"My mother’s sister, a very dear aunt of mine, died in a tragic house fire where she lived alone. My mother was the executrix of that estate.  It was very difficult for her. One of the few things she had remaining from Lillian was a diamond ring which was on her finger. The diamond was thought to possibly be carbonized. We never had it checked but the ring was cleaned and when I returned from overseas a year later, my mother gave me this ring. I really cherished it and wore it every day.

"Now moved to  Florida, my parents visiting us, I was doing some yard work which involved the uncleared lot we owned next to our house.  Toward the end of my hour or so it began to rain and ended up in a deluge,  I continued to work as long as I could which included taking large armfuls of weeds, etcetera, and flinging them into piles to be placed in bags at the curb. 

"Arriving in the house soaking wet  I realized my son would soon be late for altar service so we hastily prepared for Mass and headed to church. 

"Kneeling in the pew, I clasped my hands and lo -- the ring was missing!

"I never ever  removed it. I knew it had to be somewhere in those mounds of yard debris -- or the part of the lot we had worked, an area of at least fifty by fifteen feet! I decided to put it out of mind and concentrate on Mass. 

"I hated the thought of telling my mother that I had lost her sister’s ring.

"My husband and I picked through every bit of the piles of yard debris. Nothing! I wandered in the lot and again: nothing.

"My husband told me I should forget trying to find that ring because the downpour had driven it into the sandy soil and it would be irretrievable but I continued to pray and to beg St. Anthony (who had never let me down since I was a young girl). 

"We still hadn’t told my parents of the loss.

"One afternoon as I sat on my bed while my parents had gone to nap, I prayed again. The thought came to me to go out into that lot with a flashlight after dark. I'd had that thought several times before when praying and always discarded it as being so impractical.

"The lot was dark. The flashlight made only a small circle of  light,  the area to search was so large, etcetera. For some reason this time I decided to act on that thought. As soon as it turned dark, out I went with the flashlight. I found a piece of tinfoil; then a small piece of cellophane gleamed.

"Then, a small glimmer of gold.

"There was the ring, directly in front of my feet and it was not the diamond sparkling in the light but the narrow golden band of an upside-down ring!

"I had promised St. Anthony I would place his statue in our church if the pastor would let me and, failing that, I would put one in the lot and tell everyone why it was there. The pastor declined the statue. Nevertheless I purchased a church quality statue. We went away in the summers in those days so, afraid that it would be stolen from the lot,  I placed it in the planter at one end of our screened  deck, closest to where the ring was found. I continue to tell anyone who will listen this story of the miraculously retrieved diamond ring. (My grandson has it today for his intended)."

 Lastly, June Klins, who edits a Marian newsletter Pennsylvania.

"I have a story for you too. In June of 2009, I was asked to be a speaker at a retreat given at a shrine in Canada. I took my First Communion rosary and a rosary that my friend's daughter made for me that has the 'five stones' of Medjugorje on it, one on each decade: Prayer, Fasting, Bible, Eucharist, Confession. It is a beautiful rosary and is my favorite. I took these rosaries to use as props for my talk. While there, my friend bought me a new rosary pouch in the gift shop and I put both rosaries in there after my talk.