UK Pen Pals

Last year our group decided to complete the Brownie Pen Pals interest badge. Since I'm a member of a few UK Girl Guiding Facebook pages I thought it would be great to find some pen pals to do a swap. In no time at all we had three units lined up for a swap. My unit made crafts, sent pictures and badges - they were really excited. 

Unfortunately, weeks then months passed and we heard nothing back from our pen pals. I tried to contact these units on Facebook and although they confirmed that they had received our packages they never ended up sending things back to us. My girls were really disappointed and I was frustrated as well. 

In the summer I posted the story onto one of these Facebook pages to see if there was any other way to contact these groups. I was then overwhelmed by the response of people who wanted to send us something to make up for these other units. 

We ended up receiving letters and parcels from 8 different groups containing all sorts of things from letters and photos of their groups to guiding teddy bears and UK badges for our girls to earn. I was simply overwhelmed by these guiders generosity. 

Since there was so much sent to us (8 groups after all) we split up the goodies between the girls from last year and our current group. Our current girls wrote back to these new pen pals and will be doing some of the challenge badges that they sent us. Our girls from last year got a lovely package of badges in the mail from the groups that wrote back. 

I'm so glad to know that the guiding sisterhood extends near, far and overseas and that we truly have friends where ever we go. A HUGE thank you to the UK Girl Guide groups that wrote back to us. We are so thankful that this story had a happy ending.