Episode 4: Immigration

In this powerful episode of Cultural Connections, Pastor Daniel Cox and his wife Marie welcome special guest Sig Pell — deacon at Calvary Baptist Church — to share his remarkable true story of faith, resilience, and God’s grace through the immigrant experience.

Born in a refugee camp near Hamburg after World War II, Sig recounts how his Mennonite family fled their East German farm in the harsh winter of 1945. Traveling by horse-drawn wagon train, they faced destroyed bridges, thin river ice, advancing armies, thievery, and a stunning divine reunion with his father that can only be described as God’s hand at work. After years in the refugee camp, they immigrated to Michigan where they encountered both hardship and hope.

From hand-me-down clothes and early bullying as “the poor immigrants” to building a successful life (including military service, a 37-year career at General Motors, personal trials, and later finding love again with his wife Judy), Sig’s journey is a living testimony of God’s sustaining grace.

The conversation draws wisdom from the Old Testament’s commands to love the “gare” (the stranger and sojourner) and challenges Christians today to respond to immigrants with compassion, dignity, and the love of Christ rather than fear or assumptions.

The episode closes with a rare, deeply emotional audio recording of Sig’s mother, Emma Powell, sharing her firsthand account of their terrifying 1945 escape.

Chapters / Timeline:

• 00:00 – Introduction & Biblical View of the Stranger
• 03:37 – Sig’s Family Flees East Germany in 1945
• 07:18 – Miraculous Reunion with Father on the Frozen River
• 09:41 – Arriving in America as Refugees & Early Struggles
• 12:33 – Bullying, Prejudice & How They Handled It
• 16:15 – Parents’ Deep Gratitude for the United States
• 18:54 – Education, Military Service & 37-Year Career at GM
• 20:35 – Personal Trials, Loss & God’s Chastening Grace
• 29:18 – Meeting Judy & Finding Love Again
• 34:38 – How Should Christians Receive Immigrants?
• 39:48 – Final Thoughts on Gratitude and the Stranger
• 45:57 – Emma Powell’s Powerful Testimony (Sig’s Mother)

Whether you’re wrestling with today’s immigration headlines or simply need encouragement that God can bring beauty from ashes, this story of faith, hardship, and redemption will stay with you.

A must-listen for anyone who believes every person is an image-bearer of God.

Subscribe to Cultural Connections for more faith-centered conversations on culture, and leave a review if this episode encouraged you!

#Immigration #RefugeeStory #GodsGrace #ChristianPodcast #BiblicalImmigration #FaithAndCulture #WWIIHistory #CulturalConnections

