Lost

Despite decades of medical and cosmetic innovations, we haven't quite yet reached Never-Never Land, where no one ever grows older. But we're not that far away from a related place, Never-Lost Land, where no one and nothing gets lost.

According to an article in The New Yorker by Tim Lu, we've entered an age of Never-Lost Land, where no one and nothing gets lost. Thanks to G.P.S, Bluetooth, and the Internet, it is becoming harder both to become lost and to lose things.

This generation could be the last to have a real sense of what it means to get lost or to lose treasured objects. "Get lost" will become an archaic expression. Most of us will react to that possibility with relief. Yet it seems worth wondering whether something will be lost in Never-Lost Land, in a world without such a common and universally defining experience.

Sure, it's a relief, Lu argues, but have we lost something in the process of never losing anything. Lu continues: "While no one wants to lose their dog, or treasured object, maybe there's something to be gained by losing things, in the right dosage, at least … It helps toughen us, and it helps us understand the way the world actually is, which is to say, really quite indifferent to our well-being." He also thinks that by losing things it helps us stay less attached to the material world.

But will we ever reach Never-Lost Land? Wu doesn't think so. Instead, he thinks we will live in Nearly-Never-Lost Land, "where loss will be less common, but, when it does happen, even more traumatizing." He ends by saying, "It is something of the paradox of technological progress that, in our efforts to become invulnerable, we usually gain new, unexpected vulnerabilities, leaving us in vaguely the same condition after all."

When Sarah Darling dropped some change into a homeless man's cup, she didn't notice anything amiss. But she quickly realized that her diamond engagement ring was missing. Turns out, panhandler Billy Ray Harris noticed it in his cup right away, and held onto it. When Sarah came back the next day, he had it waiting for her.

As a reward for his honesty, Sarah gave him all the cash she had on her, and then set up a site for receiving donations from strangers wanting to help reward Harris' honesty. The site has received an overwhelming response. Along with the money, Harris is getting legal and financial counsel to help him use it well.

And that’s not all: After he made a TV appearance about the incident, his family members, who had not been able to find him for 16 years and had heard rumors that he was dead, were able to track him down. They were happily reunited, and Harris is now working on his relationship with them.

Harris said, “When I think of the past, I think, thank God it’s over. I mean, I feel human now.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes, honesty pays off, but sometimes our honesty may only be for our "Father who sees in secret." (Matt. 6:1-4)

At a waste-management facility in Morrisville, Pa., workers load incinerated trash into industrial machinery that separates and sorts metals, then sends them to get hosed down. The reward: buckets of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

Americans toss as much as $68 million worth of change each year, according to Reworld. The sustainable-waste processing company is on a treasure-hunt to find it. The company says that in the seven years since it started the effort, it has collected at least $10 million worth of coins. Many coins are also getting left behind. At airport checkpoints, the Transportation Security Administration collects hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of them each year. Coins are left in couch cushions or cars, then sucked into vacuums and sent to landfills.

Sometimes these small, seemingly unvalued coins can add up to a treasure—or even a work of art. For instance, Sara and Justin Ilse finished building a floor for their home’s 230-square-foot entryway out of 65,507 pennies.

“It was a way to encase something that doesn’t get viewed with much value in daily life,” Justin said. More than 20,000 of the pennies came from jars that Sara’s father and brother-in-law kept in their closets. They bought the rest of the pennies they needed in 2,500 increments through their local bank. In addition to the $655 they spent on pennies, they also spent $1,195 on supplies such as glue and epoxy.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Mercy; Compassion – small good works of mercy or compassion can have a huge impact and be valuable in our Lord’s eyes; (2) Spiritual gifts—our gifts may seem insignificant, under-valued, but combined with the gifts of others in the church, they can create something beautiful, (3) Giving, Generosity—like the widow’s mite, Jesus sees and values small gifts given with great sacrifice.

During an office hiking retreat in Colorado’s San Isabel National Forest, an unnamed worker was rescued after being abandoned by his colleagues on Mt. Shavano, a 14,230 feet mountain. The incident occurred after a group of 15 hikers split into two teams: one headed to the summit while the other ascended to a saddle area before turning back.

