My Most Asked Question about the Kidnapping . . .

My time in the US is growing short, and so my days are very full of activity. Today I'm going to very briefly answer the question I am asked most often about the kidnapping, which is: Who is this "Ben" kid, and what happened to your son "David"?

About two years ago, my son (originally named David) asked me, out of the blue, what I would have named him if he'd been born to me. I didn't know the answer to this question, exactly, but we have some patterns in our children's names, and so I knew that his first name would have started with the letter "B", and his middle name would have been Daniel.

He asked if I might have named him "Ben." This name had popped into his head because he had two friends near his age at the annual MK camp named Ben. Since I have a father and a brother with the name Ben, it sounded like a possible choice to me, so I said, "Sure, maybe."

Then he asked if we could change his name to Ben Daniel Sowers. Sadly, I had to tell him that we don't have the legal right to change his name, since he isn't legally our son. But I did say that we would call him Ben, if that's what he wanted us to do.

He did want that, so that's what we do. I occasionally slip up and call him David, but it doesn't happen often.

And that caused many people to be confused, when they heard the story of Ben's kidnapping - they knew we had a son called David, and they hadn't heard of us having a son named Ben.

I hope it makes more sense now!