Grace looking back

My grandparents, Paul & Elisabeth Gerk, left their families and escaped from Russia to Canada.

The intent was to sponsor their families to Canada.

It was never to be.

The iron curtain slammed shut behind them.  Contact between them and their families was forbidden.  They had no idea what happened to them.  It was, what I call, the Great Silence.

So they lived their lives here in Canada.  Raising their children. Struggling to make ends meet...working hard to provide for their family.

The Grace?

It abounds.

I was just thinking the other day...my grandfather lived in the Kelowna area...settling here in 1929.  They were members of Saint Theresa's Catholic parish in the Rutland area of town.

Family tradition says that when the new Saint Theresa's Church was built, in the early 1950's, my grandfather purchased the cross that sits atop the Church, donating it as an anonymous gift.

Paul Gerk, died in 1954, never knowing what happened to his family...but always wondering and often searching.

In 1984....we found them.  Sent to Siberia in 1941, labour camps and then release....we managed to piece together their tragic story.

In 1989...we brought my grandfather's youngest brother, Johannes Gerk, to Canada for month to visit.

He stayed with my aunt and  uncle...a block from Saint Theresa's Church....and attended Mass there every day.

This Grace.

My grandfather, heavily involved in the life of this Church...not knowing that one day his youngest brother would travel from the USSR and attend Church in the same place where he gave so many devoted hours of his life and faith.

(Johannes Gerk, youngest brother of Paul Gerk, at the grave of his brother, August 1989.)