While 14 of the hikers descended safely, the unnamed person continued to the summit, reaching it around 11:30 a.m. However, he became disoriented on his descent. His colleagues, already on their way down, inadvertently collected markers that were left to help guide the descent. This confusion left the man struggling to navigate the steep boulder field on the northeast slopes of the mountain.

Using his cellphone, the hiker pinned his location and sent it to his team, who advised him to return to the summit to find the correct trail. Shortly after receiving this advice, a severe storm with freezing rain and high winds struck, disorienting him further and losing cellphone signal in the process.

When he failed to check in, his colleagues reported him missing at 9 p.m., approximately eight-and-a-half hours after he started his descent. A search was immediately initiated but was hindered by harsh weather conditions that affected both ground searches and aerial drone operations.

The following morning, the missing hiker managed to regain some cellphone service and called 911. Rescue teams, who had been searching through the night, were then able to locate him in a gully near a drainage creek. He was airlifted to a hospital, where he was found to be in stable condition.

The hiker reported falling at least 20 times and expressed his gratitude for being able to call for help despite his dire situation. Rescue officials noted that his recovery was fortunate given the challenging circumstances.

Possible Preaching Angle:

No matter what mistakes we’ve made or how we’ve been mistreated by others, God will never leave us or forsake us. Even when God chooses not to deliver immediately, he will walk with us and enable us to endure our moments of trial.

Like many of the researchers who study how people find their way from place to place, David Uttal is a poor navigator. The cognitive scientist says, “When I was 13 years old, I got lost on a Boy Scout hike, and I was lost for two and a half days.” And he’s still bad at finding his way around.

The world is full of people like Uttal—and their opposites, the folks who always seem to know exactly where they are and how to get where they want to go. Scientists sometimes measure navigational ability by asking someone to point toward an out-of-sight location and it’s immediately obvious that some people are better at it than others.

Cognitive psychologist Nora Newcombe says, “People are never perfect, but they can be as accurate as single-digit degrees off, which is incredibly accurate.” But others, when asked to indicate the target’s direction, seem to point at random. “They have literally no idea where it is.”

Several cultural factors were associated with wayfinding skills. Country folk did better, on average, than people from cities. And among city-dwellers, those from cities with more chaotic street networks did better than those from cities like Chicago, where the streets form a regular grid. This is perhaps because residents of grid cities don’t need to build such complex mental maps.

Results like these suggest that an individual’s life experience may be one of the biggest determinants of how well they navigate. Support for the notion that people might improve with practice also comes from studies of what happens when people stop using their navigation skills. Researchers recruited 50 young adults and questioned them about their lifetime experience of driving with GPS. Then they tested the volunteers in a virtual world that required them to navigate without GPS. The heaviest GPS users did worse, they found. This strongly suggests that GPS reliance causes diminished skills, rather than poor skills leading to greater GPS use.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Guidance; Lostness - Some people are better at staying on course than others. However, in the spiritual realm, we are all hopelessly lost until Jesus came to our rescue (Isa. 53:6; Luke 19:10); 2) Believers; Direction; Sin, consequences of – Believers sometimes wander away from the truth and need the rod and the staff of the shepherd (Ps. 23:4; Ps. 119:176; Jam. 5:19).

It had cluttered up Jack Harris's dining table for almost eight years. Nevertheless, the 86-year-old was determined to finish his five-foot long, 5,000-piece jigsaw. And when he thought the painstaking process was complete, he stood back to admire his work, only to find one piece was missing. Mr. Harris has searched his home for the missing piece but his family fears one of their two dogs has swallowed it.

They have even asked the puzzle's manufacturer if they could provide a spare, but Mr. Harris has taken so long to complete the jigsaw that Falcon Games has stopped making it.

His daughter-in-law, Eve Harris, who gave him the jigsaw as a Christmas present, said she thought it would be a challenge for the retired businessman. Mr. Harris is given a new jigsaw every year, and usually finishes them by spring. But this puzzle was to prove different.

He said he started the jigsaw, which shows the 19th century oil painting The Return of The Prodigal Son by James Tissot, as usual. But eight years later he was still struggling to finish it.

Eve said,

We got him this one as a bit of a joke really, because he always boasted he could get them done so quickly, he's a bit of a whiz with them. It was marvelous to see it finally completed. But when we saw there was a piece missing from the middle, we just couldn't believe it. He was just so disappointed when he found one bit was missing. It's sad really because now it will never be completed.

