In our home worship groups, we have been sharing stories about looking back to see the goodness of God in our lives. Lothar told us about coming to the U.S. in 1968 with Heidi. Their families thought they were crazy, that the U.S. was a bad country, with the recent killings of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. And Lothar had a good job in research with the Dutch company, Philips, in Hamburg. But he left that job and they came to California with no work and unsure where they would live.
Lothar has a degree in Engineering Physics, but since jobs were scarce, he would have taken anything. He was living in Fontana and drove out to the San Fernando Valley to interview with Bendix. Because they were a government contractor and he was not a U.S. citizen, he couldn’t work for them. But the man who interviewed him gave him a list of companies that would hire someone who was not a citizen. As they were driving back to Fontana, Lothar saw a sign in Pasadena that advertised Xerox, and he remembered that was one of the companies that might hire him.
He was hesitant to apply, but a family that “adopted” them in Fontana encouraged him to at least apply. Xerox was opening a new division that would specialize in breast cancer detection. Lothar’s experience had been in electrostatic imaging, so he was a good fit for the job. In fact, he was hired on the spot, with the interviewer exclaiming, “Where did you come from?!” Lothar then spent his entire career in this field.
“When I look at my life, I see how my Lord was faithful.” He wasn’t even a Christian at the time, but he knows now that the Lord was at work in his life even then.
What’s your story? Are you willing to share it?