My Memories Growing Up Amish Elam Peachey

Guide me on the bridge of Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren. God bless you all this morning. I'm happy to share my testimony with you. I want to be clear up front that I'm free from bitterness towards anyone from the past, so I just want to have that up front. Anything I share, it's not out of bitterness; it's just out of my life story, my testimony.

I've said before that if I wouldn't have found Christ, I'd probably be in some psych ward somewhere with all the stress, sin, shame, and things that I faced during my growing up years. A lot of insecurities. But I thank the Lord for His grace.

And I want to share these things for the glory of God, and I hope it could be a help to someone out there. Now, I need to try to see if I can get my slides showing here. Yeah, for myself, I have a lot of good, pleasant childhood memories, but during my teenage years, there were some real difficulties. Yeah, and I hope it can be a help to someone, whether you're some Amish boy, Amish girl, or even some lonely person out in some big bad city in the United States somewhere. We're all part of the human family. We're of one blood. And even though we're across this globe, we have many different backgrounds, many different experiences, but there are things that are similar and things—the idea of difficulties.

None of us are immune to the difficulties, and we live in a very broken world. And yeah, there's a lot of brokenness. And for myself, growing up, I thought that my difficulties were probably a bit unique, but the older I get, the more I realize the brokenness and the terrible things people face in life. I realize, well, my growing up probably wasn't that bad, really.

So I go to the next slide there. That's my family. We live in the Shippensburg, Pennsylvania area. My wife's name is Salom. I call her Salom. A lot of Amish call her Saloma, and the Latino people call her Salome, but she's my wife, so I call her Salom.

My wife's maiden name is Byler. Her dad is Corey Byler, grew up in Bellville, Pennsylvania, and he actually lives with us. And my mother-in-law's maiden name is Myers. She grew up in St. Thomas to Chambersburg area. She grew up River Brother.

Now, a little introduction about my dad. He grew up in Bellville. This is a picture of the intersection of Bunker Hill Road and 655 going down through Bellville. At the intersection, you see that property there. That was my dad's sister, Kelly. During my growing up years, her and her family lived there, and I have a lot of good memories of playing there as a child. But if you go back Bunker Hill Road, there's like a Peaches Horner Shop, Peaches Farm Supply, something like that back there. That's my dad's cousin. Then there's a farm sitting back in there. That was my dad's grandpa's farm. His name was Ezra Peachy also, and that's still in the family.

And here's a picture of my dad. That's actually on the internet. I've had different people over the years share this picture with me and said, "Hey, here's a picture of your dad." Somehow it got on the internet. So anyway, and here's the property in Bellville where my mom grew up at, Garver Road, Bellville.

That's probably being farmed by a cousin of mine now. That was my dad. My mom's growing home where she grew up at, and her dad's name was Dan Hostetler. And since I don't have a picture of my mom, I'll share a picture of my grandmother, my mom's mom.

This is a picture of schoolgirls back in the '20s in the Bellville area.

Back in the day when, yeah, you just had the one-room schoolhouse. And so you had Amish children, Mennonite children, and community children all going to school together. So as you look at the girls there, you'll see pictures of Amish girls.

And to the left, it looks like maybe a little Mennonite girl. And then you have girls with cut hair and things like that. Those are just, yeah, the community girls. Now I'll switch to my home place in Mercersburg.

We lived on Church Hill Road in Mercersburg, and our driveway was probably close to half a mile long. We had a double silo there you see on the left. That was kind of a trademark of our home. I always liked those double silos. Then straight ahead during going in the driveway, you see a mountain back there. That's Mount Parnell, close to Fort Loudon.

Always, yeah, another trademark of our home. If you look directly north, you saw the beautiful mountain. Here's a picture that I took when I was like 20 years old. As you can see, the house is kind of—buildings are kind of deteriorating. They just farmed the land around there, and the house is used for migrant workers during the harvest season when they grow produce and stuff like that. Another picture at the barnyard there. The barn hill went up to the right there. We used to ride our sleds coming down that barn hill, and we had a nice long slope to ride.

