Lost and Found

Editorial by Sarah Capeles Frodelly

Read in Spanish

In February, my family and I experienced one of the worse snowstorms in recent years. With over three feet of snow, I wasn’t sure if my tractor was powerful enough to clean the long driveway. So, instead of staying indoors sipping on my herbal tea, I ventured out into the cold to see if I could get it to work.

As a lover of snow, when I got outside, I began photographing and recording the beautiful, white-covered hills and trees. As I walked toward the garage to move the tractor, I fell three times. Unharmed, I jumped onto the tractor, wanting to take more videos. I reached inside my pocket to retrieve my cellphone. To my dismay, it wasn’t there! I had lost my phone during one of the falls. I frantically went into search mode. My daughter even helped me look for it, but to no avail.

I resigned to the fact that I had lost a perfectly good-working phone, with all of the recent photos of my twin grandkids’ birth, new music that I had not backed up and the fact that I would now have to purchase a new phone.

Fast forward two months. The snow finally melted, and my husband found my phone! After plugging it in and charging it, it still worked, without a single photo or song missing. Having already bought a new phone, my husband decided to keep the lost one, and, to this day, it still works perfectly.

This experience got me thinking of all the young prodigal sons and daughters of God who are wandering and lost in the world, just waiting to be found. The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (KJV). This verse gives me hope for all the parents whose children have abandoned Jesus and the church. The seed has been planted, and the data is still in their hearts. The missing ingredient? A connection and a recharge to Jesus Christ! Let us go out and find these prodigals. Let us bring home the lost. And may they, in turn, plug into Jesus again.

Sarah Capeles Frodelly serves as the executive assistant to the executive secretary at the New Jersey Conference.