Thanks to Guild of Service friends

Niranjana received a package in the mail a while back. She didn't deserve a present that day, and it got caught up in a pile on my desk. Straightening for Thanksgiving, I unearthed it. Coincidentally, opening it on Thanksgiving marked the two year anniversary of the creation of the family that sent it.

This package is from a family in Sacramento whose daughter, R, was at Guild of Service with Niranjana. It includes a book with a beautiful India-orange cover, Daughter of the Ganges by Asha Miro, which Niranjana grabbed, declared hers and started "reading." Her version started out "Once upon a time there was a little girl...." Little does she know that essentially that's what the book is about, a girl adopted from India and how she retraced her roots as an adult. I'm looking forward to reading it.

But even better, the package contained a DVD. It is a copy of a video that Kamala shot in January 2006 of R — and Niranjana is there, too! In fact, she's wearing a blue dress that we recognize. Photos from the same morning were included in the referral packet we received nine months after the video was taken.

This is wonderful in so many ways. It's amazing to see the interaction between the two girls and know that we have the opportunity to maintain the connection. The video was taken when Niranjana would have been turning 2, so we have a developmental snapshot.

And like whipped cream on the pumpkin pie, at the very end of the video is a brief appearance by a third girl whose mother we know: S in Portland. With R's permission, we'd like to share the video with this Guild of Service family, too.

So Happy Thanksgiving, to the entire Guild of Service family!