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:22

Welcome to Cultural Connections, and uh I'm Pastor Daniel Cox, my wife Marie, and we are joined today by a very special guest, Sig Pell, and he is here to tell his story. We're going to talk about a very important connection in our culture today, and that is the situation of the immigrant, the person who is affected by political movements or sometimes tyrants or dictators, and how God's grace can see people through the greatest difficulties of their lives. And so full disclosure, SIG is obviously a personal friend of mine and a deacon at Calvary Baptist Church. And so we just want to thank you for coming and having a conversation with us today.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Thank you for asking me, and I'll try to be as truthful as possible.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Amen. The Old Testament has a lot to say about the sojourner, the stranger, the foreigner. As I was kind of looking into this, uh, that the Hebrew word is gare, and a gare refers to a non-landowner, someone not part of a social structure, uh, the one who is traveling, the one who finds himself not at home. As we look in Scripture in Genesis 15 and verse 13, we're told that the patriarchs of Israel were sojourners and strangers, that Israel was a stranger, that Moses himself was a stranger. And by the time we get to the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, Moses commands the people by God in Deuteronomy 10, 19. They're commanded to love the stranger because they themselves were strangers. And it was the love and compassion of Jehovah for the people that he wanted them to extend to other people. I think what spawns my thinking in this conversation, um, 2019 or 2015, uh, you and I traveled to Israel. And I remember my first trip into the West Bank. We were in Bethlehem, and before I went there, I didn't know that Bethlehem was not part of the state of Israel. And we were in a store, very famous Olivewood store, having conversations with the staff that worked there, and they so humanized the Israeli-Arab conflict for me in such a powerful way. I've been back twice, and and every time I'm I'm in a Palestinian-controlled area, it just helps me to humanize. These are not these are not people pummens on a chess board that that are being controlled by politicians. These are image bearers of God who have eternal souls, and we want to love them and and encourage them. There was a little little Arab boy who was for a dollar putting a sheep over people's shoulders and taking a picture. And when I saw him, I I didn't see him. I saw my son, who was about the same age at the time. So I want us to have a political conversation, but I really want us to humanize. Uh we have a large Ukrainian population here in our neck of the woods, so to speak, and some of those are from war-torn areas. And so kind of a good segue in. Tell us who who is Sig Powell and where did he come from?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Well, that's very interesting because it depends where you want me to start. If you want me to start before I was born, you have to start with my parents being forced off of their land. My father-in-law was my father was in hiding in the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, because of Hitler. Uh, and the U.S. was uh driving Hitler out of Germany, and uh, and uh he was all the U.S. was all the way into almost into Russia, and uh the president of that time uh decided that they wanted to have Russia involved in the reconstruction of Germany. This all took place in 1945, and it was during the winter, it was the winter that the uh German army froze to death in Russia. Wow, and that was a good time to go and attack from the U.S. point of view, and he withdrew the U.S. forces, and Russia moved in to take this place, and my parents were right in the middle, they had a farm on the east side of Germany next to Poland. And when they were my mother and her her mother-in-law is where they were living with my dad's family, and uh they had to move. They didn't have vehicles, they had only horse-drawn carriages and and wagons. So they loaded everything up on wagons, and then a little village that they were in, um they decided to form a wagon train and head west. Well, as many of you know, the history shows that almost all the bridges were knocked out, and there's a lot of lot of rivers on the east side of Michigan, um, excuse me, Germany. And uh they had to traverse these rivers in the winter, and so the wagons tried to roll across the rivers on ice. Well, a lot of the rivers had enough current to where they didn't freeze in the middle, and they went into the water. And my parents were in this wagon train heading west. They got to the a very wide river called Derweich, and they couldn't cross because the ice was too thin. They camped overnight and prayed. Their wagon train leader came up the next morning and said, I think we need to go to the north and find a better place to cross. It'll be colder as we go north, and they did. They headed up towards the Baltic Sea and they found a place, the bridge was bombed out, but the ice was thick enough to cross. And uh they did cross to the other side to to find refuge to the other side and head west. Um, in the process, my mother uh found friendship from the people that lived in that area. They seen they were refugees and were in trouble. And a woman came out to my mother and said, Would you like to get warm while they get the wagons off of the river because the ice was thin near the edge and it did break in? They still towed the wagons off to the side off of onto the banks. And she went in to change my uh, it would be it was my older brother at that time, I wasn't born yet. And uh woman brings her into the house, it was warm, and she opened a door, a closet door, and out of the closet my dad stepped out. And my mother hadn't seen my dad since 1943. Amazing. And so uh the only conclusion I can come to is that that's a God thing. God told her, told the wagon train master to go north.

SPEAKER_03 7:17

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

You know, they never hooked up if he hadn't uh went through that process. Then from there they made it back to the uh refugee camp, which was just northeast of Hamburg. And uh that's where two years later I was born. Well, one year a little bit over a year later I was born. And it took us three years of living in that refugee camp before we got the rights to come to the United States as immigrants. And the funny part of well, it wasn't so funny, but uh the sad part about becoming an immigrant was that we were not received very well, uh, even by my parents' relatives who had been there since the 1800s. We went to a German uh Mennonite church, it was it was called Home Street German Mennonite Baptist. Later they dropped the Mennonite off and became just pure Baptist. But um we got nothing but handy hand-me-downs. My dad had to work for a lot of people for next to nothing. Part of the agreement to become an immigrant was that um you had to have a place to live, you had to have somebody who'd sponsor you, and it had to have a job lined up for six months. And then after six months, you were on your own. You could apply for citizenship at that point. And so my dad, he worked for some of the farmers because they put us in an old farmhouse, and some of the farmers he'd be be up there at 4:30 in the morning cleaning the trenches in the milking parlors, and um his pay was a liter and a half of milk, fresh milk. That was his pay for that morning, and he brought that home. And my older brother and my older sister and myself, that's what we grew up on was that one and a half liters of milk. Plus, whatever eggs we did raise chickens on this old broken down farm. There were it had a hen house, and we raised a garden, nice big garden, and that was really interesting. I was four years old, and my job was to go pick the potato bugs off of the potato plants. So we all had to work, everybody had to chip in.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Yeah. So let's kind of stop right there. You you mentioned maybe not being received well. Now you're in a what a German-populated area?

