Adopt a Grandma

Last year the young women in our ward participated in an “Adopt a Grandma” activity.  I was pleasantly surprised at how successful it was.  The girls that actually did it and put effort in to visit with their assigned “Grandma” had a fabulous experience.  I think ALL of the women the girls visited just loved it.  There were a few Sisters in the Ward that REALLY needed this particular activity this year because they had recently lost their husband or were dealing with other difficult life circumstances.  It was so much fun to watch the friendships develop between the girls and their grandmas.  To hear them talking about how they were going to serve them or an interesting life experience they learned about.  Part of the project was that they were to interview their grandma about their life each month when they visited them.  We compiled a book for each grandma with their story and the stories of all the other grandmas in it.  I think they will love reading through and seeing what the girls got from their stories and which things stuck out to them enough to include in the book. 

If you are serving in young womens I would highly recommend this as something to do with your girls.  A few things about how we did it.  We split our girls up in groups of 3-4 so they wouldn’t be too nervous and then we chose women from our ward who were widows or who we just thought might enjoy having the girls visit with them each month and assigned a group of girls to each grandma. We had an activity at the beginning where we invited all the grandmas to come to the church and meet their girls.  We had refreshments (of course) and the leaders helped the girls start getting to know their grandma.  We tried to have one activity each month that included a visit to their grandma, but there were some months we had to count on the girls to go on their own.  We had a couple other little activities with our grandmas like a spa night with a photo shoot (the pictures in this post are from this activity)and a dinner at the end of the year.  It was a lot of work to make sure the girls were visiting, but it was a wonderful experience for everyone involved.  I know this isn’t a new idea, but it was definitely worthwhile and it can be used for a personal progress project too.