Share your own God Moment!

6/22/2013

Cathrine the Great

This week I thought I would share a God Moment from my own family history.

The story begins when Cathrine the Great wed Peter III, who later died, leaving Cathrine the Empress of Russia. Catherine encouraged Germans to immigrate to Russia. She promised better circumstances, more rights, religious freedom and the moon and stars to go with it. When my ancestors made it to Russia, however, it was not what they expected. They struggled to survive in this strange new land.

One day, a summons came from America calling for a Joseph Zimmerman with twelve children from the small, remote town that my g-g-g-g-grandfather lived in. The description fit my ancestor's family, except that some of their children had died in infancy. The excited family made the trip to America, pre-paid by the gentleman in America who had sent for them.

When the Zimmerman family arrived, they went to the address indicated and knocked on the door. The gentleman opened the door to see a German man with his wife and children standing at his threshold.

It was the wrong Joseph Zimmerman. With twelve children. From the same little town.

Talk about a God moment!

My grandfather begged the man not to send them back, but allow them to stay here in America and promised to pay back every penny that it cost to get his family here. He worked the rest of his life to pay off the debt, but finally did so.

Do you have any God moments in your family history?
I'd love to hear them! Please leave a comment with the story!

Tweetables:
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2 Comments

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Many Christmas stories have been told... but this one has remained hidden in the fabric of time.

Author

Amber Schamel was born in Littleton, CO and has traveled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and the Holy Land. She was raised in a family of 11 children, home-schooled through education and currently works with their 10 family businesses. Amber is a multi-published author and currently lives with her family outside of Colorado Springs, CO..

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Diane Dean White link

6/22/2013 12:52:42 pm

Amber, this is great and family history is so important. I learned a lot from my maternal grandmother. She started researching her own dad's family tree when I was young, and it took her years...no computers and she traveled to court houses, cemeteries and mailed letters asking people
for information. So many times they didn't reply but she kept at it.
She went pre-revolutionary war period through the late 1980's and her
book was completed. After almost thirty years of working on it. She used
my old Royal manual, and I drove her often and learned how to scratch
information from old cemetery head stones. Her family came from the Mohawk Valley....She was a Young, but the spelled it Jung then. And she gave a book to a number of family members, the state library and it's recently gone online. She was such an encouragement to me, and I too followed and did my own father's family tree.

Amber Schamel link

6/23/2013 01:59:50 pm

Wow Diane! That's really neat! It can be very hard to find family tre information like that. My great Aunt is the one who did most of the research on our family, but there are some things we just couldn't find.
I love family history! Don't you? :)