My Trek With Divine Destiny

I was born to a devout Christian family of German ancestry in 1938, in Alt-Postall, Bessarabia, a German settlement in Russia. In 1940, orders came from Hitler through the German SS that the residents in the area where we lived were to be expelled and deported to Poland so that the areas captured at the start of WWII could be repopulated with German people. This forced departure was the first of many times in my young life that our family was to lose virtually all of our possessions. These departures included, but were not limited to, our hasty and anxious trek ahead of the Red Army near the end of WWII and even our eventual immigration to the USA. During the course of my adult life, I have had the privilege of hearing the stories of many parishioners, patients, and their families. I have also had the opportunity to speak with them or others about portions of my own life story and have been encouraged to write it down.