An Amazing Discovery

My brother and sister-in-law have been active for some time with people in the Triangle area who have a heart for the people of Haiti. They both have taken a number of trips to Haiti through an organization called Family Health Ministries. FHM has partnered with a pastor in Haiti to deliver health care, schooling, and other opportunities for the people of his congregation and community.

One of the latest outreach projects going on in the Triangle area was to deliver wedding dresses which could be used by Haitian brides. The reasoning was that often Haitian couples co-habitat before marriage because they lack the funds necessary for a large wedding. The idea was to send wedding dresses down there that could be part of a dress "closet" for brides, who could borrow a dress for their wedding (and then return it for other brides to use), thus removing a perceived (and tangible) obstacle to marriage. Both my mother and my sister-in-law decided this would be a worthy cause and delivered their wedding dresses to some women who were packing dresses in suitcases for an upcoming trip to Haiti.

As one of the women was packing up my mother's wedding dress, they noticed a shiny gold ring that had been safety-pinned to the dress. My father passed away in 1984, and we moved to a new house in 1985. My mother was never able to locate the ring after the move. Now, 24 years later, what was lost had been found!

Remarkably, a newspaper reporter was already documenting the story of the wedding dresses when the ring was found. He wrote up an article about the event in the Raleigh News and Observer. You can view the article here.

Below are some pictures of my mom in the parking lot of Bullock's Barbecue, opening the box with her long-lost ring.

If you are interested in donating your own dress and live in the Raleigh-Durham area, submit a comment to me, and we'll fnd a way to get your dress down there.