By Jeanne Sager
SWAN LAKE — April 22, 2003 – Sometimes prayers are answered almost before they are uttered.
Evelyn Heinrichs and her church have been praying for the safe return of the soldiers battling Saddam’s regime in Iraq since the war started.
But Sunday they said a special prayer – prompted, strangely enough, by a small balloon tied with white string to a few placards that Heinrichs found in her yard the Saturday before.
Outside chatting with her son-in-law by her Swan Lake home, Heinrichs looked up and said, “Gee, would you look at that thing coming over the house?”
No sooner had it landed in some brush across the street from her front window, when the former Youngsville principal rushed across the street to see what the wind had brought in.
She found small laminated tags – each listing the name of a soldier taken prisoner of war during the war with Iraq – sent out by the people of Waterloo.
“Whoever should find this,” each card read, “say a prayer.”
Apparently the people of the upstate town sent their prayers for Spc. Edgar Hernandez, CWO 2 David S. Williams, Spc. Joseph Hudson and CW 2 Ronald D. Young Jr. up to the sky with four yellow balloons – three of which popped on the way to Heinrichs’ house.
But they made it to the right place.
Heinrichs announced her find during services at the First Presbyterian Church of Jeffersonville the next day, and the entire congregation joined her in prayer.
And when Heinrichs got home from church that afternoon, she turned on the television.
“They mentioned having found them,” she recalled with a smile.
It was a tiny miracle in life.
Now Heinrichs is drafting a letter to the head of the Waterloo municipal government.
“I’m not sure who to send it to,” she said. “They must have a mayor or someone up there.”
The whole experience, she said, has been “sort of interesting.”