SPEAKER_01 9:49

That area was. So where my dad's relatives lived. They immigrated back during when they had homesteading in Michigan. They had homesteaded a whole big area around Williamston, Michigan. There's roads named Powell Road and Germany Road and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

So what was the mental connection or disconnection that people who had already, I guess, naturalized or become citizens, what was what was their attitude against you as an immigrant?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Their kids didn't really accept us very well. The parents all started collaborating in German, you know, so they were well accepted. But us kids, we until we learned English, and it didn't take us long as kids, I think within two months we were speaking uh relatively kid English, but uh we learned fairly well. Then we were accepted better by our own relatives. But when we moved to Lansing, after my dad got a job at the Oldsmobile factory, it was a different story. Uh I was in kindergarten, that would be two years later. I was almost six, and we went into a city school, a city grade school, and the kids used to mock us, they could tell our accent and everything that we were foreigners, and they'd call us names and like like lots of Hotsy Tatsu, here comes another Nazi, that kind of stuff. We heard a lot of that inflammatory conversations. Some kids accepted us, some a lot of them didn't. It was the same way at church. We were always referred to as the poor immigrants. Even after we had established, my dad had established himself in a job, my mother was working for other people cleaning houses and things like that to pay off the bills. And uh, I might make a comment in that area. My dad only lived 18 years before he died in this country, and in that 18 years' time, he amassed a house fully paid for, two and a half homes that were converted over to apartment houses. He knew that he was short-lived, and that's why he got all his stuff established so my mother would have an income if he was to pass away. He passed away when he was 59, and um that was 18 years after we came to this country, and um my mother survived very well with the apartment houses, but they were all paid for. Hence work, pay, you know, be be frugal. He was very fru frugal, took on extra jobs, things like that to make things happen.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

Sure. Something you said I think really kind of resonates, especially with like moms with children and they send them off to school, and and knowing that your child gets there, you that you send them in order to get an education, and knowing that they're receiving I mean cruelty. I I think we could use that that phrase there. And how did how did you handle that? How did your mom what what what took place when you would come home and say this is what they're saying to me?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Well, my mom confronted the principal at one time, and funny she was German ancestry herself, Mrs. Minger. And and uh she says, Well, kids will be kids, that's all she said, and uh my brother, my older brother got in a pro in a real uh dilemma, you might call it, with with a young black girl who kept calling him a Nazi and all this kind of stuff, and uh and uh he called her a bad black name, and they tried to prosecute him, kick him out of school. Didn't do anything to the black girl for calling him a Nazi, and and and worse than that.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

So is socially accepted and not socially accepted at that time, for sure, and to tell some that a Nazi is something that would totally have been accepted for anybody who is obviously of German descent. So maybe what would you say to maybe someone who has children that struggle in that scenario? What would you give and what kind of advice would you give to the people?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

To ignore it, you know. That I use the old saying that sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me, and you just need to overcome and be uh assured of yourself that you are who you want to be. And uh we were going to church all the time, and just look at Jesus. Look, look to the Lord for consolation or consolement that um they don't really know what they're saying. Forgive them for they don't know what they're saying. Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

I've had experiences and I kind of arcing the conversation towards our treatment of the Gare, you know, the stranger, the the the pilgrim. I think after 9-11, we we were in higher education and and and in talking to young people, I think after 9-11, which was our December 7th, 1941, right? Uh even Islamic people, there was uh uh a real groundswell of of hatred, and I would ask these questions about exposing racism kind of in some of my classes. And it was always Islamic people, Islamic people. And and so I I tested myself, you know, in the grocery store or um in in a public place, and I would see the hijab clad woman with with three children in the produce section of the grocery store, and I just kind of watched people, you know, just kind of watched, is anyone gonna speak to her? Is anyone going to show uh any American kindness? You know, this is a Christian nation, and I discovered that that that mom is not going to be treated well, and I've tried to make a point to to smile, to, to, to give a greeting, like to share the love of Christ, because if we want to spiritualize it in Ephesians chapter 2, Paul says we were strangers, we we were strangers, aliens, uh strangers from the covenants of promise as Gentiles, having no hope without God in this world. And it was the love of Jesus Christ that reached out to us and invited us into this wonderful family. So let's go back. I want to maybe drill into how did your parents feel about our country? Was there a deep gratitude for the opportunities your your father had here in the States?