And now I'll switch to a video that was taken years ago in 1985 by Les Therisser. If you look to the right there, you can—in the video, you'll see the buildings off in the distance. That was actually when we placed years ago. That's Church Hill Road out there.

And my brother Dan is the one riding on the back of the grain binder, operating it. My dad is driving the horses. My brother Enos is running behind the grain binder. Two rowing horses' names are Jim and George.

The Morgan horse's name is Prince. So I'm definitely thankful today that my dad allowed this fella to take this video. Yeah, so like I said, my parents grew up in Bellville, and that's where they were born and raised and got married there. Then my dad went to Beltsville, Maryland, to do one W service, I guess, during the Vietnam War. And he worked at a research farm in Beltsville.

And yeah, I guess he stayed longer than he had to. He had a job offer there. And my dad and mom lived in a trailer park. My mom had electricity and stuff in the trailer park. My dad had a bicycle to ride to work, which I've always wondered how that was allowed, but I guess maybe there were exceptions given for different situations.

And that's where my—if I'm not mistaken, that's where my three oldest siblings were born in Beltsville, Maryland. And during that time, my dad was able to save up money to buy a small farm in Juneata County. And he bought that farm, fixed it up, bought some cattle and farm equipment. And yeah, I was able to resell that farm then. And then in the late '70s, he bought this farm in Mercersburg, which was a beautiful farm. We had what we called the big woods on the backside of the farm. The Connecticut Creek flowed through the big woods. A lot of room to explore. Then we also had what we called the little woods. We had a small stream coming through the little woods.

Then outside the little woods, we had the pond. And that was the background of our farm. Like looking out the back of our barn, we would see the pond and the little woods. And yeah, it was definitely a very, very nice farm. And I really liked his farm there in Mercersburg.

Yeah, so in Mercersburg, there's no longer any Amish that lives there. My dad's cousin was the first one to move there, Ben Peachy. He bought a farm out along Church Hill Road, the one you can see a little bit in the video there. And then yeah, the very late '70s, my parents bought the farm sitting right behind them where the grain binder's operating.

And then there's another David Peachy from Bellville. Him and his family moved to Mercersburg. And then their oldest daughter got married. And then her and her husband lived there for a while. But yeah, probably by 1992, somewhere in that time frame, I think it was, all the other Amish families had left, and we stayed there all by ourselves without any other Amish families.

Yeah, so in our family, my mom had a total of 10 children, three girls and seven boys. My brother Albert, he died at age six. I never saw him. He died long before I was born. He was buried in Juneata County.

Yeah, so that's kind of a little bit of the history of Mercersburg and my family. That's Les Therisser up on top of the grain wagon. I don't know if any of you out there have ever harvested grain with a grain binder thrashing machine, but it represents a lot of hard work. In the hot part of the summer, very dusty. And we have a big straw pile. We always bring our hay baler out there, bale up the straw. Yeah, a lot of dust, a lot of hard work. And I don't know if there's a lot of Amish. I'm not sure. There's probably still Amish that do it, but yeah, I'm not sure how many. So yeah, with the big grain binder or the big combines and stuff, yeah, obviously this work can be done a lot faster and a lot larger scale.

Yeah, this video is about done. As soon as it's done, I'll move on to the next picture here. But it would be interesting to hear from some of you if you ever have done this.

All right, so here's a picture. By the time this picture was taken, all the other Amish families had left. That's my brother Enos riding the little black miniature horse there called Blackie. Then my brother John standing beside what we called Gray Pony.

And that's me ducking under the fence. And there's a good reason I'm ducking under the fence. I had some pretty vivid memories. I don't know if it was some months before this took place where we were riding down the road in the buggy, and a car came up behind us. And yeah, somebody was taking a picture of us, and I waved at them. When we got home, my dad gave me a good looking and explained to me quite well.

Yeah, when somebody wants to take your picture, you look the other way. You don't pose. You don't wave. You don't smile. And so when this fellow by the name of Chris Lopez came up with his camera to take our picture, I said, "No, Chris, don't do it." And his camera went up anyway, and I ducked. I was going to save my hide that day. But I'm pretty sure my brothers there got spankings for posing and smiling for this one.

