NOT A GOOD REASON TO BE ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE NEWSPAPER.

After all the dilemmas of having our laptop stolen and losing our last four years of life memories, video footage and baby snaps, friends and family have been sending in all the photos they have of Madison and our life in PNG.

In fact, I think I now have pics that I never had before and I have been enjoying looking through them all like it's the first time. Thanks so much to those who have taken the time to do this. I am so grateful!

As a result of the saga, our picture was in the local paper - front page! Can you believe it!? Lots of friends who live in the area mentioned it, in fact it was Ange and Arthur who SMSed me and told me.

I dashed to the mailbox to find no paper. So then I drove down to the Main street to collect a few copies. Ten, in fact. Now I have a few spares that I can pass onto family and keep a couple for Madison to show the week he was famous. The pictures were so nice I ordered them from the paper at $30 a pop (not cheap). But I think I would be stupid not to start collecting photos again...

So, above are the pics that were in the paper... oh, and the article that went with the pics is below (a little dramatised and a little exaggerated I must say, but these guys are trying to sell papers). I love the way they put Missionary in capitals, oh also there is a great plug for ADRA:

MEMORIES GET LOST IN A SNAP (Front page)

MISSIONARY Kym Piez lost all her photos of son Madison's first steps and smiles when her laptop computer was stolen from her Croydon home. She hopes someone can help get her photographs back and has a message for other Maroondah Leader readers. "Back up your photos or get them printed," Mrs Piez said.

PRECIOUS MEMORIES LOST (Page 28)

MISSIONARY worker Kym Piez feels more vulnerable in Maroondah than in Papua New Guinea, where she worked for four years with a relief agency.

"Nothing happened up there," Mrs Piez said. "We had rascal attacks on our car when we were moving but nothing like breaking in to our house."

But on Sunday, 25 February, two months after she and her husband returned to Croydon, someone broke into their home and stole a laptop computer, camera and two lenses.

The thieves also stole four years of precious memories.

"The computer I would not care about but what is on it you can't get back," Mrs Piez said. "It had four years worth of photos - our life in Papua New Guinea and all of our baby photos, Madison's first smile and his first crawl - all that is gone."

Mrs Piez said she cried for days after realising what was on the computer and hoped whoever had it would copy the photos to a disk and drop it in the letter box.

Mrs Piez worked in Lae as the Adventist Development & Relief Agency's (ADRA) development manager.

Her husband worked with the church's Papua New Guinea school network.

"ADRA does water installations in remote villages where they have to walk four hours for water," she said. "It empowers people and helps them to be more independent so they can help themselves."