I always get a bad feeling when I lose something. I think this has happened to everyone. We will look and look until that item is found and when we do find it, we feel like celebrating. In the 15th chapter of Luke, Jesus tells three parables of things that were lost -- a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. In each one of these stories when the sheep, the coin, and the son were found there was rejoicing.

In Shenyang, we spent a week with the children at an orphanage. These children all had special needs. We were each assigned to a child. Everyday we would take the children on an outing and on the way back to the orphanage, we would stop at McDonalds. The children would all get a Happy Meal and before they’d start eating, they would first find out what kind of toy was in the Happy Meal -- just like children in this country! One day, after the children had been taken back to the orphanage and we had returned to our hotel we received a call -- one of the children was missing. The last time he was seen was at the McDonalds. This child was one that had been assigned to a worker at the orphanage. We were asked if we would help look for this child. We all met back at the McDonalds and each member of our group was paired up with someone from the orphanage.

We would go out in different directions and search for this lost child. After one hour, we would return to McDonalds and if the boy hadn’t been found, we’d go out again continuing to search. Before we started, we gathered in a circle standing on the sidewalk and prayed that God would lead us to this one little boy in a city of six million. I walked with a young girl by the name of Angel and during that hour we continued to pray that we would find the boy. After an hour, Angel and I returned to McDonalds. When we were a block away, we saw members of our group and others celebrating. The boy had been found. He had walked to a nearby park. To this day, I still believe that it was through the divine intervention of God that this little boy was found.