The Immigrant and the Long Road Home

The Immigrant Christian Hofmann was a teenager who had outstanding abilities in sports and a mental drive to match them all. The future for him in his native German looks more than promising. At a time when his name began often to appear in newspaper headlines throughout the country, his family obtained Canadian immigrant status, a privilege for which the family had long hoped. Once in the country's area where their sponsor family stipulated they needed to settle, he found no opportunity to join a soccer team, nor did a gymnastics club exist where his outstanding skills could be honed to the professional level. Only the local people's love for hockey, which soon captivated Christian, kept the teen from making good his thoughts of fleeing to his homeland. He had also not anticipated to receive the many expressions and physical confrontations of hate from both adults and young people, not for what he said or did, but for where he had been born. With the passing of time expressions of hate grew fewer, but time did not erase them all. Christian made friends quickly and near the end of high school he met Charity, the love of his life and the woman with whom he would share his future. His faith, wisdom, hard work, willingness to drop activities he loved, and his attitude not to give up, led him to become one of the leading specialists in the field of brain and heart diseases and surgery. The spreading of his expertise led him to reconnect with some of the tormentors of his youth who looked to him to help them overcome illness thought incurable at the time. At the end of a day filled with difficult hours, Christian reviewed his life, and all God had given him. In the stillness of the night he realized he had come home. He had come to love Canada as much as he had once loved the country of his forefathers.