One Sunday afternoon we were playing together as a family and then we all sat down for a family meeting. At this time we had five boys. As we sat down and began our family meeting, we noticed our two-year-old Talmage was missing. My wife asked where he was and I said, “I think he is in the playroom.” We sent one of our sons to check but he was not there. My wife and I began to search for a few minutes, but we didn’t find him. I approached our sons who were playing and I said, “This is serious. Talmage is gone and we can’t find him.”
They all began searching and the search became more frantic as time went on. I
announced to the boys and my wife, “pray while you look.” After a few more minutes of fruitless searching, my oldest son Tyler, eleven-years-old, came to me and said, “Dad, we should say a prayer as a family.” This was great advice and great insight from an eleven-year-old, but I didn’t stop or heed his desires. In the hurry of the search, I didn’t want to stop and gather the family. Every searcher was spread out throughout the yard and the house. This was a bad decision, but it was my feeling of the moment.
My compromise was this, I said, “Tyler, let’s you and I say a prayer,” and so we did. At this point in the search we were both crying as I offered a plea for help. Every boy in our home was now searching the home, front yard, back yard, and detached garage. We had just moved into our house and had a side fence without a gate at this point so we realized we needed to extend our search down the street. I ordered the two oldest boys to get on their bikes and go down the street off the back gate. My wife jumped in her car to drive around the neighborhood, and she was obviously bawling by this time. The situation was quickly becoming desperate.
Again, my oldest son Tyler found me and said, “Dad, I think we should pray as a family.” In my increasingly desperate state, I finally realized this was the best thing we could do. Tyler and I gathered his brothers—Mom was still frantically driving the neighborhood— and my four boys and I knelt in the family room and offered a sincere, heartfelt prayer. This was finally a prayer of much faith. I had not exercised much faith up to this point, but now I knew things were bleak and we desperately needed intervention. By this time, I and all four boys were crying as twenty to thirty minutes had elapsed and we had been very unsuccessful in finding Talmage. We
had checked everywhere in the house two to three times. We even checked some scary areas like an empty fridge downstairs, in the washers and dryers, and under huge bean bags. It was scary looking under those things as I didn’t really want to find him there.
We finished the prayer and then every boy took off in search again. This time, following the prayer, I had a specific impression to check the laundry room. I had already searched there two or three times. My son Tanner had already searched there as well. It didn’t make sense, but it was a definite impression that came from our prayer of faith.
There was an island in the laundry room with cabinets on the front and shelves on the backside. We ran into the laundry room and checked the backside of the island, and there was little Talmage asleep on the top shelf. He had been hiding from us and had fallen asleep.
Just as we found him, we received a phone call from my weeping wife. I said, “We  found him!” What a wonderful phrase. Emotions changed and we all went from tears to elation. We knelt in prayer again a short time later and expressed appreciation for the answer to our prayer.