Lost And Found...An LDS Chapel Staple

My daughter had a dance performance earlier this week and I attended (I provided transportation, but I still wanted to watch my daughter dance--you know, for support...). Like many of her performances, this one was held in a Latter-Day Saint chapel. We live in Utah, and there are places where LDS chapels can literally be across the street from each other--same religion, different congregations.

After a certain point in time, probably around the 1980s, most LDS chapels follow a similar design. Basically, the buildings are one big rectangle. Very smart. Take off the roof and you'll see the chapel on one half, and a basketball court (sometimes with a stage...) on the other half. Surrounding those two sections are classrooms and church offices. Once again, very smart.

There are things you'll find in every one of these church buildings. There's bishopric offices, a place for the nursery (or nurseries...), rooms for meetings of children, the men, and the women for their classes.

There's also a place--in every building, except this place is not found on any of the blueprints. It's a space for the Lost and Found. I snapped the above picture while the kids ballroom danced in the gym. What struck me--and why I took the picture--is I almost expected some of the Lost and Found stuff to be mine, as if things I misplaced at our church building magically appeared in this one thirteen miles away.

I thought that because the things in this particular Lost and Found were the same things found in all the other buildings. Scriptures, church manuals, water bottles, articles of clothing, eyeglasses--though I don't see any in this picture, there's usually small toys, Matchbox cars, or little action figures in the Lost and Founds.

As our kids have aged, fewer and fewer of our items have found their way into our Lost and Found. I don't know if any research has been done as to any direct correlation between age and forgetfulness. I imagine it's an inverse bell curve, high for the very young, and the perhaps the elderly. And if that's true, I guess we'll be searching in the Lost and Found more in the future.