A journey made in heaven

I was green with envy when Bro. Albert Pecson, one of the founders of the St. Ignatius community here in Jeddah, emailed the group that he was already in Sweden. I have dreamed of settling my family in Sweden, Norway or Switzerland but I know how difficult it is to migrate to any of these countries. So I poked my nose into their journey.
"Finally, I arrived in Sweden on April 2. It was 2 degrees and chilly cold," he said in his email to the St. Ignatius community, to which my family also belongs. "Sis. Luz and the three kids will follow in two to three months and with God's blessings this will be our last place of destination."
The family's journey to Sweden is a story of faith. Bro. Albert, Sis. Luz and their three kids stayed for quite sometime in Jeddah. The couple, known for their piety, opened their home for prayer meetings and related activities when the community, led by Bro. Ahjid Sayas, was being formed in 2003.
Bro. Albert, a civil engineer, was then working with the company Saudi ABV. In one of our prayer meetings, he surprised us with an announcement that they were moving to Riyadh because he was hired by the telecommunication company Ericsson with better pay and benefits.
The announcement was followed by words of praise and thanksgiving to the Lord for the blessings. His job at Ericsson, which had a branch office at the same building where he worked, was given to him on a silver platter, so to speak.
"I applied at Ericsson by chance. Ericsson was renting an office space at the building of Saudi ABV. When a co-worker told me that there was an opening at Ericsson, I went there at once to apply. The following day, I was asked to go to Riyadh for an interview and I was immediately hired."
In Riyadh, he joined another Catholic community but never lost contact with the St. Ignatius group and, in one or two occasions, even attended the group's foundation anniversary.
A few years later, he emailed the group that they were moving to Oman, and again never failed to mention his gratitude to the Almighty. But last year, he was retrenched from his job, at a time when their son JP had an eyelid operation. As Christians who practice their faith, the couple kept still but prayed hard for divine succor.
"What happened was that in November 2010, I was included in the redundancy program of Ericsson-Oman. On that day, JP was operated on his lower eyelid. It was really a bad day for us. But I never failed to ask our Lord for intervention. We prayed and asked for guidance," he said in an email to me.
That night after he was informed of his retrenchment, he called up his previous boss who had been transferred to the Ericsson's headquarters in Sweden. "Without much ado, he told me that he would find a way for me to move to Sweden. The rest was history," he recalled.
The family's journey to Sweden seemed to have been tailor-made in heaven because, although the couple have had plans to migrate to a Western country, Sweden was never part of the equation.
"Our plan was to settle in any country that could give us a future, but we never thought of Sweden. It was either USA, Canada or New Zealand," he said in response to one of the questions I sent right after he emailed the St. Ignatius group when he arrived in Sweden.
Bro. Albert has started to look forward to the day when the family becomes a permanent resident which he hopes would come after five years of continuous stay.