The Knife That Couldn’t Be Lost

Last furlough (2011) a really nice man named A.J. from our home church had us over for dinner. Before we left that night, he gave us each a gift. My gift was a Swiss Army Knife that Mr. A.J. had had from his twenties. I was so excited; I've had Swiss Army knives in the past, but this knife was very special to me. The knife has a string with a knot at the end so that it could be hung on something. It also has two blades, one long, one short, a bottle opener, can opener, screwdriver, and a hole puncher. Anyway, when we returned back to Papua it became my favorite knife.

It has stayed in my pocket for about four years now, and as many times as I have lost it I always seem to find it again. The first time I lost my knife, I was hunting birds. At the time, I was totally oblivious to its absence until the next day. I was able to retrace it back to the last time I had used it, which was the morning of its disappearance. That particular day I had covered a lot of ground, an hour or more in the jungle; I walked all around our little neighborhood and went down to the airstrip. The odds of finding my knife again were not good. I searched for days, and then finally out of desperation I asked about it at church, hoping a little kid might have found it laying on the trail. No one had seen it, and I was beginning to lose hope. Three weeks later I stumbled upon it out in the jungle.

The rope that hung out of my pocket got caught on a twig and pulled the knife out of my pocket without me feeling it. I then started tying the string to my shorts, but after a while I got tired of untying the knife so I could use it, then tying it back when I was done. I got complacent and wasn't faithfully tying it any more. Next thing I knew, I had lost it again. Four weeks later as we were cutting firewood out in the jungle, I found it again. This kept on happening until now; I never leave the house without making sure my knife is secured to my shorts. I must have lost my knife about six times or more. One time when we were on a long hiking trip we took a break and I took the time to sight my gun. I used my knife to adjust the sights and afterwards forgot to tie the string again; a branch pulled it out of my pocket like it did the first time. If Morgan hadn't seen it fall, it would have been lost forever.

With this knife I've carved, cut, and sliced everything from slingshots to pipes to bows to fingers. The smallest blade is extremely sharp; I've started using it as a skinning knife. For every pelt I skin with it, I tie a knot in the string to keep count.