We are at our home in Tanzania at last! This trip, we will be here until September 15. Here is a photo of Dorris and four month old Phillip. This is what we are here for.
After church Sunday we took some of our Neema volunteers out to see the land Neema is buying, and where we will build the new home for the babies. We were sure we could hear the laughter of children echoing across these beautiful hills. God is indeed Good!
To have two teenage girls see Africa for the first time is way beyond cool! Hayley, our granddaughter, and her best friend Kyndel (Hayley, right, and Kyndel, left) have been at Neema a week now and I think they have fallen in love with Africa and its beautiful people.
The Neema babies, Debora and Matilda Grace, both abandoned babies, can be found most anytime either tied on their backs or in their laps as the girls feed, change, bounce and burp these beautiful little Neemaities.
Everywhere you look Africa is a million shades of manjano (green in Swahili). Yesterday we took them to Moshi, a beautiful green flowering town, where they toured a coffee plantation and helped make the world famous Tanzanian coffee from “bush to cup.” An old African Mzee took the girls through the process and energetically sang and pounded, winnowed and roasted his way to the best cup of coffee I ever drank in my life. I will never drink another cup of coffee without thinking of this weathered almost toothless man singing and clapping as we pounded the coffee beans.
Mt. Kilimanjaro, who is very bashful and as the Africans, say only shows herself to special people, finally peeked her snow covered head from the clouds to greet the girls. Michael and the girls hiked to the Kili waterfall at the base of the mountain and waded through the ice cold glacier river water to stand on a rock and see this misty vision of God’s beauty.
We sat with them in the damp, musty caves of the ancient Chagga people and listened to the guide tell of how the ancients hid from the warrior Masaai who came raiding to capture tall women to sire their babies. Sadly he told us they killed the women when the child was five so she could not tell them of their Chagga home.
At the end of the trip we stopped by the Machame hospital where Jack and Mija Coles from Temple, Texas worked for so many years. In the maternity delivery ward we got to see a brand new baby just washed and I was given the honor of naming the baby. It was a touching moment for all of us as I named this beautiful little wonder, Rebekah.
On their day off last weekend we took the girls to Maji Moto, a hot volcanic pool, where they swam in the blue pool, swung from a rope swing squealing as only teenage girls can, or sat still while the little fishes nibbled at their feet. It is quite a unique place, dropped in the middle of a dry, goat-infested, overgrazed plain, this beautiful oasis suddenly appears. The pool was hidden by giant, spreading fig trees with monkeys flinging themselves from branch to branch in search of their dinner. We have nicknamed Kyndel, the monkey magnet, since she can spot them anywhere.
We are so glad to be back in Africa and once again be able to share this land and its people with you on our little blog. Having Hayley and Kyndel here and seeing Africa through their eyes has been a special treat for us. Bless all of you who made this possible for them. And bless all of you who support and pray for our babies at Neema House.
Grace to all,
Br>