Third Annual Formula Fund Run
Benefitting Neema Village/Neema House Arusha
-A Rescue Center for Orphaned, Abandoned, and At-Risk Babies-
Arusha, Tanzania, East Africa
Dear Neema House Friends,
We are just one month away from our annual 5K Formula Fund Run, which helps purchase formula for the babies of Neema House. With forty
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Registration Table 2014 |
-eight babies, we need a lot of formula and milk!
The Formula Fund Run will be held in Temple, TX, Saturday, April 23, at 8:30 a.m. at Pepper Creek Trail, 546 N Kegley Rd. 76502.
Registration is now open, so I urge you to click on this link and get signed up now: https://runsignup.com/Race/TX/Temple/NeemaHouseFormulaRun
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| It’s more fun with friends! | |
Every pre-registered runner will receive a T-Shirt, and we are holding off ordering the T-shirts until we have a count of the quantity and sizes we need. I want to encourage you to sign up for this 5K and support Neema House. Please mention our 5K to your runner friends, perhaps get a group, and have a fun day together.
Even if you are unable to participate in this year’s 5K, you can still support it. Make a donation of at least $30, and we will send you a T-Shirt. You can donate at: http://www.neemavillage.org/Donate_Sponsor_a_Baby.html
In the purpose blank, write “5K Donation and list the T-Shirt Size”
If you have questions, please send me an email at Michael@neemavillage.org . I hope to see you at the 5K on April 23.
God bless,
Michael Fortson, Founder
Neema House Arusha
So much of what our little Neemaites at Neema Baby Home do and say reminds me of our children when they were little.
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.
“Really,” I said. Joycie with head down looking up through her eyelashes said “Nyoka kitanda.” 
So Babu Michael takes her hand and they walk down the hall to the back bedroom where she points under the bed in the corner. Michael gets on his knees and searches all around saying, “Ona, hakuna Nyoka, Joycie.”
in Southern Tanzania, came to tell Michael there was a snake under the bed, but this time there really was! Michael, then 20 years old, (Yes, that’s him at 20 to the right) flipped out the knife he carried strapped to his ankle, stepped on the cobra and sliced its head off. At which the Africans ran out of the room howling!
But alas for those of you worried about encountering wild animals when you come to visit Neema, the goats who walk each morning down the dirt road in front of our house is about all the animals you will see when you come to big city of Arusha.
One of the little ones is in the hospital in NICU and could use your prayers right now. His name is Imran, pictured below with Bekah. His mom died of AIDs and the doctor put him on the medicine for that which may have been too toxic for him.
The Neema Nine,our big three and four year olds, had had their baths early and were getting their school clothes on when I stepped outside our bedroom door at 6:30am. My first thought was “I hope The Little Einstein School will be ready for this!!”
They brought Frankie’s triplet sisters, Yacinta and Lucia, to Neema as well so the family has been getting reacquainted. Frankie’s family is Maasai and they are famous for their beautiful jewelry. I was curious to see if they slept in all that sparkling finery and surprise, yes, they do. They were sleeping on mats in the playroom when our little school squealers came running in and woke them up. Both grandmother and mother sat up, earrings dancing, with that “Where am I?” look as the naughty nine tumbled in and began jumping and yelling around their sleeping mats. With the weight of the jewelry Mama Frankie’s ears have fallen so she has taken a slip of skin from her head and wrapped it around her ear to hold it up! Can you see it?
I was asked recently what was one thing I had learned in all this grand experiment called Neema and after thinking a moment I replied, “I have learned that people are basically good, no matter what the daily news would have you believe, most people want to help when they know there is a need.” We are continually blown away by your love and support for this most precious ministry. 
comes to us tonight, he weighs 1.65 kilos, about 3 pounds. His name is Saruni and his mom died at his birth. Please pray with us that God will save this young life and that we will be a blessing to him.
Matt and Kelly Erdman, with their two daughters, Camille and Tabitha, traveled back to the states for their first furlough home since coming to Africa a year ago.
We also drilled a dry hole out at Franki’s Maasai village. Another big disappointment for the women of that village who walk 4 to 5 miles a day for water as well as a disappointment for the kind folks in Colorado Springs and Nacogdoches who gave the money for the Masaai water well. But we have not given up. God is still good and we hope to try again in the future.
The staff number has now reached forty at Neema and at the Christmas Party this year, all our staff received a great Christmas bonus of $100 accompanied with lots of dancing and trilling. We killed and cooked two goats to celebrate plus peeled a couple hundred potatoes for the party. 
ups and downs and the loss of one baby this year we know that God has been Faithful. We continue in the knowledge that this is all His work and we are but His helpers.
(One of my favorite pictures, Camille Erdman, with Rehema’s help feeding one of the Neema babies, left.)
Meet Neema House Arusha’s newest precious little babyHer name is Nengai which means “Of God.” Nengai’s mom died giving birth to her. She is from a Masaai village where there is no refrigeration, no clean water and where many of these little motherless ones will not make it due to unsterile conditions. We are crying with her today. Nengai will stay with us until she is ready to go back home. We are crowded with 45 babies in a home that should have 30 but how could we say no?
As you drive up to the gate leading into Neema we will plant bouganvilla bushes along the fence to the right. We have 24 hour guard service at Neema and the little house beside the gate is where you will check in to volunteer or visit the babies. The guard shack has its own restroom. We have guards not because we are afraid. Michael and I have never been afraid to live in Africa. People are poor and sometimes desperate here, they may want your stuff, but they are not out to hurt you. We tell our volunteers don’t wear expensive jewelry, wear the pretty jewelry the African women make here.
Gabriella above is also new at Neema. She is an abandoned baby. 
We will be so excited to finally unload the container sitting beside the new shop in the picture to the left. The blocks used to build the buildings at Neema weigh 80 pounds each! They carried those heavy blocks up a handmade wooden ladder. The men and women building Neema are the hardest working people I have ever met. They also dug a septic tank hole 25 feet wide and 22 feet deep by hand!
s. I was raised in an orphanage, went when I was four and left when I was 18. It was my giant. I’ve dealt with it but so has my husband of 52 years and our 4 children who were raised by a motherless mother. I have had to apologize for so many decisions I made. By the Grace of God, they have stuck by me.
someday walk, he is struggling to be like his little friends at Neema. He sees what they are learning to do and you can see the hope in his eyes that he can too someday. What this little boy could teach us about courage!
God. That is our faith as we work with these babies, as we try to find water on our land, as we build a home for the babies and widows and disabled children, as we try to keep them fed and healthy and safe and as we work in a land where power is sporadic and the internet is down about as much as it is up, we do battle daily. We thank God for those of you who battle with us with your prayers and support. (To see the cutest video ever of Elesha trying to walk with Sylvia Pape click on the link below!)