Lost and Found: Responding to God's Voice — Part 2

(Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a three-part story describing the disappearance and rescue of 12-year-old Emily Hollis. Click here to read Part 1.)


IGNORANCE

The boy drove Emily out of South Carolina and into Georgia, heading toward Jacksonville, Florida. Emily had no idea that she had been manipulated into believing she was running to a place of “freedom” and “unconditional” love.

Michael Bartel of F.R.E.E. International, however, explains how it works for the groomers who use manipulation (rather than others who use intimidation and violence) to get what they want.

“The groomer does something for you — takes you away from your ‘controlling’ parents,” Bartel says. “But now you have to figure out a way to pay for things as housing, food, and drugs aren’t free. And as he has already breached the sexual walls and established what the girl naively believes is a loving relationship, often he then moves to asking her to do something for him to help them make it, that is ‘if you really love me.’”

STUNNED

Sunday morning, Feb. 16, started like any other Sunday for the Hollises — wake up at 8, get the kids up, get ready for church.

“All of a sudden, I hear Autumn call out, ‘Emily’s not here,’” Kiel, Emily’s father, recalls. “At first, I didn’t understand, it’s just something foreign . . . not here? What do you mean she’s not here?”

The police arrived at 8:30 a.m. and the Hollises gave them what little information they knew — providing a picture and physical details about Emily and names and addresses of friends she may be with and locations she liked to visit.

“Twenty minutes into talking with the police, two women, strangers, show up,” Kiel says. “They introduce themselves, ‘We’re Emma’s (Emily’s) boyfriend’s mom and grandmother.’”

Her what? It took a few seconds for the words to even register with Kiel. Emily didn’t have a boyfriend! And how did these two women just happen to show up at the house with Emily missing — something was very wrong!

“I asked them how did they know where we lived,” Kiel says, noting that he was still struggling to comprehend the significance of the women’s claim. “The mom said, ‘Oh, I dropped her off here Valentine’s night, about 12:30.’”

The women went on to tell how they had been up since 6 a.m. as their son/grandson had ran off with their truck during the night and they were trying to find it — so they decided to check at Emily’s home and saw the police.

As the two women went to talk to the police, the Hollises tried to wrap their minds around this never-imagined scenario, which only grew more painful and foreboding the more they learned. It initially appeared that Emily had run away — a description that the Hollises later regretted using.

A few hours later, the first encouraging news. The license plate of the truck was pinged by a FLOCK surveillance monitor at 10:30 Saturday night — only it was in Macon, Georgia, headed south.

PRAYERS BEGIN

As it became readily apparent that Emily was no longer in Beaufort or even South Carolina, fears and concerns grew. That’s when Grandma Vonna made the call.

“As soon as Autumn called me and told me what happened, I began to pray immediately,” Vonna says. “Then I called someone I knew would be at church. I knew they would be in service, but I called anyway and asked them to stop the service right now and pray for Emily.”

It was only pastor Charles Taylor’s second week in the pulpit at Praise Assembly, having been recently elected following a lengthy pastoral search. However, when his wife, Cheryl, approached the platform and handed him a note, he knew it must be serious.

“I hadn’t gotten to know everyone very well yet, but I knew Vonna (Autumn’s mother) and Philip,” Taylor says. “I confirmed with Cheryl and Kim (the widow of the former pastor, Jaime Gardner, and the one Vonna had called with the request for prayer), that we had permission to share the message . . . we stopped right then and prayed. We later scheduled a special time of prayer for Wednesday night as well.”

Vonna says that the South Carolina AG district office also sent out a prayer request to every church in the state to pray for Emily’s safe return.

And Vonna herself dedicated herself to nearly non-stop prayer.

“The Spirit came over me, and I travailed for days at my daughter’s house for this child’s life,” Vonna recalls, breaking down in tears.

MIRACULOUS SIGHTING

The Pfau family — Dan, Amy, and Austin — was in St. Augustine, Florida, on Austin's winter break from school. St. Augustine is about 40 miles southeast of Jacksonville, Florida. That Sunday, Amy saw Autumn’s post on the Bridges Preparatory parents Facebook page, explaining what had taken place and asking for any information about Emily.

“She had a picture of Emily and the boy and the truck they were in,” Amy says. “That whole day, I could not get out of my mind the picture of Emily, knowing she was 12 . . . Why did this kid take her? What was going on? . . . all I could do was pray for her and watch for her as they could drive our way.”