Possible Preaching Angles:

There are at least three possible ways to use this illustration: 1) Maybe as a wince-inducing look at disappointment in life. 2) Maybe the whole "building a life yet there's a God-shaped hole" sort of thing. 3) Maybe even as a metaphor for Body life (every part is important).

Mariska Hargitay has been playing the same fictional cop role for over 500 episodes of television, spanning over 25 years. Hargitay plays detective Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She’s been doing it so long she can practically do it in her sleep.

So, it came to no one’s surprise last April when a little girl spied Hargitay, filming an episode wearing a realistic looking police badge, and mistook her for an actual law enforcement officer. Given her public persona, it was not surprising that Hargitay halted filming on the episode to make sure the little girl got the help that she needed.

The girl had become separated from her mother in a playground in New York City and witnesses say Hargitay took 20 minutes to find her mother and console them both upon their reunion. When asked about it, Hargitay insisted it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing. She said:

There’s a thing: WWOBD, “What would Olivia Benson do?” The fans would always talk about it, and one day it hit me. I have those moments where I’ve sort of slipped into her. If there’s a crisis, I just take over and lead like that. Being strong and fearless.

Hargitay has good reason to feel secure in her role; a month prior, the show was renewed for a record-setting 26th season, besting the previous record for the longest-running primetime live-action series in American television history.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We become what we practice; when we practice deeds of righteousness, we become more likely to live as righteous people. Being a disciple of Jesus is not just about knowing rightly but doing rightly.

When a tornado hit Lamar County, Texas, Dakota Hudson and Lauren Patterson feared they would not survive. Hudson said, “We could feel the house start lifting up around us. We could hear the creaking and breaking.”

When the couple emerged from their bathroom, everything around them was destroyed, including their home, a family member’s house next door, and all their neighbors' homes. Hudson said, “God had his hand over our entire community. Looking at this destruction it’s hard to fathom how anyone could survive it.”

As the couple began checking on neighbors and learned everyone was physically OK, Hudson realized the engagement ring he’d just purchased to surprise Patterson was lost in the debris. He said, “Needle in a haystack doesn’t come close to what we were looking for.”

That is until the Paris Junior College softball team stopped by the property to offer help cleaning up. Once the team heard about the missing ring, they got to work. Outfielder Kate Rainey said, “I basically made my mind up. I was going to find the ring.” Rainey and her teammates searched for hours until she spotted a little miracle buried in the mud.

Though it wasn’t the proposal he had planned, Hudson decided there was no better moment to pop the question. Covered in mud, he dropped to one knee, surrounded by debris and with a team of softball players cheering him on. “We’re safe. We’re here. Everybody’s alright. It’s a miracle the ring was found. What better time to do it?” Hudson said. Patterson said “yes” immediately. “This was the light in a very dark moment. And it is still a dark moment, but this has given us reason to breathe and smile a little.”

The couple stayed in a hotel until they determined their next steps. They hope to rebuild on the same property and say they are extremely grateful for the love and support they’ve received from the community during this challenging time.

In a remarkable twist of fate, a couple from Bowling Green, Kentucky experienced the rare joy of winning the lottery twice—first by winning the prize and then by finding their lost ticket.

In November, the Kentucky Lottery announced that Mark Perdue and his wife were the winners of $50,000. Mark Perdue recalled the moment when he realized he won, recalling the store owner's words of congratulations.

“I said, ‘For what?’ And she said, ‘You won the lottery.’ I said, ‘I wish.’ She said, ‘You did, I have you on video.’”

However, the Perdue’s rejoicing turned to despair when they couldn’t find the ticket. Despite their best efforts, the ticket remained missing for several days, leading them to believe it had been accidentally discarded. His wife said, “I’ve been beating myself up for three months thinking I threw this ticket away.”

However, the story took a fortunate turn three months later in February. Mark was inspecting a company car, and found the ticket. He rarely does such inspections, but a visitor needed transportation, which prompted it.

“I don’t know how long it might have sat out there if I hadn’t needed the car,” he mused. The discovery left him visibly shaken.

With the ticket finally in hand, the couple visited the lottery headquarters the next day, and received a check for $36,000 after taxes. Reflecting on their plans for the money, the couple expressed a desire to clear debts and perhaps celebrate their good fortune with a trip.

