The Millennium Box

The history of the Knights Templar contains speculation that the Ark of the Covenant had been hidden in St. Mary's Church in Axum, Ethiopia, until the church was entered and found to be empty. Pastor Lars and Mrs. Margaret Erikson visit Ethiopia in the '70s during one of the eras of famine and political unrest. While in Axum, orphaned twins (a boy and a girl) are brought to them by priests of the town.
Pleading the real dangers of hunger, disease and death, the priests persuade the pastor and his wife to adopt the infants. Almost 30 years later, retired widower Pastor Lars is settled on San Juan Island where he adds to his pension by holding Sunday morning "tourist" services in a small, historic chapel. Silvie and Jess, now adults, still live with him. One morning, Lars discovers that a large tent has been erected in his yard by the same three Ethiopian priests who brought the twins to him so many years ago.
They indicate they have brought something that must be hidden and completely forgotten by the whole world, warning him that no one should even look at the object. The next morning, the tent and priests are gone. Lars lets slip too much about his visitors to an old acquaintance, Professor Weston. For all the wrong reasons, the Professor assumes he knows what is being hidden and becomes obsessed with obtaining it.
He arrives on the island to talk his friend into letting him take charge of the "artifact". Lars faces the ancient dilemma of whether there truly is forbidden knowledge. Weston has ceased struggling with ethics and now wholly subscribes to self-aggrandizement as deity. Silvie fights to know what she should be protecting, her own family or a larger but less intimate cause. Jess, who has always needed to be part of something bigger, struggles to understand what is worth dying for and, thus, what is worth living for.
Winner of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association fiction prize, this atmospheric novella was inspired by what the author found while hiking on San Juan Island in Puget Sound. Down a little used forest service road, there is a mausoleum with Knights Templar buried in it. There is a little known holiday called Epiphany that celebrates that the arrival of the three Wise Men. All of this is public knowledge.
But so much else is not known.