Tornado lost and found room at Iowa church closing at the end of September

By Ophelie Jacobson

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    GREENFIELD, Iowa (KCCI) — The lost and found room at a Greenfield church will close at the end of September after being open for months following May’s deadly tornado.

Greenfield United Methodist Church converted its chapel into a lost and found room the day after the storm. For months, they have collected lost items, and people have come in to search for and find those things.

Deb Blazek said she’s sorted through thousands of photos and other memories.

“There’s just a lot of memories in here, but we just got to find the right people to come in and look at them,” Blazek said.

Blazek said the church needs their chapel space back. There are two weeks left for people to come in and take a second glance at everything on the tables.

“If they could just show up and look, they might be surprised,” she said.

Once the doors close, Blazek said photos will be placed in brown paper bags and stored at the library. Copies of the photos will be placed in a binder for people to look through.

“If we can try and preserve them and get them back to families, it’ll be their memories,” Blazek said.

As for the larger items, she said they will store them. But they are still figuring out exactly where that will be. She said closing the lost and found room will mark a return to normalcy.

“To have this not in our faces every time we come into church, I think it’s going to help us heal a little more,” she said.

The church said people can come by at any point and ring the doorbell if they want to look in the lost and found room. Blazek said starting next Monday, the lost and found room will be open every weeknight from four to seven p.m.

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