Memory books

Laureen (left) and I (right) have been matched as "co-mentors" and are also planning to go to Kenya together. We are sure this is a "God-thing" -- listen to the circumstances. Laureen has been one of my "gold" friends for about 20 years, our kids know each other and we have been at Pathway forever. However, she and I do different things and we don't always get to spend much time together, but everytime we have time to sit down and really talk we don't have to explain anything -- we both know each other's history and we pick right up where we left off. A few months ago, after we decided to go to Kenya, we both ended up on the steering committee for the Women's Mentoring Ministry at Pathway. Long story short, after everyone had been prayed over and matched, Laureen and I were left. We just kind of looked at each other and giggled -- and just said, ok, if this is what you want, Lord, there must be a reason...Turns out that over the past few years, Laureen has been leading people in a grief recovery program and I have had a lot of interaction through my child welfare job with children who have suffered much grief and loss because of their families' dysfunction. We decided to do something along these lines for the children of Tumaini and after several brain storming sessions came up with the idea of memory books to help these children remember their parents who now have been lost to them. We will take pictures, help the children write stories about their parents and what they remember so they won't forget. Children often are able to deal with loss better than adults, but we would like to help them remember the good things about their parents. Full blown grief counseling is not practical for the one week we will be there, but we would like to leave them with something concrete. Both Laureen and I get into trouble if we don't have anything to do...