SPEAKER_01 16:15

Oh, yeah. They, you know, I a lot of people would ask my dad, would you want to go back to Germany now that it's peaceful over there? He says, No, this is so much better. They actually have freedom here, even those countries today, you know, have a very socialist background, or or may have got, you know, they they aren't any better off today than they were before Hitler, really. You get right down to it. I still have a lot of relatives over there, and we communicate a lot, and um they are a lot like us. In fact, they're speaking more and more English mixed in with their German. And uh I think that my parents fell in love with this country, especially the church. They they they helped build the brand new Baptist Church in Lansing Colonial Village Baptist Church, was built in 1954. I was baptized there in 1956, 10 years old. And um that was our home. That was now our home. And my dad had a hard time at first because he didn't catch the language as quickly as my mother did. My mother learned it very well. She learned how to drive cars very well. We didn't own a car until 57, and um my dad was used to driving horses.

SPEAKER_03 17:38

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

You know, giddy up, go past the corner and then turn. And uh going in a car, he'd go past the corner and always turn left. Did the big S turn. And uh if he looked off into the field, pretty soon the car was going off into the field. Amazing. Because the horses would keep going straight. Amazing. They knew the street. He did look at the field. So anyway, that was uh my dad had a harder time of it, but he did pick it up, and it was took him a while, but he did catch on eventually. I would say maybe the last eight years of his life in this country, he was acclimated.

SPEAKER_03 18:25

What did you learn from your dad?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Oh how to work, work ethic. If you if you start something, you finish it, you put everything into it to make sure it's the best that you can do. And uh not be lazy, save money. Um the rest will just come to you, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:50

So you uh you graduate in Lansing, I assume, high school?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah. Lansing Eastern. And then where did you go? Went to community college for three years, got a uh uh three-year degree in industrial management. They put me on management at GM, and uh I kept on going to school. I went, I got drafted and went to Vietnam for two years. And then I got Oh, by the way. Lucked out of that, and um then after I went out, I used my uh education benefits from the military, and I continued my education and got elect I made journeyman electrician, then a state licensed electrician, then a master electrician license. By 75 I was a master electrician. In the meantime, I was taking engineering classes to get up into engineering and work for plant engineering until 1983. I was gonna say 82. I was also teaching electronics and computer technology in uh 79, 80, and 81. And then I went into vehicle engineering after I got a mechanical engineering degree. Uh I had an electrical engineering degree, and I went and got a uh MBA at uh in in North Northwood. It used to be called Institute, it's now it's now it's Northwood University in Midland, Michigan. And I got those through GM. Amazing. They paid for all of that stuff. How long were you with GM? 37 years. And I hired in I was 18. I retired when I was 55.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

Amazing. Yeah. Wow. And then what happened after retirement?

SPEAKER_01 20:35

I moved to Florida. Well, actually, I had some other interruptions in the meantime. Um in 1995, after I graduated at Midland, my mother was at the Midland University, and it was uh the I think it was May 15, something like that, was the graduation ceremony. And they announced my name and said he's graduated MBA with a sumacum lousy. My mother looked at my sister, said, What's sumacum lousy mean?

SPEAKER_03 21:08

Sumakum Lausey.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

She said, No, no, sumacam laudi. She said it's just one under valedictorium. And uh my mother cried. And she died in two weeks after that.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

She went in for open heart surgery uh near the end of May, I think it was May May 20, I don't remember the exact day. But she died, we buried her, and uh my wife had a heart attack in 1999 and went in for an open heart surgery bypass in the summer, late summer, I think it was September, maybe late October uh August, she had bypass surgery, and almost six months later, well, not six months, about four months. Months later on Martin Luther King Day, I went in for a triple bypass. Doctor said it was brought on by the stress of my wife almost dying. And I had a triple bypass in 2000, the 18th of January. And uh I thought that maybe uh God was punishing me. You know, I gave a testimony back at the church uh a couple years ago, a lengthy one. The pastor wanted us to get up in front. And uh I made the comment that when we moved from Lansing, I got transferred from Lansing to the tech center when I went into vehicle engineering, which is in Warren, Michigan, and I refused to live down in Detroit. I lived 35 miles north on I-75 and trucked in that distance every day. And uh we didn't go to church much because we couldn't find a church in Oakland County that suited us. They were not, in our opinion, biblically taught, biblically preached churches, and uh because of that we didn't go to church, and um I think that maybe the Lord was telling me something, and I was slow in learning. You know, are we learning yet? No. So a year later, after my wife had the open heart, or after I had the open heart surgery, we were gonna we knew we were gonna retire in fifty at when I was 55, and um we came down to Florida, rented some property over by Melbourne, and uh it was on a golf course. We rented a nice condo. I put the money down, and my wife started having pains in her chest. She says, I gotta get back to Michigan to my doctor so I can see what's going on. So we did. They did a body scan on her and found that she had a six-centimeter lump in her chest, in her in her lungs, right in the middle. And she had some in her ankle and some in her lower spine. The doctor gave her 16 to 20 weeks to live. And uh I couldn't believe it, and she couldn't believe it, and so we said we gotta do whatever we can do. And she went through all of the therapies and uh you name it. Some of those treatments almost killed her by themselves. And she ended up dying February 4th in 2004. Excuse me, 2002. Well, I'd already rented all this stuff down there in Florida. So I paid the first month's rent, the last month's rent, and a one-month deposit. So I told my brother, who lived in Ovido at that time, and he said he'd go down there and talk to the manager, and the manager didn't want to refund the money. He refunded everything but the deposit, one month's deposit. He kept that. So I got some of my money back. Then I said, Well, to myself, what am I gonna do now? I'm gonna follow through and move to Florida. Because I hate Michigan winners. I used to love them when I was younger, but I was getting to the age now where I didn't like them. And my brother was still in Ovito, he's a builder, he was building a big Marriott hotel up by the uh uh Daytona 500 Speedway. And um he says, Well, come on down here, maybe we can build a couple houses. He says, uh he knows I like to build stuff. And we did. We built a house in Christmas, if you know where Christmas, Florida is.

