Sunday, July 17, 2011

The Amazing Knock On The Door

Life in our corner of the world can be interesting at times, to say the least. This morning shortly after 9am somebody knocked on our door. We were sleeping because it was a late night last night. So needless to say we were startled. John looked out the peephole and didn't recognize the man standing there. He opened the door and asked if he could help him. The following conversation ensued:

"Is your name John Mack?"

"Yes."

"Is your wife named Wilma and you have a son named Sean?"

"Yes." John was getting extremely confused because he had never laid eyes on this man before but he seemed to know all about us.

Now the man was extremely excited. "Oh, praise the Lord! I've been looking for you for so long and today was the last day I had to find you."

"Why were you looking for me?" John asked. By this time Sean and I were hovering in the doorway behind John listening to what was going on.

"I bought the stuff out of your storage locker when it was auctioned off. I opened the boxes and found all of your photo albums and loose photos. My brother said to just throw them away but I couldn't. You had all the baby pictures of your son and all the old pictures of your families back into the 1800's. Your marriage license is in there and your military commendations too--by the way, thank you for your service to our country. I just HAD to find you. I've called all the Macks and Sargents in Tucson and nobody knew you. I've been calling out of state to FL, IL and PA because I saw those states on letters in there. Finally I found this address on the internet last night in the internet white pages. I had to come here today because we're being evicted from our house and we have to be out by tomorrow night. I just wanted to try one last time to get your pictures back to you. Not all of them made it but there is a giant box." 

So, long story short, around noon we went out to Littletown and picked up our photos that we had thought were lost forever. We spent the evening going through them and seeing what had survived and what was gone. John went to the store and got a giant bin and they are currently residing in it in the middle of the living room floor. We haven't really looked at all of it but just kind of sorted his family stuff from my family stuff and then another stack of our family stuff. It's sort of jumbled in the bin though but that's okay. I left out a stack of stuff that I am planning on scanning and uploading to Facebook within the next few days. So you can all look forward to some more old family stuff and some of friends from when I was growing up. For those of you who love to laugh at the old 70s and 80s styles, there are some pretty good ones in there for that. Mostly with the glasses more than the clothes, although some of the clothes are a little outlandish. *grin*

I still can't believe that this happened. We had resigned ourselves to losing them. It was just one more thing that was lost and gone in a long line of stuff that has come and gone over the years. This was heartbreaking though because it was our history. We just didn't have the wherewithal at the time to save them. Apparently the Lord guided this wonderful man named Steven to buy that particular lot. We asked him why he was so bent on finding us and returning our pictures and he couldn't explain it. He said it was just something that he felt he had to do even though everybody was telling him he was nuts.

5 comments:

MsCaroline said...

Wilma, that is truly incredible! What a blessing that those things fell into such caring and responsible hands. I know you must be over the moon!!!! So happy for you all....

Miriam said...

Wow! How wonderful!

Karen said...

Absolutely amazing!!! I'm close to tears reading this Wilma because I can only imagine what it feels like to lose such a valuable possession and then have it returned to me so unexpectedly. Have fun sorting through it all and am looking forward to seeing some of those pictures!

Mel said...

Wow, that is amazing!

Anonymous said...

That is a fantastic story! What an amazing gift from this man who had his own struggles, but worked so hard to find you. The world needs to hear more good news like this.