But yeah, during my childhood, I have a lot of good memories. Like I said, we had the big woods and a lot to explore. And I have good memories of being a little boy and my dad taking us young ones out for strolls in the woods on Sunday afternoons or holidays. And there were things like that. And I have a lot of good memories of friends and stuff that we had come to visit us on the farm.

Actually, this Chris Lopez, he was a school teacher for us for a while when the other Amish families left. There was a John Christner family that moved from Kansas to the area. They did school with us. And then Danny Byers' family did school with us, two other families. Then Chris Lopez was our teacher and actually lived with us during that time, that first year. So yeah, very good. I'll go to the next one.

Obviously, this is a picture when we were older. And when I think of this picture, I think it has a low time in our family. We're getting rebellious. Us boys are. We're not listening to Dad. And yeah, we made a lot of friends in the community.

Some of the influences weren't good. We'd sneak out at the windows at night when Dad was in bed and go and watch movies and do tobacco, drink beer. And of course, we even did marijuana there towards the end. And it was definitely a time for a change. I was scared where things were headed.

This picture was taken in November of 1997. And yeah, it was a pretty rough time over this time. And I was actually scared where my life was headed. And obviously, all the rebellion and things we did caused a lot of stress on the whole family. And yeah, my dad hardly knew what to do. He got stricter and stricter and spanked us harder. And yeah, even one time between an argument between my dad and I, things got pretty bloody, if I can say it that way. And it left resemblance on my face of it. And people would come around and ask what happened. And eventually, some social workers showed up, which really shook up my dad.

They were actually a private-run organization that was working on keeping families together but helped them function the way they should. And when my dad got really upset with them, they warned them. They said, "We're not here to take your children from you. We're here to keep your family together.

And if you don't comply, we'll have to turn you over to the state, and you will lose your family." So that really was a scare.

So yeah. And actually, when this picture was taken, my parents were at a wedding in New York in 1997. And by then, things were—yeah, like I said, things were pretty shaky. And my dad started shopping around for land up in New York. So the moves finally came. Wow, I'm sorry. My mouth is getting really dry. Do you mind if I take a quick pause and get a cup of water? I'll be right back.

Sorry, I was sipping on a cup of coffee, and that wasn't helping with my dry mouth. Yeah. So yeah, by 19—yeah, '95, May of 1995, we made the big move to New York State. And I was ready for an escape. I wanted out of Mercersburg, away from all the influences.

And I had hope that something good would come out of that. And yeah, life was so rough, so difficult. I was so scared where I was headed. And I had no wisdom or ability. It seemed like I was under control of, yeah, maybe dark forces and bondages and addictions. And I was thinking, "Wow, move to New York, in an Amish community. That'll help straighten things out."

So soon after we—not too long after we were there, I have a good memory of being at an Amish barn raising, which was my first time to be at anything like that. And it was an amazing event to see a barn go up that fast and so much work get done. And towards the end of the day, I saw my brother Enos talking to an Amish fellow.

And I walked over to hear what the conversation was about. And here, Enos was telling this Amish fellow everything about our family, just all the stress, the yelling, the arguing, the—I think maybe even drugs and alcohol, and telling this Amish fellow how bad we were.

And I was super embarrassed. I was so humiliated. But it didn't take long for word to spread that we were a troubled family. We needed help. And of course, there were attempts made to try to reconcile us and bring things together and open up conversation. And eventually, the Amish preachers thought they need to have a meeting with us all together, all at the same time. So they scheduled a meeting. Seven Amish preachers came to our house—preachers, deacons, bishops, whatever they were—and wanted all our family members to be there, which the ones from Pennsylvania didn't show up. They didn't want to be part of that. But we all sat in our living room, and each preacher took their turn saying their thing and trying to help us understand what it takes for a family to function.

But they all had their little message and asked for any—as my dad—to make comments. My dad wouldn't say anything. I asked his children if they had any questions or comments. Yeah, everybody just totally quiet. So afterwards is where the amazing thing happened for me. My life changed. One of the Amish preachers was talking to me. His name was Moses Fisher.