SPEAKER_04 25:49

I do.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Built one there. We built one in uh Rocket City, which a lot of people don't know where that is. That's really not the name of it. It's um something else. It's on the road that goes from Christmas to um Coco Beach. Titusville? No, it's not that far. It's it's it's an area out there that's actually below the water table. When we had Hurricane Charlie come through here, that place they keep it pumped out with um portable pump systems, and they all quit. I don't know why they quit, but they quit, and the house we were building in the process had a foot of water in it, and we just finished putting the baseboards in. So we had to peel the drywall back up, all the baseboards out, and start over again. But we sold that house and made a nice profit anyway. And then I built a house in um in Eustace, right up on the north shore of Eustace, up on a hill. And uh, I mean, literally a hill. Florida doesn't have many hills, but that's a hilly area. Mount Dora. Sure. I climbed Mount Dora. Very expensive. You have the t-shirt. So anyway, that's that's what I did after I left Oldsmobile or General Motors at that time. I was a GM employee, no longer tied to any one nameplate. In the in the business, I was a manufacturing engineer. I developed manufacturing systems to put parts together to make an assembly, like a door or a hood, or a deck led or a side frame. Um, that was my job, was the mechanical side of it. That's where the electrical experience and the mechanical and all that other stuff came in. Project manager, when I made when I made project engineer, which was the top of the engineering scale, then I managed a whole project. And all of the design houses and things, build shops. That was all under my control at that time.

SPEAKER_03 27:54

So I'm tracking your story. So you're born in a refugee camp. Yep. Uh your mother is on uh um wagon trail as God turns them to the north. Your dad is there, grace. God allows your family to immigrate here. He sees you through really lean days. It's grace. You come to Christ, uh, your dad builds a life here, uh, your mom lived to be in her 80s, I think.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

Oh 77.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

77. But we're seeing grace. Uh God, even if you said God was punishing me, you know, the Bible uses the word chastisement. And it's it's the proof that we are his sons, whom the Lord loveth, he scourgeth. Uh he disciplines every son that belongs to him. But it's just a God's reminder of grace to you, that he's still there, he wants your attention. So um I know this part of the story, but our listeners don't know this part of the story yet. So you're in Eustace, you're in Central Florida, and God has another gift of grace for you. Um I think her name's Judy, but maybe I'll let you tell that story. So, how how did you meet Judy and how did God's grace just come into your life, life once again?

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Well, I went uh nine years not even thinking about another woman. You know, my wife was my life. And um I couldn't see dating at that time or anything, so it was like nine years. And finally I was I was going to First Baptist Church in Mount Dora and uh uh had a I guess he'd be the associate pastor. Pastor Jameson is the head the pastor of the church, and then um guy by the name of Boone. He was the associate pastor, he discipled me, so to speak, and uh got me involved in teaching all the different classes as a vacation replacement. Or if a if an instructor called in sick, he'd say, Well, this is what he was gonna, this is the lesson plan that he was gonna use today. Can you teach that class? I'd go teach it, and it could be any age group. And um I did that for about two years, and I thought, well, this is working out pretty good. I ought to get back in the swing of things and see if I can find a woman that would put up with me for the rest of my life, you know, because it's a fact that married couples live live longer. Sure. If they're compatible, that is, if they're not, if they're struggling all the time, no, that's not a true statement. But I decided to check it out, and of course, all this nine-year period, people are look at her. Helping God, right? Look at her. Even my sister is the woman by the name. Well, I probably shouldn't use names. It's a friend of hers that she really pushed, and it didn't work out. No, I wasn't ready. And so anyway, I tried dating some of the people from the church. They had a singles group. I joined the singles group. It was okay, but I just didn't wasn't up to it, didn't feel like it. Wasn't ready. God hadn't pushed me there. And I waited a little bit longer in about 2012. See, I moved here in 2002, and in 2012, I decided to, I seen an advertisement on TV, Christian Mingle. Well, it's got the word Christian in it. We know that that always doesn't mean what we think it should mean. Okay, I'll try it. I took one of their free three-month things. I had like 35 women respond. Different women that, you know, you put your whole thing out there, you put your your innermost thoughts out there.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

