There are God-sightings everywhere if we choose to look for them. I wrote about one at the Olympics. Here’s another. The story is a bit long but worth it…

In the summer of 1975, we had just moved to Omaha the previous January for an Air Force assignment and decided to go to Colorado for a brief vacation. My friend John Morgan, whom I had served with in Turkey 1970 – 1971, was in Boulder, CO, getting a master’s degree. Decades before Air B&B he found us a place to stay in mountains between Lyons and Estes Park. The owner, a Denver commercial artist named Dieter Sebastian had just bought and assembled a kit home: “They bring it to you on a large flat bed trailer. They dump it on the ground, shake your hand and leave!”

The Sebastian house in 1975. They built it to live on the top floor and rent out the bottom floor, where we stayed. My 51-year-old son, Mark, was two at the time. Note Mt Meeker in the background of the picture on the right.

We started going out to Estes Park regularly in the 1990s and again after 2006 when we returned to Colorado from five years in Alabama. At some point we got the idea that we should find this property. Dieter had passed away by this time, and we didn’t contact his wife before she passed. We had no idea where the house was except it was between Lyons and Estes Park, and you could see Mt Meeker. That would put it on a side road off of a 15 – 20-mile stretch of Highway 7.

MANY times over the past 20+ years, we have gone exploring trying to find that house. No success. When we were there recently we went out again and on a side road, there was a fellow out working in his yard. We told him the story, and he suggested we call on the manager of Meeker Park Lodge, within a mile of his property. He didn’t even know her name exactly, but he said, “She grew up here, and she’s in real estate. She knows all the properties.” Turns out his name is Robert, same as mine.

The next day I called the Lodge, and Rainia answered the phone. I asked if she was the lady who knew all the properties around here. “I am.” I told her my story, and she said she would be glad to research it for me. So I emailed her a few pictures. A success, right? Bob, you wouldn’t be telling us this story if she hadn’t found the house for you.

Yes and no. She didn’t have to find it. Here’s what she wrote:

Oh my goodness. This is the house I grew up in! My parents still live in it actually. This is wild!

You can’t make this stuff up. A road we happened to turn onto…just when a guy is outside working…who is vaguely aware that the manager of Meeker Park Lodge might be able to help. Help!? She grew up in that house! (And it turned out to be several miles further away from Estes Park than we had been looking.)

The house had been added on to, but it is the house. There was practically no vegetation when we were there, but in nearly 50 years… You can’t see Mt Meeker from the house today, but pull back out onto the highway, and there it is. The bottom row shows our new friend Rainia today, sitting in front of the window as a little girl, and the original owner in front of that same window. Turns out he lived there only six years.

And we had a bonus moose-sighting! This mother and calf were right next to the house. (By the way, a good reason not to get out of the car. Moose are the most dangerous animals out there. They’ll leave you alone until they don’t, and since they can kick in any direction, “There is no safe approach to a moose.” Especially one with a calf.)

Thanks to God, Robert, and Rainia, we accomplished our mission. The long-missing house has been found.

A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul… (Proverbs 13.19, ESV)