Possible Preaching Angle:

You should use caution in using this illustration because it is not intended to encourage anyone to play the lottery. But, this does illustrate the elation of those who find what they believe was irretrievably lost, such as woman who found the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10).

It’s never a good thing for an airline to send a passenger on the wrong plane, especially when that passenger is a child. The six-year-old was supposed to fly from Philadelphia to visit his grandmother in Fort Myers, Florida, but ended up on a flight to Orlando instead.

Panic set in for Maria Ramos, the child’s grandmother, after the plane her grandson was initially supposed to be on landed and he wasn’t on it. Ramos began asking, “How did that happen? Did they get him off the plane? The flight attendant – after Mom handed them the paperwork – did they let him go by himself? He jumped in the wrong plane by himself?”

Spirit Airlines personnel informed her that Casper had instead landed in Orlando, 160 miles away. Apparently, the gate agent assigned to escort Casper to his departing flight from Philadelphia accidentally put him on the wrong flight. According to Spirit Airlines, that individual is no longer employed by the airline.

In a statement, Spirit Airlines said, “Any individual whose actions resulted in the incorrect boarding will be held accountable for failing to follow our procedures.” It also reiterated that though the boy was transported to the wrong city, he was accompanied by and under the supervision of a Spirit Airlines employee the entire time.

Ramos was eventually reunited with Casper after she drove to Orlando to pick him up. She already had his luggage, as it made it to Fort Myers on the correct flight. Spirit Airlines offered to reimburse her for the trip, but Ramos said all she wants is answers to her questions.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It seems instructive that it happened on Spirit Airlines, because even when the child seemed to be alone, the Holy Spirit was present to protect the child, even in the face of professional incompetence.

In November 2023, 71-year-old Thea Culbreth Chamberlain was treated to a wonderful surprise from her local movie theater. The thing that took her breath away seemed straight out of a Hollywood tearjerker, but it wasn’t. It was an item intimately connected to her past—something she’d never seen before, yet there it sat, plain as day ... her mother’s wallet.

Floy Culbreth passed away in 2005 at the age of 87. But in 1958, when Thea was just six-years-old, Floy lost her wallet. Inside contained several mementos that served as snapshots of her mother’s life 65 years prior: some raffle tickets, a library card, and a few family photos. At the time, they might not have seemed like much to Floy. But to Thea, six and a half decades later, they were everything.

The wallet's discovery came during renovations of the Atlanta theater when a contractor found it hidden behind the walls. Christopher Escobar owned the Atlanta theater where Floy’s wallet was discovered. Escobar found the name Thea Culbreth written on a reminder card for a dental appointment. After an online search, he contacted the family and arranged a meeting at the theater to return the long-lost item.

Thea said, “I don’t even know how to say how flabbergasted I was. And it took a while for it to sink in.”

Chamberlain says the family plans to get the wallet’s contents framed—a preservation of memories they hope won’t be lost again.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There are many life lessons and wonderful family memories which can influence succeeding generations. We must make an effort to not let them slip away and learn from them.

Author Nijay Gupta recounts the 1965-1966 story of a group of six boys who ran away from their homeland of Tonga.

The young boys stole a boat and headed out hastily in search of Fiji (some five hundred miles away). They took a sack of food and a small gas burner stove, but no map or compass. Due to their amateur sailing skills and the unfriendly seas, they were lost, adrift for eight days, until they finally spotted land. They ended up on the deserted island of Ata. These Tongan boys were stranded there for fifteen months.

Their rescue finally came through Australian Captain Peter Warner, who happened upon them as during a return sail from the capital of Tonga. Casually focusing his binoculars at a nearby Ata Island, which was thought to be uninhabited, he noticed a burned patch of ground. He said during a later interview, “I thought, that’s strange that a fire should start in the tropics on an uninhabited island. So, we decided to investigate further.”

As they approached, they saw a teenage boy rushing into the water toward them; five more quickly followed. When the boy reached the boat, he told Mr. Warner that he and his friends had been stranded for more than a year, living off the land and trying to signal for help from passing ships.

Most stories of dramatic rescues tend to stop there, and the reader is left wondering, “What happened to these boys? Were they okay? Did they live happy, and fulfilled lives? Did they stay friends?”