And that's the first memory I have of any adult—well, outside my parents, I should say—talking to me in such a personal way. And I was telling him that it doesn't work for me to be a Christian. There's too much stress. I get angry at my dad. We argue, and things just don't work and function around here. Then Moses Fisher said, "Well, God can use you to change your family." And whatever that did, God used it somehow to really convict me of my selfishness and also touch an area of my heart that I desired. I desired change. I desired our family to be better, but I never connected the dots that I could be a link to that or an instrument to help bring the change.

But that spoke faith to me. It spoke life to me. And I don't know, the next days or maybe even turned into weeks. I'm not sure. It was a fairly long period of time where when I went to bed at night, that conviction was on me. When I got up in the morning, it was on me. All day, it was like day and night. I couldn't get away from that conviction and that idea that God could use me to change my family. It was definitely the Holy Spirit working. And we were still milking cows by hand at that time. And one evening, we were in the barn milking. And that conviction, that emotion, just kept—it kept growing.

And that evening, it came to a breaking point. And any of you that know anything about cows, you don't just walk away from a half-milked cow because the cow can get mastitis. The cow can even die from that.

And that was something I was taught well from a little boy up to make sure the cows milked well before you leave the cow. Well, that evening, it was a battle between me or the cow.

I was worried about my family seeing something, some emotion in me, or seeing tears in my eyes, or seeing something that wasn't normal other than a stoical Amish boy, right, without any emotions. But yeah, that feeling came stronger. Finally, I was like, "I'm abandoning this cow. There's no way anybody can see me cry or see some kind of emotions. They might think something's majorly wrong." And it would draw a lot of attention to me. So I quickly grabbed my milk bucket, went and dumped it in the milk tank, and I ran to the hay barn.

And I found a quiet spot all by myself up in the hay barn. And I just wept, and I cried, and I prayed, and I just poured my heart out to the Lord. And that went on for quite a while until finally I was like, "Wow, I got to get my emotions under control because somebody's going to wonder where I'm at by now."

So yeah, got myself all straightened out and looking solemn again, the best I could. And so the next memory I have from that is seeing my dad. All these years, I looked at my dad, and I was always scared of him. And I viewed him like he looked like some kind of scary monster, basically.

And now I looked at him for the first time in my life. It's like, "Wow, my dad's actually a good-looking fellow." And it's like I never saw that before or whatever. I always looked at him as a scary monster.

And I didn't have any theology back then, what Born Again is or anything like that. Well, I shouldn't say I didn't have anything like that or any idea. But yeah, I didn't have any theology behind it. But it was definitely the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came into me that day and changed my life. And I even went and talked to my dad. And I told my dad, "I want to obey him now." And I'm not sure what all I said to him.

Obviously, there was a strained relationship for many, many years, so it felt really weird to do that. And I talked to my dad about it years later, and he remembered that there was a change, which, yeah, which to me, I took as a huge compliment for him to acknowledge that. But yeah, there were challenges ahead. Obviously, there was still a lot of stress in our home.

My brother Enos had battled with a hernia for a number of years. And there was a lot of conflict connected to that. And he kept getting on my dad, telling my dad, "He needs help. He needs his hernia fixed." And finally, he gave my dad a deadline. "If you don't have it fixed by a certain time, I'm going to go and get it fixed."

Well, my brother Enos had left home. He was two years older than me. And then another thing that happened, my brother John turned 21, and he moved back to Path Valley.

Now I was the oldest boy at home, so a lot of responsibilities fell on me, things like hauling manure and things like that. So obviously, the enemy is always out to rob, kill, and destroy.

Yeah, my relationship with my dad had gotten a lot better, but then a lot of farm responsibilities came on me. So one of the things that was really bad was hauling manure became, of course, my responsibility now. And we had a number of breakdowns that took place. And some of them were my fault, and some of them were outside my control. But each breakdown caused conflict with my dad. And the manure spreader, parts, and all of that came from the Lancaster area. So any breakdown, we had to get the parts shipped from Lancaster, and it was a cold winter. It was in New York.

