If you have ever put a message in a bottle, you probably wondered where it might end up or who would find it. You probably wouldn’t assume that you would ever see it again. But that’s precisely what happened to Makenzie Van Eyk of Ontario, Canada.
She told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that she had put a message in a bottle into Lake St. Clair in 1998, when she was in the 4th grade at St. John The Baptist Elementary School in Belle River, Ontario. She did this for a school project but hadn’t thought much about it since.
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Not until a kindergartner at the same elementary school, River Vandenburg, found the very same bottle by a jetty. "There was no date on the letter, so I thought maybe [it was from] this year, maybe last year at most," River’s grandmother told the CBC. "We sent it to school. His teacher contacted us later that day and said that was from 1998. I was shocked."
As if it wasn’t a miracle in itself, River is in the same class as Scarlet, Makenzie’s daughter. Their teacher surprised her by reading the note and revealing the name on the paper. "My mouth completely dropped,” Scarlet told CBC. “Everyone was like, 'Who's that? Who's that?' And I was like, 'My mother!'”
Makenzie was of course astonished to see that the letter had been preserved for all those years. "I definitely wasn't thinking about it often, so I was very surprised," she said. "I think that process really stuck with me. This was also right when our school got a computer lab … one of the first things that I ever printed on paper and got to do something with. It was memorable to do something like that, throw something and think maybe someone will find it later."
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The idea to put the message in the bottle back in 1998 came from teacher Roland St. Pierre who told CBC that he had forgotten about it and it “was a real shock” when he heard the news.
Finding the message after all these years is definitely a God thing. A fun moment to celebrate between mother, and daughter.
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“Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.” - Psalm 23:6
h/t: People
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Burazin