Finding Sarah - A Needle in the Haystack

Beaverton, Oregon, about 1988:

We had gone as a family to the Air Show at Hillsboro. About 40,000 other people were also there. It was very crowded, but we wanted to see the airplanes, so we started exploring. We had no cell phones, no emergency plan of where to meet if we got separated.

As we were walking past the planes, one caught our attention and we stopped to look at it. Sarah, about age 9, didn't notice we had stopped, so she kept walking.

By the time we finished looking at the plane, we looked up and noticed Sarah was not there! Alarms went off in my head! Where was she??? Was she ahead of us or behind us? Where could we look? It was a mass of people and she was so small!

Tom and I split up. He went back the way we had come and I ran ahead looking for her. My heart was racing, the adrenaline pumping as I scanned the crowd in every direction. What if someone took her? No one in the crowd would know! I said a very earnest prayer. If anyone needed help from God, I did.

Shortly after my prayer, I spotted Sarah. What relief! I was overcome by waves of emotion. Sarah was upset at being lost. I had been scared, too.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. God had answered my prayer.

Moral to the story: Any time you go somewhere as a family, plan a meeting place in case you get split up. . . . or arm them with cell phones! Above all, God hears and answers our earnest prayers.