But during that time, some terrible things took place between my dad and I. And I got really discouraged to the point where I said, "I'm leaving when I turn 18."

So yeah, so I started marking the calendar. I mean, here, the Holy Spirit had come, done an amazing work. Another thing I forgot to mention is that after that experience in the hay barn, I had a tremendous hunger for the Word of God. And I had a little pocket testament I would take with me out to the fields or wherever I was, and I would read it every day, just devour it. And it became a real source of life for me. And I began questioning a lot of things in the Amish without any kind of outside influence.

It was like as I read the Bible, it was like, "Wow, where is this happening? I don't see this happening in my community." Then another thing that took place, it happened to be instruction class. Every two years, the Amish have their instruction class thing.

And that's another thing that took place. And I was really battling. I knew this instruction class thing. If I go through it and then get baptized, it'll sort of tie me in with the Amish. If I would ever desire to leave, then I would get excommunicated. And I had the idea that if I would leave the Amish after I get baptized, then I would probably go to hell when I die, or yeah, when I die.

So that was a real warfare going on in my life, a real challenge. And I went through with it. Severe man overtook. And I was actually really discouraged during that time. Then, of course, the manure spreader breakdowns during the winter. That was a real discouragement. And it just seemed like my life crumbled. And it seemed like my relationship with my dad went really bad, worse than ever. It was almost like it had improved. I mean, it had improved a lot. And it gave me great courage. And then when it failed, it was just like a huge discouragement.

So anyway, when I turned 18, I was out the door. I actually left a letter on my pillow that night. Yeah, I snuck out at night. I left a note for my dad. Yeah, and wrote some stuff on there that wasn't very kind. So anyway, so here's a picture after I moved to Mercersburg.

I actually moved in with a neighbor named Bob back the lane from the farm. That's actually his barn there. And that's a picture my brother Dan took. Dan was my oldest brother. He had left Amish and all that. And he stopped in for a visit one time and took a picture of me. Then also, a picture I'd showed previously, my brothers and I, there was Scott and Marvin, who were two fellows with us. The Holy Spirit was actually really working in Scott's life. Scott had made a real change in life, started going to church. And then Marvin had gotten himself in a lot of trouble with the law, lost his driver's license. So those two fellows came and visited me also.

Scott was going to church, and he started taking Marvin to church. And he came to visit me and invited me to come to church with him also. So I went to the United Brethren Church, St. James United Brethren Church on Warm Spring Road. And that's me. That's not normally the way I dress going to church though. So that picture, we were in a play, and I was a Bible character. And I'm sorry, it's been too long ago. I can't remember what Bible character I was at that time. Then I also got myself a job working with Jason Johns in Mercersburg.

This is a picture of a building we're building in St. Thomas area for East Coast Greens Landscaping. On the weekends, we did farming and stuff. That's Jason Johns farming there, and he really liked his international tractor. And also on the side, that's my Ford Ranger, the first vehicle I ever owned.

Jason's son, Nathan, and I did some lawn mowing on the side. So I worked for him for a number of times until I got a job offer at Precast Systems in Williamson, the Nitterhouse Company. So that's me after we set some walls.

Then there was also some real kind people that reached out to me. I was like a wandering Amish, just running from my troubles. And it wasn't really finding a lot to reconcile with life and all its troubles. This fellow, Bill Nichols, he was actually an old friend of my dad. After I left, he reached out to me. And he would come and visit me. And then for Thanksgiving, he actually came and picked me up, took me to his house for Thanksgiving. And I was still 18 at that time, and that was that first Thanksgiving there. Then Leon and Donna Witter are really, really nice people that have a real kind heart. They had two boys about my age.

They were part of the United Brethren Church. Yeah, they were a real comfort and stability. Then also my brother Dan, during his late 20s, he was still single, and he started struggling with the Amish. And he eventually left the Amish. And that's what he looked like when he would come and visit me there in Mercersburg. So he would talk to me about the Lord and different things. And for myself, I was like, "I'm a bad boy, and I know it." And my brother Dan is some religious person. He got baptized also and left the Amish. And he's probably on his way to hell and doesn't know it. But see, that was the confusion I was in.

