Put to Good Use

When doing humanitarian aid projects, do you ever wonder, "Is this really going to help? Will they really use this?" I have my answer with one particular project I wasn't sure about. The project is to make books out of magazine cut outs. You find interesting pictures from magazines (animals, wildlife, nature, objects, people, etc) and glue them to basic card stock. You put the cardstock in page protectores and either tie them together with yarn or string, or put them in a binder. Jessi and I worked on making a book to send to Abbi in Romania (working with special needs orphans). Abbi received the package and this is what she said,

And as for the book--Thank you, thank you for it!! Raluca, one of my sweethearts from Bambi, has been at the hospitl for the last week and we have been able to visit her there. But when we leave, she always cries so much. Well, today, I brought her that book and she loved it!! Raluca is really good with names, and so she went> through the whole book and assigned names to every picture of a person, and then went through it again and again and would say, "Bogdaaan! Filica!!" etc., as though she was greeting a friend who walked into the door. It was so cute to see. And when I left today, she didn't cry! I told her it was her book, and if I go there tomorrow and it's not with her, I'm going to be ticked. But I couldn't take it from her when I left, so hopefully no one will take it from her! Hopefully she'll be able to look at it when she's bored. I couldn't have asked for anything better for her, because she doesn't really know how to play with normal toys--she just likes people. And that book is full of people, and so it made her really happy. It was so cute, she'd ask me what the name of a person in the book was, and I'd say, "Iulia" for instance, and she'd say, "No! Ana!" She remembers names really well. Anyhow, thank you, thank you for it, because it was perfect.

So now I know. It motivates me to make more.