The rest of the story is that immediately after Wallace delivered them back home, they were arrested for stealing the boat they had “borrowed.” Warner took pity on them and paid the boat owner $200 to get the kids off the hook. Furthermore, Warner decided to quit his job in Sydney and stay in Tonga long-term. He started a fishing business there and hired the shipwrecked boys as his crew. Warmer mentored and stayed friends with some of them for the rest of his life. One of the boys said, after several decades of friendship, “He [Warner] was like a father to me.”

Gupta adds, “This captures poignantly the difference between a plastic, ‘get-out-of-hell-free’ type of salvation message of Christianity, and a deeper, more relational, dynamic vision of ‘rescue’ that is characteristic of the New Testament.”

Editor’s Note: Captain Peter Warner passed away in April of 2012 at the age of 90.

When Aaron Köhler tries to talk to people in Cottbus, Germany, about Jesus, church, and faith, he can’t assume they know what he’s talking about. Many in the city near the Polish border don’t know anything about Christianity. Köhler has had people ask him whether Christmas and Easter are Christian holidays, and if so, what they’re about. One time, he talked to someone at a local market who wasn’t familiar with the name Jesus. The person had never even heard it, that they could recall.

“That was crazy for me. In the ‘land of the Reformation,’ in a supposedly ‘Christian country,’ these people don’t even know the basic basics,” said Köhler, who co-pastors a church plant.

According to the most recent data, more than 60 percent of Germans identify as Christian. A little more than a quarter say they have no religion. Zoom in a little closer, though, and stark regional differences emerge. In the western part of the country—which includes Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, and Frankfurt—three-quarters of the population identify as Christian. But in the east, the region that was a Soviet Union satellite state from 1949 to 1990, only a quarter of Germans are Christian, with nearly 70 percent identifying themselves as “nonbelievers.”

Christianity is declining in much of formerly Protestant Europe. But eastern Germany stands out, even compared with other rapidly secularizing nations. Here, large swaths of the population have had no serious contact with Christianity for three generations. Köhler said, “For decades, there was no prayer, no Bible at home, no church attendance. After all these years, people don’t know what they don’t know.”

The regional differences are easily traced to the division of the country after its defeat in World War II. The French, British, and American-controlled sectors in the west merged into the German Federal Republic in 1949. The Soviet-controlled East formed the German Democratic Republic, a socialist state with totalitarian leaders who suppressed religion. The Christian population in East Germany fell from about 90 percent in 1949 to only 30 percent in 1990.

When officers from the Michigan State Police (MSP) were asked to provide traffic control for a recent incident, they didn’t know they were signing up for snarky posts with viral video clips.

But that’s exactly what happened when police cordoned off a section of Interstate 75 on a recent Sunday afternoon to help animal control officers wrangle an errant steer named Lester who’d been seen roaming the nearby countryside. “It was pretty wild — cars were still flying by when I went after him,” said Ricky Littlejohn, a local wrangler hired to retrieve the errant bovine whose heroism prompted the road closure.

The original post on MSP’s social media read, “We know that if there are no pictures or video it didn’t happen.” The post was accompanied by a clip of dashcam footage featuring the steer trotting down the freeway as cowboy-hat-clad wranglers rode horseback, twirling ropes in hot pursuit.

The traffic control initiative likely saved Lester’s life, either by preventing a motorist from crashing into the errant cattle, or from an intervention by law enforcement resulting in lethal force, like what happened a month prior in a nearby area.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God cares enough about us to go to great lengths to rescue us from harm and correct wayward behavior that can lead to destruction.

Sixty-five-year-old Dianne Gordon had a job at VC’s Marketplace in Waterford Township, but she lived in White Lake Township. After her Jeep Liberty broke down, she was forced to commute by foot, a trip that took an hour each way. Gordon, who lives alone, said, “I didn’t have a choice. I had to have a positive attitude.”

Walking home in late January, Gordon spotted a plastic bag with almost $15,000 in cash—more than enough to purchase a replacement vehicle. But again, she felt she had no choice. “I just looked at it, and I knew it wasn’t mine,” Gordon said. “I knew what I needed to do.”

After contacting police, Gordon was informed that the money belonged to a couple who’d gotten married earlier that day. And police were understandably moved by her honesty—so much so, the spouse of one of the responding officers set up a GoFundMe account for Gordon.