So as he would talk to me about the Lord, I would kind of put up a wall. I'd listen. I'm thinking, "Okay, you didn't keep your commitment to the Amish. You broke your vows."

Yeah. And yeah, it just added to the confusion. Then as time went on, even though I left the Amish, I was telling myself, "I'm not going to return to the old life of alcohol or drugs or anything like that. I'm going to keep myself set apart. I don't want to fall into bondage and be ensnared by alcohol and stuff again."

But as time went on, my life started slipping. There's a friend of mine and I, we rented a house together. Eventually, he got a girlfriend and moved in with him. And my brother Dan would come and visit, and he'd see all this. And he became very concerned about that. And he would talk to me about it. And I'd feel very convicted.

But I couldn't listen to Dan because I was sure he was deceived. And I did not want to get deceived. That was the last thing I wanted to happen to me. So one night, I went to bed. Dan had actually given me a phone call that evening and talked to me. He was really concerned with the decisions I was making and things I was allowing into my life. And I knew he was right. But again, he's the deceived one. He's the bad fella. He's deceived, and he doesn't know it, kind of thing was my view. And yeah, I went to bed. I was wrestling that night. And I would always get up at 4:00 in the morning to go to work.

And the war that was going on in my heart went on and on. And I could not sleep. I was just battling. I was tossing. I was turning. And I was running everything through my mind of the commitment I made to the Lord. And I was baptized in Amish and all those different things. And I was so confused. And I was kind of like, even after I was baptized, I had a lot of battles and a lot of struggles.

And I would always battle with the thought of dying. Would I actually go to heaven, or would I go to hell? Now, you have to realize, my growing up, my dad talked to us a lot about hell. He put a lot of fear in my heart about hell and about Judgment Day to the point where I'd even have nightmares at night. So that's how much I feared hell.

And I felt like I never reconciled that whole thing or totally found peace in my heart that I was right with God, even during my Amish years, even after I had found Christ up in the hay barn. And to me, I was kind of like, "Wow, I have friends.

Life is good as long as my brother Dan doesn't come around and convict me." And I made a terrible commitment that night, a terrible thing. God is merciful. But yeah, it was scary what I said. I pretty much said to God that I can never that idea of not finding peace or not being reconciled with God or not knowing how to reconcile life and its troubles along with finding peace with God. I just said, "You know what? I'll just live the life that I'm living. I'll die. And at least I'll know where I go then rather than wondering where I'll go. I'll just live my life peaceful and do my thing. And when I die, yes, I know I'll go to hell.

But that's fine." What a terrible thing. But the battle was over then. It was probably about midnight by then. And then I fell asleep. But it seemed like after I made that commitment, that my life just spun even more out of control.

Yeah, it was scary. I had a friend, for an example, crazy temptations that I never had before. I had a friend that would tell me about how he used to shoplift and how fun it was and thrilling and how scary. "You'll go to jail if you get caught shoplifting," he would tell me. But he would tell me how fun it is. I was like, "Wow, that sounds like an exciting thing to do." So I started dreaming of shoplifting. Thankfully, I never did.

But that's just one example of temptations that started coming into my life that I never dreamed of having. I dreamed of doing things that never even entered my mind of doing before. And that's how scary things were getting.

But here, I get a phone call. And I'm talking about alcohol coming into my life. My life was just going out of control, and I was getting depressed. I was getting scared of where I was headed again. But I didn't have no anchor in my life. Scary, scary. But one night, I get a phone call from my sister saying that Dan is in the hospital. He needs to do a surgery. He'll die. And I was like, "No way." So I called Dan. He sounded very weak. Yeah, he ended up in the hospital.

But he wasn't planning on taking any surgery. I guess it was a very risky surgery years ago. I don't know. I don't understand everything. But as time went on, sure enough, he died. And I was standing beside his hospital bed while he was drifting off to eternity and dying. And I could not believe it. And in that room were a lot of different kinds of people. There were charity kind of people in that room. There were the Yeslavic people from the Yeslavic Church, like Russian and Ukrainian people that my brother Dan fellowshipped with. And they all came and spent the day there praying, reading the Bible, singing to Dan as he was dying. And I was thinking, "Wow, if this was me, I would be so scared."

