Never Alone: Amazing Stories of One Man and His God

By Wolfgang Jenke

This book features amazing and true stories of life experiences of one man and his God.
Wolfgang Jenke tells of his early years behind the Iron Curtain, his plan to escape from East Germany, how he got caught, put in prison, and was eventually bought free by the West.
He traces his life from East to West Germany then Canada, England, and finally Australia. In his life, there have been many shocking and many amazing experiences, but you will be able to see that in every situation, we are never alone. For everything that happens, there is a purpose. Whether it will be for good or bad depends on our choices.
This book is about the extraordinary life of an ordinary man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Apr 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503504714

Wolfgang Jenke

The author, Wolfgang Jenke, is an ordinary man with an extraordinary life. In this book he shares his life journey from East Germany to West Germany then to Canada, England, and finally Australia. These experiences of faith and courage are given in order to encourage you in your time of trial and to let you know that you are never alone. May God help you to see your tribulation not as a reason to complain but as an opportunity to get to know God better.

Book preview

Copyright © 2015 by Wolfgang Jenke.

ISBN:      Softcover        978-1-5035-0470-7

                eBook             978-1-5035-0471-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 04/17/2015

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

708225

CONTENTS

Preface

1   It’s Another Boy

2   The Beginning of My School Years

3   An Unexpected Calling

4   Next to the Autobahn

5   Leaving School and Learning a Trade

6   Taking Matters into My Own Hands

7   Imprisonment in East Germany

8   The Amnesty

9   My Day of Deliverance

10   Studying in Canada

11   The God Who Multiplies

12   Getting Married in England

13   The Winter of Discontent

14   Tragic News

15   Thank You, But No, Thank You

16   God Told Me the Price

17   The T-Junction

18   Migration to Australia

19   When My Heart Broke

20   Selling an Unfinished House

21   Innumerable Locusts

22   Custody over My Children

23   The Burglary

24   When My House Fell off the Truck

25   The Ticks

26   My First Mission Trip

27   God Built My Business

28   The Ute

29   God Chose My Wife

30   A Call to Ministry

31   Finishing with a Bang

32   Diagnosed as Type 2 Diabetic

33   You Must Be a Missionary

Reflection

Overview

This book features amazing and true stories of life experiences of one man and his God.

Wolfgang Jenke tells of his early years behind the Iron Curtain, his plan to escape from East Germany, how he got caught, put in prison, and was eventually bought free by the West.

He traces his life from East to West Germany then Canada, England, and finally Australia. In his life, there have been many shocking and many amazing experiences, but you will be able to see that in every situation, we are never alone. For everything that happens, there is a purpose. Whether it will be for good or bad depends on our choices.

This book is about the extraordinary life of an ordinary man.

Acknowledgements

I want to give my unreserved and wholehearted thanks to my honey, Lyn Joy, my helpmate and companion whom God has given to me. Life is so much better with her. I thank her for her patience, while I am busy writing, as well as her undying commitment to me and my calling.

And I want to thank God, most of all, who has been with me through thick and thin, who gave me the amazing experiences which I share, and who gives me my every heartbeat.

Preface

Dear Reader,

In the ongoing chapters, I am opening my heart to tell you about experiences that have shaped my life. Many of them were pleasant and some were heartbreaking. However, as I sit here and recount them, I am struck with the realization that this book is not about me, but about Him. I am an ordinary man who believes in an extraordinary God. He has done and is doing amazing things, which I cannot explain in any other way than to give all the credit to Him. God’s everyday care for all His creatures is so all inclusive that we are indeed never alone.

I am very much aware that my values and convictions are different from yours, yet our struggles are often similar. The experiences I share I trust will give you courage and hope for your own difficulties.

It is impossible to erase impressions that I received throughout my childhood, and I have grown to appreciate all that has happened to me.

I am very thankful for my parents, my siblings, the poverty we lived through, the training I received in life as well as my value system, which has been imprinted on my mind.

It is undeniable that life back in East Germany was hard, yet we felt relatively safe.

The one area in my life that has had the greatest influence on me throughout my years has been and still is my faith in God.

Since my early childhood, I have been learning about the existence of God. One of the greatest benefits I received during my Communist education in East Germany was the ability to learn to reason from cause to effect. That in itself has served me well as I struggled at times to make sense of challenging situations. We have to take life as it comes, but we can greatly influence our future by the decisions we make.

Yes, in East Germany, as everywhere else, we had to make choices. Our parents were our role models. However, in no way did my parents use any force or coercion on any of their children to adopt their beliefs. We were entirely free to choose what we wanted to believe.

The reasons most of their six children adopted their philosophy in life was because the evidence is so overwhelming. I cannot explain the outcomes of many of my trials in life in any other way than to acknowledge the leading of God. Thus the title Never Alone. In my mind, God is absolutely real; He cares, and He has a plan for each of us. I trust that you will agree with me by the time you finish reading this book.

1

It’s Another Boy

At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into East and West. The Russians had come from the east and occupied what came to be known as East Germany while the Allies (America, France, and England) came from the West and occupied West Germany.

My dad was only a young man when he had been assigned to fight on the Eastern Front and, when the war finished, became a prisoner of war for five years in Russia.

Through God’s protection, however, he was able to return to Germany some time during 1949.

My mum had finished her nursing degree and was working in a hospital in Berlin. During the war years, she lived at home and met a handsome young man. They started a family; unfortunately though, he got very ill and died.

Foto%20Nr%201.jpg

My mum and dad when they got married

That left my mum a single parent. When my dad returned from Russia, he met my mum, proposed to her, and soon after they got married.

So it is understandable, having lost many years to the war, that children followed in quick succession. They settled in Liegau-Augustusbad in the Shire of Dresden.

Foto%20Nr%202.jpg

My parents with us five children

In October 1950, when my oldest brother, Juergen, was six years old, my sister was born.

My brother Stefan followed in January 1952. By March 1953, my mum gave birth again to me. I was closely followed by my younger brother Volker, who came into the world in June 1954.

You can understand that my mum had her hands full. Accordingly, when I arrived, she was too occupied with the older three. She was glad that I turned out to be a quiet baby and needed little attention.

For the first two years, she would only feed me, bathe me, and put me back to sleep. I would be so quiet that our landlord would sometimes ask my mum whether I was all right because they never heard me.

When my younger brother Volker was born, I was still quiet, and he got the attention that I should have had. According to my mum, I was already 2 years old when she finally had more time for me. Not surprisingly, then, I never learned to crawl but walked straight away. Our youngest sister, Kristina, was born in December 1958, and thus the Jenke family was complete.

Foto%20Nr%203.jpg

I am learning to walk

Life in East Germany was simple. My dad was a hard worker. He was tiling and building fireplaces and worked in his own business. The government tried desperately to discourage small business through high taxes and difficulties in employing others, but dad worked hard and would not give up his business.

Basic foods were freely available, but I remember that butter, meat, and imported fruits were rationed.

Many children meant much work for Mum, and we didn’t mind that each had a list of jobs to do to help her with the housework. Clothes were handed down from older to younger siblings, as were shoes and some toys.

My parents didn’t own their own home but lived and worked to pay the rent. However, we did have a garden property where we grew vegetables and fruit trees and where we had geese and even a sheep.

Because my dad had his own business, we were amongst the few families in the village who had a car.