When I’ve taken my foreign mission trips, I like to bring back a little bit of the foreign currency, as a souvenir and to give to my nieces and nephews.

But in the weird 32-hour odyssey of waiting for our plane to leave Bolivia last month, after we’d already changed in most of our Bolivianos, I spent what little I had left at the airport and came back here without any Bolivian currency ….

… or so I thought. I’ve been taking my trusty, world-traveled backpack to the Celebration each night to haul around the program, binoculars and other assorted paraphernalia. Tonight, while searching for something in the front pocket, I found a 20-centavo coin, worth about 2 1/2 cents at today’s exchange rate.

It brings to mind a passage from Luke 15:

8″Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins[a] and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? 9And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ 10In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (NIV)

Of course, the woman in the parable resorts to cleaning to find her coin. Mine would have stayed lost a lot longer if that had been required in my case.