But the very fact that the Pfaus were in St. Augustine all ties back to Austin, now 9 years old. Amy says, if it wasn’t for Austin, she and Dan wouldn’t be vacationing in St. Augustine.

“We always planned to one day move to South Carolina,” Amy explains, “however, once Austin was born, we wanted to move there before she started kindergarten.”

The Pfaus specifically chose Beaufort because they wanted Austin to have access to good schools, church, and community. In January — just a few weeks before Emily went missing — Austin was offered a seat at Bridges charter school where she had been on the wait list. This enabled the Pfaus to get Austin into the prestigious school and allowed Amy to join the Bridges Parents online group.

“We never pull our daughter out of school for vacation,” Amy says. “But Bridges had a slightly different break than her former school, and our reservations we made before Austin transferred were non-refundable. So, we received special permission for Austin to miss a couple of days.”

Wednesday morning, the family left St. Augustine, headed north back toward Beaufort on I-95, which goes by Jacksonville. Since Sunday, Amy had felt God powerfully impressing her to keep her eyes open and be vigilant — and now that feeling was even greater.

“I knew the truck was a white Nissan 4x4, and it had last been seen in the Jacksonville area,” Amy says. “I remembered the mom (Autumn) had posted the license plate online, so I looked it up and then messaged Autumn to let her know that we saw her post, we were praying, and we were looking for Emily as we drove home from St. Augustine.”

As they approached Jacksonville, doubts began to enter Amy’s mind — she says like a devil on her shoulder whispering, “There is no way you are ever going to find this girl driving 70 mph on I-95.”

“But God kept telling me in my spirit to keep my eyes open — that thought, it was just so powerful . . . it was like He was telling me, ‘I’m using you,’” Amy says.

About five minutes later, Dan calmly noted that there appeared to be a white truck ahead in the median of the southbound traffic on I-95.

“I turned my head to look back to confirm what we thought we saw,” Amy says. “It was a white Nissan pick-up just as the posting had described.”

Amy’s heart began to pound.

“What mile marker was that?” she asked, her voice beginning to rise.

“Mom, we’re at mile marker 337,” Austin piped up from the backseat.

Amy, whose excitement was reaching panic levels, now had conflicting thoughts as they hadn’t been able to make out the license number. It could be, but it might not be . . . she messaged Autumn, Emily’s mother — what should she do? Autumn told her to call the Beaufort Police Department and provided the number.

Although her call ended up being transferred several times and she had to leave a message, about 30 minutes after she first tried to call, a highway patrol officer called her back and agreed to check the vehicle out . . . Amy’s hope was that they were still there — that the police weren’t too late in responding.

“We were approaching Beaufort and I decided to go check Facebook and I saw a post by the Beaufort police — Emily had been found!” Amy says. “I screamed in the car, ‘They got her! They got her! Austin, they did it! We did it! They found her!”

Amy messaged Autumn, expressing her happiness and joy for the family. Not long after the Pfaus arrived home, Autumn and Kiel called — coherent, but emotional as they were headed to Jacksonville.

“She said, ‘You found her, you found her, you found our baby girl! I will forever be in your debt that you found her,’” Amy recalls.

“As terrifying as the experience was for all of us,” Grandma Vonna says, “it is definitely an all-glory-to-God story!”

And being a part of Emily’s rescue left Amy praising God and affirmed in how God uses people for His glory.

“When you hear God calling you, when you hear God speaking to you,” Amy says, “listen to what He is saying, where He is guiding — even if you don’t know why or it doesn’t make sense at the time — you have to listen to what He's saying to you.”

“I’m still praising God — I cannot not thank Him for what He has done,” Vonna says.

“I believe I cannot overstate the impact of Jesus in my life and my family's life during the time Emily was missing,” Kiel states. “Grace has always been something I've seen in hindsight, but God placed His grace upon me to have gratitude for everyone, even in the most challenging moments, who was helping us — in real time, not just in hindsight.”


(This is the conclusion of Part 2 of a three-part story describing the disappearance and rescue of 12-year-old Emily Hollis — including how God intervened through an attentive believer and the unexpected difficulties the Hollis family faced. Click here to read Part 3.)

Image: Due to privacy concerns, a stock photo has been used for this article.