Have any of you boys or girls ever been lost? Well, it is an awful feeling.
I want to tell you of two boys who were lost in the woods. They couldn’t find their way back without help from someone else. Their mother had taken them on an outing to “Nature Center.” There they walked around and looked at the animals, birds and other things that ordinarily roam the woods and fields. Children and grown-ups too enjoy seeing these creatures of the forest which have been caught and put in cages.
These boys weren’t satisfied to stay with their mother. They wanted to be on their own. They found a path leading along the river. It was so much fun watching the water, so they kept going on and on, taking this path and that until they realized they didn’t know the right path back to Nature Center. Then they knew they were really lost.
As we got out of our car heading for the pump in a forest preserve, we noticed two boys coming toward us. They asked if we knew where Nature Center was. We told them we had been there, and gave them directions on the highways, thinking they came on bicycles. To our surprise we found out they had none. Then we discovered their troubles. They had gone astray.
“We are lost,” they admitted. Will you take us back to Nature Center?”
They were so trustful we couldn’t refuse. We thought of the long walk back on the busy dangerous highway, so we told them to get in the car and we would see they got back to their mother.
When we arrived at Nature Center the first person we saw was the boys’ mother. She had been waiting for her boys a long time. It was such a happy meeting for all of us and they thanked us so heartily. We gave the boys a Sunday school paper to read.
ML 09/15/1968