Crazy Love!

Dead Bowels Come Alive!

March 11, 2020

I’m sure you are thinking that is the craziest title you have ever heard. It was pretty crazy to us too! But God is in the business of “Crazy Love” isn’t He!

Neema Village had two babies in the hospital in January and February, one of them, Christina, is an abandoned baby who will live at Neema until she can be adopted. 

She and another new baby, Joyce, both became sick and we took them to the doctor who put them in the hospital. But Christina was sicker than Joyce and was eventually put in ICU for over a week. Many of you who follow Neema Village Facebook were praying for this little abandoned baby. Bless you. Even now this picture makes me cry as I remember how we prayed for her while she whimpered and pled with her eyes for us to help her.

We hired overtime nannies 24 hours a day to stay in the hospital with both babies. One day I had taken three volunteers and our daughter Kim to the hospital to check on the babies. They were medical people and also wanted to see an African hospital. Dr. Matthews, the pediatrician, told us Christina was not doing well and that part of her bowels had died and would have to be taken out or what they touched would die too. But they would need blood for the surgery he said, and Christina was A Positive.   

All four volunteers were tested and all four were A Positive! Amazing isn’t it, how God works!

They couldn’t find a vein the first day for the blood transfusion and Christina became more critical as each day passed. The next day they were able to give her the blood. Christina perked up with all that new blood and in a few days Dr. Matthews said, “Well the bowels are working now so she doesn’t need the surgery.” Who knew dead bowels could come alive and begin working!!  God just continues to amaze us in this work of saving abandoned, orphaned and at-risk babies in Tanzania!

Christina is now back home at Neema and doing much better. Thank God!  She had one little set back but is home in our isolation room now.  Keep the prayers coming. 

Michael and I are home in the States for our Granddaughter Hayley and Rob’s wedding and taking care of business and visiting friends and family, and eating as many McDonald homestyle hamburgers as I can!  That is our little adopted Tanzanian granddaughter, Maria, in awe of Hayley in her wedding dress.

Michael was diagnosed with Typhoid before we left Africa so we have spent a lot of time in Doctors’ offices. We are amazed at how thorough the medical community is here! He has seen almost every kind of doctor imaginable, except gynecology of course, and there is still no definitive diagnosis except Typhoid. Typhoid is a killer and he has had a pretty rough time of it but doing better now. That is Michael above working on the new aerobic sewer system at Neema before we left Tanzania.

Before we left, we put together the totals for last year at Neema Village. We received 23 new babies from Social Welfare in 2019. Thirty babies were adopted or put back into a family home in 2019. Our highest number of babies in the house for one month in 2019 was 63! It’s loud, it’s messy and sometimes quite wonderful, right Kim White? Our daughter Kim is pictured above.  

Hannah tells us there were 215 volunteers last year who stayed in the volunteer house. Hey, all 215 of you guys, We Love You!! That is Steve from Australia pictured above.

Music with Kathy, Isy and Shannon, VBS with the Burkhalter puppets from Rusk, Texas and a prayer and medical clinic out in a Maasai Village led by the Billings, Montana group all rounded out a busy couple of months for the fill-in Neema Directors, Kim White, Ashley Berlin and Hannah Patterson. You three Rock!