But Dan did wrestle some, but he managed to find peace that he's going to die. It was so scary.

But Dan had requested a prayer for me. So these people knew who I was because, yeah, he had asked them to pray for me different times. So right there, they had a fish on the hook. And I'm so thankful for that. Eventually, everything—Dan died. And all the monitors went to zero. Dan was gone. And I just broke down, started weeping. But those people gathered around me, prayed for me. And yeah, they became real friends.

Then after the funeral and everything was over, yeah, I was working for this concrete company. I didn't have a work at that time. I was laid off work. I was home all by myself. And of course, the old life was watch TV, do those old things that I tried to do it, no meaning to it. I turned the TV on, turned it off. I hate that thing.

Where will I go when I die? I guess my mind had changed meeting all those people and seeing the peaceful death that Dan went to heaven when he died. But what about me? Where would I go? I guess it was a time when death was really real. And I was so scared.

So that evening, that one evening I remember being at my house, I was invited over to someone else's house that was at Dan's bedside when he died. And that day, I felt I was lost. I was between a rock and a hard spot. And I just cried out to God. And I couldn't wait to go to these people's house. I had so many questions. So that night, we stayed up till probably 2 o'clock in the morning.

I had lots and lots of questions for these people. And I'm very thankful that they spent the time with me to answer those questions. But that became sort of a routine. People would invite me to their house, and I was just full of questions.

But one battle was I made this commitment to the Amish Church. As long as I live, what will I do with that? I don't want to die and go to hell.

So that was a real warfare. But I finally came to the decision that I can't reconcile the thing of, yeah, I see all these Christian people around me now, people that are so godly. But for me, I got to keep my commitment. So I came to the conclusion I need to go back to the Amish. I need to keep that commitment. I'll be a Christian, and I'll be an Amish the day I die. That was my commitment. So that's what happened next. I went back to the Amish.

And here's a beautiful verse that came real to me during my instruction class in the Amish. It's the only thing that I remember that was very impactful: Hebrews 11:6. "But without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him."

So I went back. I had a lot of courage. I had a lot of people. I was reading the Bible a lot. I was reading good books, just putting good things into my life. Back to the Amish, I went. I knew I could stand. I'll stand strong and all that. But going back to the Amish, I went to the youth singing, different things. And it just seemed like there's so much lightheartedness around the people. Life is a party. And I got really discouraged with that. It only lasted six months. So one evening, I was coming home from the youth singing. It was a beautiful full moon.

And I was driving my horse and buggy, open buggy. It's a beautiful evening. And there's the moon. So beautiful. And I was just praying, "God, I need you." I just felt like when I prayed, it seemed like he wasn't there.

And I even had hit a period where I was like, "Is God even real?" Just a warfare. But this verse here really gave me courage. So that evening, I just felt like God spoke to my heart saying, "You need to leave."

God didn't speak in an audible voice, but I just felt this impression. I need fellowship if I'm going to survive spiritually. But then that question, what about my baptism? How can I leave these things hanging over me? And I really started praying really hard.

I would go up to the hay barn, just pray, pray, pray. My prayers became more fervent, more intense. I was just crying out to God. And then I even—and one thing that stuck out to me, it's almost like words were put in my mouth. I started praying, "God, make me holy." Where did that come from? That sounds really weird to my mind. I felt like it was almost the Holy Spirit praying through me. "God, make me holy." Meaning that during these intense prayer times, God was convicting me of things in my life that weren't right. And I just wanted everything removed from my life that wasn't right. So I started praying, "God, make me holy.

God, make me holy." Just I was—yeah, anyway, those became part of my prayer, daily prayers. And I was really seeking God for direction. What about this baptism thing? And it was—I mean, you have to be Amish. You have to almost live this to understand how real it is. It was ingrained in me from childhood.

