On Thursday October 31, 2024 our family was swimming at the pool at Crossroads Hotel in Lae. While packing to leave, it was a bit chaotic and I was double checking I had everyone’s things and that both kids were ready. I left with one hand holding Karis’ and the other carrying all of our pool towels, floats, valuables (or so I thought).
We went back to our lodging and quickly changed and got ourselves and the kids ready for lunch. We got loaded into the car and were about to head to lunch with friends when I realized my phone wasn’t with me and I wanted to double check that it was in the diaper bag. At this point I assumed it was just in the bottom of one of our bags since we had packed up in a rush.
Long story short, Sam and I each checked the house, the bags, and the hotel pool area twice before I realized it was fully lost. When checking the pool area one last time, the hotel manager approached us and confirmed it had been stolen.
The security footage caught us packing up, my phone falling between the arm and cushion of the chair. Then a male, with several others, who had come from the restaurant upstairs just after we left took some photos near the pool, looked around, grabbed the phone, and left.
The hotel management couldn’t do much but they gave us a description of the vehicle and the plates.
Sam and I both have iPhones so he pulled up my location on his phone and we could tell the phone was immediately turned off (because the location couldn’t be found, but showed it was last at the hotel an hour previous). When we called the number it was answered by a man who said he had just bought the SIM at a bus stop. We didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but we couldn’t do much about it.
Navigating the justice system abroad isn’t something we are familiar with, so we pretty much just figured being in such a remote country, that we needed to consider it a loss and move on. We mentioned it to guards in different areas in town and gave them the plate and vehicle information in case they saw the vehicle around town.
Sam wanted to wipe the phone to keep our information safe, but I urged him to wait because I didn’t want to lose all my photos if it was somehow recovered, hoping that they wouldn’t decipher my passcode. Shortly after some research, we marked the phone as lost on "find my phone" which is supposed to lock the phone down and display a message with Sam’s phone number notifying the user that the phone was stolen any time the device is powered on. It should also notify us when the phone is connected to a network and turned on. In this mode it doesn’t allow reentry into the phone without a more thorough passcode and account information.
At this point I was working through processing the loss of all my baby photos, figuring out how to get a new phone, and occasionally checking for an updated location on the phone. We pretty much counted it as a loss, but I couldn’t shake a little bit of hope knowing if they got the phone turned on it would notify me of its location. I was juggling many feelings of frustration and feeling stupid for not backing up the device, for leaving it behind, etc. There is a certain sinking, sickening feeling that comes with having something personal stolen from you, but I also had this unexplainable peace and hope in what really should have been a hopeless situation.
On November 12 I was working to set up a makeshift phone so I had something to use while Sam was planning to be out of town for work. I pulled up the locator app and my heart skipped a beat, there was an updated location for the phone.
It told me that three days prior it was at an inn in Madang, a town four and a half hours away from me, and five hours from where it was stolen. Later that day it refreshed and confirmed it was at that spot still.
At this point I notified our missionary center’s security staff and asked if they could help connect me to local authorities or help in any way as it moved around this town. They made sure I had reasonable expectations, and reminded me of some cultural nuances involved in situations like this one. I sent them an official statement and waited.
The next location was a storefront a block or two from the local police station and I reached back out to update the security staff so they could let the local authorities know.
It was incredibly frustrating. To see where it was, just sitting for hours, and to have no ability to do anything. It felt like the first real glimpse of hope, but yet I was absolutely helpless, hours away—and at this point Sam was also out of town for work.
I had to relinquish any idea that I had control and just accept that I couldn’t do anything.
Unbeknownst to me, Sam was with a friend who used to live in the location where the phone was and he mentioned the store where the phone was had two phone shops inside and that most likely they were at that store trying to hack past the phone’s lockdown features.
He also found out that we had a colleague and friend who was on a work trip to the town where the phone was—he agreed to check out the shop. While he was there the staff told him they did have a man come in twice already (aligning with the location timestamps) trying to unlock “his” phone, which matched the description of mine. They agreed to hold the phone and notify our friend if he returned again.
Meanwhile our friend checked out a couple locations as they updated on the map (usually pretty delayed because the phone didn’t have a sim and may not have been on). The rest of the process felt pretty chaotic, almost like a scene from a movie—I was checking locations, relaying them to the friend via screenshots, checking in with security/handling paperwork as needed, filtering input from Sam, while my devices kept dying and kids were melting down if I diverted my attention for too long.
The next day I got a call from our friend in Madang who had my phone in his hand.
The shop owner and workers intercepted the phone as it came back into the shop and called our friend, who came over and confirmed with us that it was my phone. The shop workers and staff were so excited to have been able to help because they could tell the guys were being dishonest.
We were having some trouble unlocking the phone remotely and there was a chance that we wouldn’t be able to restore the phone. The guys with the phone were upset because they were going to be losing this new phone and wanted compensation. We didn’t want to pay someone for taking something and causing so much trouble, but there is a cultural aspect at play and it is typically customary to pay something out of gratitude for receiving lost property back.
We had the serial number and identification number of the device, so the store let our friend leave with the phone. He told the guys who had my phone that they could work things out with the police and was escorted to his vehicle by local security so that there wouldn’t be any issues caused by the lack of immediate payment.
They guys were still demanding payment and we’ve been navigating handling that situation with grace and wisdom.
All in all it really, truly is amazing. Lost and stolen things have been recovered occasionally, but it’s not common and in our situation it was very unlikely. It is incredible how God orchestrated the details…
That Sam would be in the city we lost the phone with a friend who knew the area it was found in, that he would know both that the location was a phone store and that we had a colleague in the area.
For me to be in a position to track the location on a working device (it wouldn’t show up on any other devices, even logged into my apple id) as well as be in the same location as our security.
For our friend to be in the same town as the phone at the same time and for him to be able to intercept the phone before it was hacked into or resold.
And even just the fact that the phone was in a city where the iPhone locator could work accurately enough to find the exact store it was in—if they had gone out to a village I doubt location services would have worked.
There were a few moments of conflict as our friend was trying to leave town, the thief was trying to get compensated for the loss of the phone or get the phone back. But our friend was very street-smart and handled the situation with wisdom.
We were able to recover the phone, but at some point in the chaos of trying to unlock the lost mode from afar while it was still pending and after attempts had been made to unlock the phone previously, the phone was restored to factory settings as soon as we entered the password. I’m not entirely sure what happened or why God allowed it to happen after all of the miracles of bringing the phone back. I am thankful that the phone was reset after we already had it (or else we would have never been able to track its location).
While the situation was unfortunate from the beginning, there was always this feeling of “what if,” a glimmer of hope. While anything is possible with God, we’ve reached the point of being pretty settled in what is, the general consensus is that once a device has been factory reset the data is gone.
I’m finding myself truly grieving the loss of all those precious photos and videos of my sweet babies for the first time since it was stolen.
We are praying for another miracle, but I’m letting myself be sad. God did so many big things to get it back, so I’m sitting in the dissonance-thanking him for how he’s worked and wondering why the most valuable piece is the one we are missing.
I’ve been studying the book of Revelation with a small group of women, and if anything (maybe the only thing that) is clear it’s that God is sovereign. And my understanding of his purposes doesn’t add or subtract from the fact that He’s in complete control.
So for now I’m thanking God for all he’s done, crying when I feel sad, smiling when I discover photos that were saved in various other places, and I’m gonna keep hugging my babies extra tight because I can’t bring photos with me to heaven anyway.
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