Surprise Reunion

When we were up in Idaho this past March we made an unannounced stop. Long story short, we found out that our niece Brooke, Ty's older brother Todd's daughter, whom he hasn't seen in years is attending BYU-I. We lost contact with Todd's kids after his divorce years ago. I haven't seen Brooke since she was 9. She is turning 19 next month. I wasn't kidding when I said it's been a long time.
Todd informed us that she was at school up there and because I have connections up there (thanks Darin) I was able to get her address and e-mail address. On Sunday before we headed home we detoured to campus. As Tyler and I discussed what we were going to do we felt that we need to at least try and see this long-lost niece of ours. Remember, she hasn't had contact with anyone in Ty's family for over 5 yrs. And here we were about to pounce on this poor, unexpecting girl. We figured the worse she could do is slam the door in our faces. Then we would be no worse off than we already were.
We tracked her down and believe it or not, she let us in. She had a very confused look on her face as we entered, but Ty quickly broke the ice when he said, "What, you don't even recognize your own uncle." Her mouth dropped and her eyes got wide as she exclaimed, "Uncle Tyler!"
It was a wonderful experience. We all chatted and visited with her for about 2 hrs. It was an amazing experience. When we left she said we could stop by next time we were up there. I told  her she better be careful cause we really would. I think or hope she needed the visit as much as we did. As Ty and I drove home we reflected on our visit and both of us agreed that we felt so honored to be the ones to reconnect with her after all these years. We pray that we left her with a feeling of how loved she is. And hopefully we were able to break down some of the walls she has put up and that maybe we repaired a bridge between her and our family.