Lost and Found

Yesterday was the most heart-wrenching day I have ever had as a mother. My daughter went missing for an hour and a half. We were at our End of Summer Church Picnic at Mashamoquet enjoying the day relaxing and enjoying the company of our church family. Kaleigh was sitting in our 'area' having a snack when I glanced at the time and saw that it was 4:30pm. Time to get going I thought, so I started to pack up our things and walk them to our car which was parked pretty far away. When I got back she was gone. No big deal, probably in the creek with her friend catching frogs again I thought. I was ok with it because I wasn't completely packed to go yet anyway. I continued to pack up our things and waited for Eric to return from his volleyball game. At about 5pm I sent the boys over to the creek to get their sister so we could go home. She wasn't there. I checked the beach, not there either. I checked with some people I knew and no one had seen her. I ran into the mother of one of my daughter's good friend who confirmed that they were indeed together but that she had not seen them in a while. We both set out looking in opposite direction to look. After about 45 minutes and still no sign of them, I started to panic. The worst went through my head. Could they possibly have BOTH been abducted? The older sister to the other missing girl informed us that she had seen them heading up the hiking trail. So the other mom headed up the trail while I continued the search in the park. She came back down about 15 minutes later saying that she could not find them, she had hiked quite a ways and could not imagine that her daughter would have wandered THAT far into the woods. It was about then that both of us started to panic and about 25 of our church members headed out in all different directions in search of the girls. We contacted the park rangers who contacted the DEP and within minutes we were giving physical descriptions of our girls and answering health questions about them. Way too much time went by with nothing but phone calls saying that so and so had been to the end of this trail and had not found them. I was getting hysterical when a few women came over to pray with me. It calmed me and I held onto the comfort that they were indeed together and just lost in the woods, not abducted by some psychopath. I received a call a bit after 6pm saying that they had been found and were on their way down the mountain. The tears of relief came along with the praises. I hugged her bawling and telling her how glad I was she was ok but that she was in so much trouble. We talked later that night about how upset I was and how important it was for her to ask permission before going that far because no one knew her whereabouts. She apologized and I think she realized how badly she had scared me. Needless to say I am grateful beyond words to everyone who jumped up to help search for her and thankful to the Lord who watched over them.
But wait...the story isn't over. As everyone came down out of the mountain we found out that 3 of our teenage girls who DID tell their parents they were going on a hike had beed gone for three hours now and no one had seen them in the search for Kaleigh and her friend. SO, the search team went back into the woods in search of the girls. They, a bit wiser, had followed the sound of some voices and ended up in a campground. They found someone with a cell phone and called to let someone know their whereabouts. Someone from our search party that was in a vehicle and not on foot, went and got them. They were safe, now we just had to wait until all our adult search team were back and accounted for. It wasn't until after 7pm that everyone was accounted for and on their way out of the park. It was a long and emotional day but it ended on a positive note for those of us who got our loved ones back.