Rediscovering our Family in Denmark After 60 Years Apart

This is the story of my family's trip to Denmark... 

My mother's family in Denmark has been in close contact for generations. However, when we visited the tiny island of Als, in Denmark, no one in my father's family had been in contact with their relatives in Denmark since just before World War II, when they had lost touch. All we had to go on was the name of the town and a photo of my Dad's cousins with the cosuins from Denmark taken in the 1930's.

We had only a few hours when we arrived in Als because of a tight ferry schedule. Hurriedly, we started searching every church, every cemetary, but found no leads. Finally, my Dad spotted a farmer pulling a manure wagon down a little country lane, and followed him, thinking that if anyone knew the people who had lived in the area in generations past, it would be a farm family. (My dad is a farmer -- so was his father and grandfather.)

When we reached the end of the lane, the Danish farmer went to get his brother, who spoke English, from the barn. His brother looked at the photo and said, "I don't know the people in the photo, but I recognize the house and can take you there. It is in the next village over."

When we arrived at the house in the photo, there was a couple outside doing yardwork and pruning bushes. They did not speak English, but the farmer explained the situation to them and showed the woman in the yard the photograph. She began to cry, pointing at the people in the picture, saying, "My moder, my fader," and so on. Then she pointed to a toddler in the photo and said in Danish, "That is me."

How excited we were! She went on to tell us that their family home had been sold after the war, but that it had come on the market about the time her husband had retired from his medical practice in a larger city. They were able to buy it and had renovated it.

We enjoyed a great time of fellowship with them, looking at photo albums,  having tea, and communicating in snipets of Danish, English and German. Their children, who know English, now communicate with my mother and father via letters.

Again, everything that happened was too "coincidental" to be anything but God leading our paths so that our family could reconnect after all those  decades apart.

A very exciting day for our family...