Stacy Connell said, “As a police officer’s wife, I typically hear the bad things, so this was obviously heartwarming. I was hoping we could help her get a car, since she could have walked into any dealership and used that money.” In less than a week, the account swelled to over $60,000.

Gordon said she is stunned by the outpouring of generosity. She said, “I never expected anything like this. I am overwhelmed. I was just doing what I was taught to do.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Acting with integrity is its own reward; God delights in providing for those who put their trust in him and not in money.

A sheep named Baarack received a much-needed shearing after rescuers in Australia found the abandoned animal with more than 75 pounds of wool weighing it down. A video of his transformation on TikTok has more than 18.5 million views. After rescuing Baarack, sanctuary staff gave him the long-overdue shearing and found the fleece clocked in at about 78 pounds.

According to Kelly Dinham with Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary, sheep need at least yearly shearing to keep their coats light enough for the animals, otherwise it will continue to grow. Despite his heavy fleece, Baarack was actually underweight after being sheared. The wool around his face impaired his vision, too. Dinham said they found grit and debris "pooling in the gap between his cornea and the lid." And a grass seed stuck in there had caused an ulcer.

If a sheep goes for an extended period of time without adequate care, the overgrown wool can lead to build up of manure and urine that then could lead to infection, according to a North Dakota State University fact sheet on sheep shearing.

Possible Preaching Angle

This illustration easily applies to the Chief Shepherd and his sheep (and the undershepherd and their flock). As the sheep of his pasture, we need to be under the care of our Shepherd, otherwise we can wander off (Luke 15:4) or be attacked (Acts 20:29). We need those peaceful streams and quiet pastures, and his loving care (John 10:1-18; Psalm 23:1-6).

In a review of A.J. Swoboda’s book Dusty Roads, Leslie Fields writes:

We all have stories of getting lost. Here is one of mine: I crossed the Sahara one year on an expedition truck with 20 others, meandering from Cairo into the heart of Africa. We got lost often, once for three days, wandering farther and farther into the African bush with insufficient water, no GPS, and no people to point the way out. We were tense: we had to get off the dirt roads before the monsoon rains began. For most of those months, we were covered in dust, breathing through bandanas, praying we’d find the right path.

That’s one kind of “lost narrative.” Here’s another: As I write, I am on the brink of major life changes—some prayed for, a few drastic and unwelcome. I find myself stumbling, fearful, uncertain of these new snaking roads and unsure of God’s place in it all. Then I feel guilty. Where is my faith? Why am I not “counting it all joy” and skipping confidently into the sunny future?

A. J. Swoboda’s book, The Dusty Ones: Why Wandering Deepens Your Faith, came to my door at the right time. It is, of course, about the second kind of trek: our pilgrimage toward the city of God, with its painful desert crossings and wanderings.

We all want a life marked by straight paths, smooth roads, and victorious arrivals. But as Swoboda argues, wandering is “an inescapable theme of the Christian experience,” even if the church has often minimized its inevitable role in every pilgrim’s progress.

Returning to my own story, our expedition truck arrived in Mombasa five months later, nearly on schedule. We beat the monsoon rains, but the trip was not just about getting there. Every village, waterhole, and sandpit along the way had purpose and value. So it is with our lives. Swoboda reminds us that “Christian spirituality is a slow train that must inevitably stop at every little Podunk town in our life—nothing can be skipped over.”

Vicky Umodu needed furniture for her new home, so she responded to a Craigslist ad for a matching set of two sofas and a chair, all available for free. Upon arrival for pick up, Umodu was told that the owner of the furniture had recently passed, and the family was trying to quickly liquidate everything on the property. Umodu said, “I just moved in, and I don't have anything in my house. I was so excited, so we picked it up and brought it in.”

It wasn’t long before she discovered something inside one of the couch cushions. Rather than discovering a heating pad, which was her initial assumption, Umodu found cash. A lot of it. "I was just telling my son, 'Come, come, come!' I was screaming, 'This is money! I need to call the guy.'"

All told, there were several envelopes with over $36,000 in cash, which she promptly reported to her contact from the ad. Grateful for her honesty, the family gave Umodu $2,200 as reward, which she used to purchase a new refrigerator. She said, “I was not expecting a dime from him, I was not.”