So here, God spoke to me again. I was out chopping thistles out in the pasture one day, and I was just really pondering and praying about these things. And I almost had—this might be an Elam thing. I don't know if anybody ever had this. And nobody told me this. It was just an impression that I got during my growing up years that I felt like, surely on Judgment Day, if somehow I'm missing it with God, surely one of the Amish preachers will come forward or the bishop or somebody and intercede for me and bat for me and somehow maybe persuade God to let me get into heaven. I mean, I wanted to go to heaven.

I was so scared of hell. Anyway, while I was out chopping those thistles, this impression came on me. It was the Holy Spirit speaking to me saying that on Judgment Day, it'll just be me standing before Christ. There will be no Amish preachers who have the ability to come and bat for me. I'm his. And yeah, the idea that for Amish to baptize me and have that tied in with being part of the Amish church, yeah, that's unbiblical. The baptism is a baptism under Christ, not to a church or certain denomination or whatever. And there was my answer. And I felt free to leave. That's the very answer I needed. First things first. So I went to Finn Chani, made a phone call, and made arrangements.

And then I moved to Shippensburg from there. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of battles, a lot of challenges. Let me see where I'm at. Okay. Then the idea with the scripture verse, it's so important to have songs to sing also, like songs that would be meaningful and minister. So I moved to Shippensburg. So it's been a little over 20 years ago now since I moved to Shippensburg. That's a picture that was taken soon after I moved to the area here.

But there's still, yeah, battles ahead. I went to a charity Bible school and a lot of emotion there, counseling and different things happening there. And one of the counselors told me I need to confess all my sins, everything I confessed, everything I could think of. And then he had a list of things. You need to go make X, Y, all these different things. You need to go to these certain people, make things right, confess to them. And so that's what I did. It was hard to do. It was embarrassing. But I felt it was the right thing to do, to go and maybe visit certain people, tell them I'm sorry for things that I did with them since and whatnot.

Then also my dad. I need to go and confess things to my dad.

And yeah, the first time I went home to visit after I left there, my dad just yelled at me. It was a terrible, terrible time. But then finally, the day came when my wife and I started our courtship, started our relationship. And I wanted to be the one to tell my parents about it because my mom had said, "If you ever marry one of these charity girls, I don't want to see her face." Well, a lot has changed over the years. Anyway, I had a real battle going home to talk to my dad about this. And I prayed a lot that night and went to New York, saw my dad. And I told my dad I could use the word.

I said to my dad, "I love you." But I said to my dad, "I like you." There's no word for love in Pennsylvania Dutch that I know of. So I said to my dad, "Ik like you." And my dad, actually, I felt like it really relaxed him. And I said, "I'm sorry for all the bad stuff I've done and different things." And my relationship with my dad has really improved drastically after that.

Yeah. So I'm going to just—my times, I feel like my time's running out here. So here we have a verse. Finally, my brethren. And I'm sharing this verse in light of leaving the Amish. I was really worried and concerned that I am on the right path. I wasn't so much worried. Right then, I wasn't so much worried about the Amish. I was like, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I making the right decision?" But after I left the Amish, I encountered a lot of ex-Amish that would tell me all the horrible things about the Amish, just on and on and on with the list of horrible sins and abuse and all these different things.

And it fed me negative things. So in our life, we need to focus on things that are—let's just read this verse here. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there's any virtue, if there's anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. So here's the thing.

In too many of our communities, we have—in our churches, we have a culture of gossip and telling all the bad stuff about everybody else. And in ex-Amish culture, I've seen that too. In Amish culture, no doubt. I only lived in Amish community two and a half years of my life. But if ex-Amish have the problem, it probably comes from the culture of the Amish.

And we need to deal with it. We want a community with a culture of things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, good report, virtue, praiseworthy. Those are the things we want to meditate on. That's the culture we want to create. I might have shifted things a bit here, but I'm out of the Amish now. And I remember all this stuff I was being fed. I was around some of these people. And I remember just feelings of bitterness rising up in me in the Amish. I had an Amish preacher tell me in New York that I don't really know the Amish, that I'm judging the Amish with the way I was raised and with my family, the bad experiences I had with my dad and stuff like that.