Can you describe like that entry in like 10 words? Like what was your what was your profile?

SPEAKER_01 32:24

My profile?

SPEAKER_03 32:26

It was I Christian single, ready to be single.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Can't be a drinker, can't be a smoker, uh, had to be a church attendee, um, not afraid to pray at at meals when you're out in public, those kind of things. I had a lot of that kind of stuff in there. And I got, like I say, 35 hits. And I actually went on dates. I'd meet them somewhere in a restaurant, and the the structure they had on Christian Mingle is the idea was you didn't know their name, their real name, and their address until you were ready to, you both agreed to meet somewhere. And you would meet and you'd have separate checks so that nobody was obligated to anybody. And you'd talk, and if you wanted to meet again, then you would get back on Christian Mingle and make the date. And I'd like I say I went through about 34 of them and didn't find a in uh any of them that I'd want to do again until I met Judy. And um we met at a um uh Olive Garden in O'Coe, Florida, if you know where O'Coe is. And um it was a lunchtime meal, and we were there for four and a half hours. Amazing. So we discussed everything just about, and uh, you know, the fact that her dad was a pastor and her grandfather on both sides were pastors. I thought this was the woman, you know. She knew the Bible frontwards and backwards, better than I did, actually. And uh so we got married and it was a very nice wedding. I invited Fred Boone, the associate pastor that got me involved in teaching, and uh went from there. And how long have you been married? Since 2013, June of 2013, June 29th, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Well, Judy's a great lady and has encouraged me. She'll often come up to me and say, you know, when my dad was pastoring and give me some good advice, and I always appreciate that. So, do you have a question?

SPEAKER_02 34:38

I I do have a question. Um, kind of at the beginning when you were sharing coming over and some of your experiences, another thing that you had mentioned was that maybe some unsavory, I guess if I could use that word, um, reception for even the people at the church. So maybe I I think most of our listeners probably are Christians. So maybe what what would be something you would encourage Christians or even the church itself as a whole? How should we receive immigrants? What what is our duty as Christians?

SPEAKER_01 35:07

Don't remind them that they're immigrants. You know, they were forever calling us the immigrants. Oh, the immigrants, the Powell family, could they come up here and say this or do this? And then we got blamed for a lot of stuff, too, that happened in the church, and even though we weren't involved. Us kids, me and me and my older brother. We were considered rowdy, and we weren't rowdy. Uh not in my opinion, anyway. My my cousin Edmund, yeah, Edwin Yaps, he was more rowdy than I was, and he was he was here, he was born here, but he was an only child. Yeah, you know how that works. Sure. So provide them a sense of belonging.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

Yeah, maybe not not so much of the distinction.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Yep. And another thing would be they were forever taking um in, they were taking in old clothing and things like that. Even after we were completely economically set, our family was. My brother, he started a paper route for the Detroit Free Press, and he made his own money to buy his own clothes. I mowed lawns and stuff like that. In the winter time, I shoveled snow to buy buy my own clothes. I bought my own clothes. My parents didn't have to dig deep. He didn't have a very good job. My dad was a press operator at Ozmobile, and uh he didn't make much money, so we helped out the best we could. And I guess we didn't like the fact that they'd hand my mom a box of old clothes. I mean, they weren't as good as they you get at Goodwill. They weren't that good. They were just old clothes. You know what my mom did with them? She took and cut cut them in strips like this and sewed them together and rolled them up in a ball. And we had a place where they could rent looms, and she made those big, those carpets. Those carpets that have the made out of the old clothes. Amazing. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

So maybe what I'm hearing too is is maybe not so much of the distinction and then not just making assumptions that oh you're poor and needy.

SPEAKER_04 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:22

I mean maybe, maybe they are, maybe they're not, but in your case, you were not at that time in your life, so maybe careful of our assumptions that we're making regarding them.

