The Role of Fate in Genealogy

I have been able to find quite a bit of information in the last couple of weeks.  I received birth, marriage and death certificates ordered from England on quite a few members of my family.  We had concrete birth dates, concrete marriage dates, concrete death dates, at last.  My father stared at each one of them, touched them, smiled at them.  The most moving certificate form him was his father's birth certificate.  "I have people, " he said.  More certificates were ordered, and now we sit and wait again.  Every night I plow through hundreds of hints on Ancestry, multiplying my family tree beyond belief.  There are still questions, of course.  What happened to my grandfather's sister that drops out of records in 1911?  What happened to his brother that also drops out of the records?  Where did his mother go?  We can't find her death date or location.

And then fate stepped in.  I'm not usually a huge believer in fate, but today I have seen it in action.  At the beginning of January I posted to the Ancestry message boards looking for family members in England.  Today, I received a message on Ancestry from a woman in England who had read the thread.  There are 1700 Brown threads in that message boards, and she happened to come across mine.  Her grandmother was my grandfather's sister!  She was writing on behalf of her mother.  She stated her mother did not know my grandfather was a British Home Child.  She also stated her grandmother never knew what happened to her brother.  It breaks my heart to know his family never knew where he went or how he fared.  I am, however, overwhelmed with emotion and excitement.  I truly believe that fate has stepped in and will bring our family together.