The thing I remember the most about the room was the floor. It was worn smooth with age but still showed signs of paint. However, the most vivid memory was how clean it was!

The room was full of people, mostly children in diapers, every day. Yet the floor was spotless - no dust, no clutter. Just beds and children all around.

It was milk time when we arrived. All the children, except the sleeping babies, were given milk. Babies who were too young to sit up were given one of the scarce baby bottles. Everyone else was given a glass. Food, especially milk, was apparently scarce because even the smallest clung to their glass and quickly emptied it without spilling a drop.

While their faces smiled with delight at the daily treat you could tell that even the youngest knew that there was no more available to replace any that was spilled. It soon dawned on me that the spotless floor was as much the product of austerity as of good housekeeping.

It was a simple, happy room basking in the glow of children's smiles. But there was sadness too. One only had to look in the crib by the entrance. A beautiful baby girl slept soundly. Only she wasn't a baby - she was a two year old whose malnourished body had never received the nourishment needed to grow.

We were the center of attention immediately. Like Valle de Angles the day before, we were immediately surrounded by smiling children clinging to our legs.

The staff knew us without introduction. They were expecting us yet we had not been in contact with them in months and had not decided to go until the night before. The information we had received up to this point had been vague and somewhat contradictory.

If we had been successful in our visit to Valle de Angeles the day before we might never have come here. But we weren't successful and my time was limited. It was now Monday and I had to be back to work on Friday.

The previous Friday had been spent traveling. Saturday sitting in a hotel after missing our last plane connection on Friday. We had finally arrived in Tegucigalpa Saturday night. Our visit to Valle de Angles on Sunday was not successful. That had left two small leads plus the vague prospect of other places.

At the embassy picnic Sunday afternoon our suspicion, that one of our two leads was useless, was confirmed.

On Sunday evening we attempted to call here but the telephone lines were out. On Monday, in desperation, we took the 8 a.m. plane to San Pedro Sula. I had twenty U.S. dollars and some spare Lempuras my friends had lent me. My wife, who is both a good negotiator and bi-lingual, negotiated the cab fare to ten dollars U.S.

In the room I was nervous not knowing what to expect. Attention was focused on my wife and I was trying to follow with my limited Spanish. Then they pulled a healthy little boy through the clutch of children, pointed him toward my wife, and said "Mama".

He went to her immediately. He was a happy, beautiful child, clad only in a maroon diaper.

Our quest was successful and David was now a part of our family. He had shared the simple faith of the nun who had been caring for him. She knew, and he believed, that we would be coming for him. Hence, there was no surprise when we arrived.

In the little town of Progresso, Honduras, where the telephones worked sometimes and the cab drivers thought it was too far from the airport to bother driving there, our family had come together. Thanks to the nun's simple faith and love for her little charge, we had been guided, as if by an invisible hand, to our rendezvous in this little room. Overcoming in the process, missed flights, broken telephone connections, and less than eager cab drivers.

David and the nun both knew we were coming and, at that moment, when David rushed into him my wife's outstretched arms, we realized where God's hidden hand had been leading us since our departure from Tucson three days and a thousand miles or so earlier.

NOTE: the above story was originally written as an exercise in a writing workshop that I attended twenty years ago.