SPEAKER_03 37:32

I want to go into a hypothetical world. So your family was Mennonite.

SPEAKER_01 37:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 37:37

Um we didn't really drill down into the fact that you became a Marine, correct? You were in the army, Navy. I was a CB. He was a Seabe. My apologies. But you served in the military. So the Mennonites obviously have a pacifist theology. Some that's not really the point of my question. The point of my question is you came as Christian, but supposing your family came, not understanding the gospel, and had received a really cold reception, that would no doubt have had uh a gospel impact, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Yes, it would have. But but it wasn't that way. My parents were very forgiving. Yeah, they would just forgive people mentally. They may not say it to them, the ones that were rude to them because they were immigrants or pushed away ahead of you in a in a line or something like that. They stole from them all over the place. In the refugee camp, my parents used, my mother, when she packed up to leave, they she had pictures and stuff of the family. I have no remembrance of her side of the family at all. Because it was all stolen from her. She had a real nice Leica camera that they probably saved up for several years to just to buy that camera. And uh the refugee camp was a really a humbling experience for anybody because people thievery was just rampant in those places. Amazing. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Well, at the end of this episode, we're going to play uh with a few pictures. I think it's an eight-minute-long um interview your your mother did regarding her experience. And I it's just it's super emotional. It really takes us into the story that you've painted. Um and I'll I'll kind of have a closing word in just a moment, but maybe just express your appreciation for our country. And I know Maurice kind of asked you to kind of tap into that. What are we supposed to do with this? Any any last thoughts you have about how we can be an encouragement to to the stranger?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

Well, I think that um you know I I I can do nothing more than thank this country for what they've done. And because I went in the military, I got a lot of benefits. I use those benefits. I use them to further my education, I use them to to keep me lifted up financially as well as spiritually. The church has lifted me up spiritually, but to say what I really can't get into the American mindset when it comes to why they are this way against immigrants, because almost everybody in this country is either an immigrant or a relative of an immigrant. There's very few people that aren't. It have to be Indian or you know, uh south of the border. When I lived in California, well, back in the 60s, California was 45% Spanish.

SPEAKER_03 40:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

So and it belonged to Spain at one time. Before that, it belonged to the Indians. So I I don't know how to express what the Americans should do. You can't just go out there and hug them and say, well, we'll give you everything. We can't do that either, because if you don't work for what you are entitled, you don't work for your entitlements. You work to make money, to live, to prosper, to help other people. And that's what I try to do. I try to help other people that need help.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

Yeah. And it's Yeah, you are, I just publicly praise you, but you you you are the heart of benevolence here, and I know I've told you that privately. You have a real heart for people, and and I know it it comes from no doubt your relationship with God, but I think your experience informs you that we are to respond with grace and and dignity to the needs of others. There's a great book I want to um encourage. It's called The Bible and the Ballot. It was written by Trimper Longman, and I want you to read the chapter on immigration because he has a lot of biblical insight, Old Testament insight into who the Gare is, how they should be treated, what do we do about this immigration problem? Frankly, ice is in the news every day now, um, and now we have militant. Um it's interesting. Um the anti-fascist in our country tend to be the the biggest fascist in in our country. But what Longman basically says um is the Bible doesn't say that national sovereignty is a bad thing. Um I think if we look at Genesis 11, even all the way through the scriptures, uh, it is God that creates national boundaries, and we're not saying those are bad things. We're also not saying that that borders are bad things. I mean, I I'm going to heaven because of Jesus. There are gates in the city. I mean, I think that may be a silly illustration, but the Bible's not saying that any of these are bad, but we need some wisdom and to carry not just the political side of this, we need to bring the spiritual side into this. Ultimately, the nations of the world have come to us. The mission field has come to us. And we can bemoan that, we can criticize that, we can chafe against that, or we can see these people as connections. They're cheap mission trips. I mean, we can go, uh we had a missionary to Ukraine that was here at Calvary a few weeks ago and gave a word about the Ukrainian situation. We have people that live within 10 miles of our church that are directly impacted by footage he showed here in our church. Like there's connections that we can make for the gospel's sake all around the world. I wanted this story told because I the next time you see the immigrant, I don't want you to think about the front page of the New York Times or what CNN or Fox News are talking about. I want you to hear when you see the immigrant, I want you to think of Sig's story and think to yourself look at what God did. With a family that was brought into our country from a war-torn situation and how God can bring beauty out of ashes out of very difficult situations. Love people with the love of Christ. Um this is a supposedly a Christian nation, and I think we're struggling to be Christian in our in our treatment of not just the immigrant, but frankly, we're having a hard time being Christian with one another. So I normally give my wife the last word, but this is your show today, so I'm gonna I'm gonna give you the last word and then we'll then we're gonna hear that footage from your mom.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

I really don't know what to say as the last word. I mean uh just thank god for I wasn't born here. I do everything I can to make other people grateful for you and thank you for sending time with us today.

