her birth and her dad has now remarried. The new mom came and spent a few days diapering and feeding Asha and has fallen in love with her. We are so happy for this little baby and her new mom.

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Angel is a quiet shy 2 year old that we have had since she was abandoned at a few months old. She was finally able to return home with an aunt this week. Her mother has had some mental problems but Social Welfare has now granted the Aunt permission to take Angel home. Angel has cuddled up very nicely with her Aunt who has said we could visit her any time. We like that.

So babies coming and going has made for an exciting month at Neema.

We love it that we try to put these babies back in a home when possible. It has always been our policy that no baby belongs in an orphanage. You can help us in this work by sponsoring one of our new babies until we can find forever families for them.
Thanks a bunch,
Dorris and Michael