Minister 'prays for miracle' after accidentally donating beloved family Bible to Goodwill
A minister is “praying for a miracle” and offering a $500 reward for a lost family Bible, which she believes might date back to the 1600s.
Reverend Dr. Pamela Anderson, who is a minister in Sacramento, Calif., posted about the missing heirloom on Facebook this Tuesday, calling the situation “tragically embarrassing.” She explains how she accidentally donated the Bible to Goodwill, mistaking it for a different book because it had a new cover on it.
The Sacramento Bee reports that Anderson’s great-grandparents gave her father — who was an Air Force pilot who served in Vietnam — the Bible when he was in his 20s. He passed it down to his daughter when she was ordained as a minister, 28 years ago.
According to her post, the Bible has “generations of marriages and births” listed in it. She only realized it was missing last week, when her father was entering his second week of hospice care.
“My sister told me that my dad had the family Bible re-covered because the old cover had fallen off. It’s a shame that he did that because it would have lost its value, but also, I would clearly have noticed that this was a vintage book,” her post reads. “So the heartache of this story gets even worse … I donated it to a Goodwill Express which means that it could have been donated to any Goodwill here in Northern California.”
According to her post, Anderson “searched over 20 Goodwill stores,” and even found herself at the headquarters, but hasn’t been able to locate the Bible.
“I have also been told that books don’t last long on the shelves … one month. Isn’t that crazy?!” she wrote. “Goodwill gets so many donations they don’t stay long.”
She is now requesting friends to help her in her hunt by searching Goodwill stores near them, checking eBay and rare book stores and sharing her Facebook post.
“We can do this! I need your help!” her post says. “Trust me … I have been going through a lot of embarrassment and shame that the family Bible got lost … on my watch. Heartbreak, right? But I have got to get over this. No time for wallowing. No time for pity.”
Many people commented on her post, some volunteering to search stores near them, and others providing information about other resources she could use to search for the Bible.
One person recommended using “Nextdoor,” a social media networking service for neighborhoods. Another suggested checking Ancestry.com, and wrote, “My sister found a family Bible we didn’t even know about because someone posted about a family Bible they had found in a thrift store.”
Anderson and representatives from Goodwill did not immediately respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment.
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