God Still Calls some of His people to new places! by Linden Malki

Reading about the call of God to Abraham's family made me aware that I have seen that happen in my own family. My grandmother's uncle, father, and another uncle and their families were banished from Sweden for preaching outside of the state church, and came to America over 150 years ago. My dad's father was kicked out by his father for joining one of the underground Baptist churches in Sweden, and came to Minnesota, married my grandmother and moved to the Seattle area.  My dad was offered a job promotion to move to Spokane, met my mom at church, and that's where I grew up. 

And then it happened to me. I had finished college, was turned down for a graduate fellowship I had applied for.  My dad's missionary brother was retiring from a Christian college in Taiwan, was planning to come home the long way around and spending some time in the Middle East with a missionary son and then going on to Sweden.  He invited Dad and I to join them in Beirut and travel with them through the Holy Land and then on to Sweden. Dad was retired, I was at loose ends, my mom had died five years earlier.

Dad and I took a Dutch freighter to Beirut, and on that boat was a Lebanese man with his mom, who was taking him back to the "old country" to find a wife. He had been living in California for about eight years at the time. His family was historic Christian; his father had grown up in a missionary school in Turkey, and he had a missionary brother who knew my missionary cousin in Lebanon. My aunt and uncle went on to Sweden, while Dad and I stayed in Beirut; dad's health was failing and he passed away that summer. I wound up getting married there. (Yes, Dad was happy about it, he told the family that he'd never met a man that he thought would take better care of me.) We spent the rest of the summer there, including more time in Jordan, which then included Jerusalem and the West Bank. When we came back to San Bernardino where John had been living, I discovered that the associate pastor of the church John was already attending had been the pastor of the church in Spokane I had grown up in, was one of Dad's best friends, had gone to college with Dad's sister, and had introduced my parents. God pulled a lot of strings to get me here, with a new family, a new church, and a business that was just what I actually could do well. God moved my great-grandparents from Sweden to Minnesota; my grandparents to Seattle, my parents to Spokane,  and then me to San Bernardino and a new life.