SPEAKER_03 45:08

Your mom's name from Emma.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

And the interview comes from the Church of the Nazarene on Holmes Avenue, or excuse me, Holmes Road, Lancing Michigan, and they had a special program going on about suffering. What people went through and what they what they saw through their suffering. That's what this interview to her is all about. It's actually a testimony of her leaving Germany at the end.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Well, let's hear from Mrs. Powell and we'll see you next time on Cultural Connections.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

We could hear the bombs exploding on around us in the distance. As we prepared to leave our home, we knew that once we left, we would never see our farm in East Germany again. It is a day I will never forget. In the morning, the local authorities had come to take my husband away to the German army. As Mennonites, we didn't believe in fighting and killing, and up to this point my husband had escaped being drafted. Now he didn't have a choice. It was either go along with them or be killed. I had no idea where they were taking him or when I would see him again. Then later that night there came a knock on our door. We were told to pack up what we could and be ready to leave the next morning at dawn. I was terrified. I was 26 years old, with two small children, a five-year-old girl and a 19-month-old baby boy. What were we going to do? It was winter and the temperature was below zero. I prayed to God for strength and wisdom. My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law were living with us at the time. My mother-in-law was too sick to help, so it was up to my sister-in-law and me to gather together what we could for the journey ahead of us. There was no way for me to get word to my husband about what was happening to us. We packed two wagons, one with food for the horses, and the other one covered the wagon with things for us that we needed, not knowing that we would have to live out of this wagon for five months. This was all done during the night, in the dark, so the Russian bombers flying overhead couldn't detect any lights. By the time it was dawn, the fighting was so close that the windows and doors rattled from the gunfire. When it came time for us to go, I thought I wouldn't be able to leave everything behind. But God gave me strength to go. The thought came to me that these earthly goods didn't mean anything, that in trying to hold on to them we would lose our lives. I felt the certainty that God would provide for us, and in that moment I had peace in my heart like I never had before. We joined the other people in our village to form our wagon train, where the town commissioner was appointed our leader. Heading west, we had traveled about 20 kilometers when we came to a river, but we couldn't cross it because the bridge had already been destroyed. So we had to change directions and go north. By doing so, we came into an area where the armies were fighting, bullets and bombs were flying all around us, but no one was hit. After three days of traveling, we finally came to a village. The fighting was going strong. The wagon train leader ordered us to hide our wagons close to the buildings because the village was under attack from the air. Some of the people traveling with us didn't find a place fast enough, were killed. We were frightened and exhausted. My children were hungry and crying. The baby was wet. I couldn't change him in the cold freezing wagon. I felt despair. I prayed, Oh God, what will happen to us? I thought there was no way out. And as I sat there crying in the wagon, a woman came out of her house near where we were hidden. She came right up to me and asked me to bring my baby and come into the house. At first I was afraid, but because it was a chance for me to change my baby son into dry clothes, I went with her. My daughter stayed behind me, behind with my mother-in-law. I followed the woman into the house. She went to a closed door and opened it. There stood my husband. Unknown to me, the military unit that my husband had been assigned to was defeated within the first 24 hours that he had been with them. So he found a chance to escape and started looking for us. I can't describe to you the feelings that I had. I knew in my heart that this could not have happened by chance. Only God could have led him to where we were found. We were by no means out of danger yet. The war was raging behind and in front of us. There was danger all around us. We came to a river that was frozen with no bridge in sight. We had no choice but to cross there because the fighting behind us was coming steadily closer. My husband went to examine the ice and decided that we should wait until morning to cross. That night we couldn't rest at all. We had to guard our few belongings, including the horses and wagons, because there were so many thieves going east from Western Germany, they took everything they could get their hands on. When morning came, we were the first in line with the rest of the wagons to cross the river. With the light of day we could see that about ten other wagons had tried to cross the night before and didn't succeed. I felt as if we were going into a grave. Everyone was quiet. I thought in my heart that at least we would all be together to meet our God if we drown. But God's plan was different. Once again, he led us safely across. Even though we had many more frightening experiences to face, we were together as a family, and through all the dangers we had yet to encounter, God made a way for us to escape.