My Testimony: Atlee Miller

Guide me o'er the bridge, Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased to have Brother Atlee Miller on this morning, sharing his life story. Atlee grew up Amish and lived in a number of different states. He currently lives in Fanesburg, Pennsylvania, along with his wife, Barbara, and two children.

If you don't know where Fanesburg is, that's fine. I do, because I used to live there when I was Amish. Nice little town in Path Valley. All right. Well, we're going to just let Atlee have the time to share his life story and remember it's about Jesus and his redeeming work, and we want to hear about it. So I'm going to have a prayer and then hand the time over to Atlee.

Dear Lord God, thank you so much for your redeeming love. Thank you for the salvation that you have graciously extended to us through your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for Brother Atlee and his testimony and the journey you've had him on. I pray that you'd be glorified this morning in this talk, and as it gets recorded and listened to later, just move in hearts and lives to love you more. Pray that this would advance your kingdom, that you would exalt yourself in our midst.

Bless Brother Atlee as he shares, bring the right things to his mind to say and help things to be clear and may it just all be a blessing. We love you, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, Atlee, the time is yours.

Yeah. So good morning, everyone. Yeah. So to get started, I was looking back over my history, and a lot of times I know some of you guys are the same way. I always kind of cringe talking about myself or having to focus on me, but we'll try to do the best I can anyway. So my roots come from Holmes County, Ohio. I grew up Amish in Cashman, Wisconsin then. We moved up there when I was almost—I wasn't a year old yet. I can't remember exactly when that was. I mean, I can't remember it at all, but from hearing others talk about it. So my mother always said that she was depressed when I was a baby, and from that, it could have caused me to be depressed a lot more.

I always felt insecure growing up, didn't have a stable relationship with anybody. I was very insecure and didn't feel like I was having a—it seemed like I couldn't talk to anybody, was unsafe, or it would get me into trouble. There's a lot of insecurity, so. And I was the black sheep of the family. I think my brothers would say the same thing.

I was just hard to get along with, so. And then there was a lot of things I really liked doing when I was growing up, but it didn't happen very often. One of the things that I really liked to do was there was a place out behind the barn, the big shed, and there were some trees back there and stuff. And I would go back there with my brothers, and we'd put ropes up in the trees, and we would climb around and act like we were monkeys. And that was pretty fun. So just some highlights that I had. And another thing I did was go back into neighbor's property. There was a creek back there.

It was a spring bed, and it had minnows in it. I don't know if that was the actual name for a fish, but they were small, about three inches long. And I would catch them sometimes, take them home, put them in a jar, and have them for a week or so, and then they'd die.

You have to really keep that water changed or they just die off. So yeah, that was some of the things I did. I'm sure there was more stuff that I liked doing. There was just a lot of stuff that I don't remember everything from back then, but I remember that there was a lot of stress in my life already then. And going to school, I had a hard time focusing on my schoolwork, and I had a hard time doing my lessons. And it was just a lot of stress and focusing.

I think when I was in second and third grade, I wore glasses because I used to get a migraine headache, and we didn't know why. But then when I was going to school, it seemed like every evening I came home was a migraine headache. So finally, we went to the eye doctor, and they figured out my eyes are not looking quite straight. One is maybe a little down, and the other one a little up. And I mean, you could not see it, but when I was trying to read, I had to try to bring that together, close up, and it caused a migraine headache. So we went to the eye doctor and got that figured out.

I wore glasses for about a year, and it kind of took care of it from there. After that, I could feel like I had a little bit of a headache. It was usually migraine, and it was on this side. And yeah, I would just feel that there's a little bit of a headache there most of the time, but I got so used to it, I don't really notice it. So then, yeah, after a year, it kind of disappeared, and I got over that. But then from this, I think it was in the third grade, I was too slow in school. I just couldn't get it done. So they put me back to the second grade, about halfway through school.

So that was pretty hard on me. And yeah, I just couldn't do it. And also in school, I had a few friends in school. It seemed like we had to tell each other that we're friends so that I knew. And yeah, it was a little hard for me there as well. Just looking here. And then also when I would sometimes go to the neighbor's property and the creek and stuff like that, it was something I had to do to have some fun. So it seems like every child is looking for some fulfillment in their life, or every person wants to do something. And it seemed like I would go to the creek in the neighbor's property and catch some fish sometimes and do stuff like that.

And I was not at home after school if I was doing that and supposed to be doing my chores. So that would cause some conflict between me and my brothers sometimes. And I'd come home, and they would say that you're supposed to be doing your chores. And usually, we had a big barn. We had beef cows, and we had a lot of horses. And I don't think we had sheep in Wisconsin, but we had horses, cows, and some pigs. But then usually, we had to put straw in for the young steers. And I would usually not feed them, but I would put straw in for them and things like that. And yeah, it wasn't getting done if I was down by the creek.

So just stuff like that. It kept bottling up, and it got worse as time went on. But there were some other highlights that I had that I can talk about. And that was sometimes I'd come in while doing chores, and my brothers would be sitting there talking to each other. And I really got an enjoyment sometimes just sitting down and just listening to them. They would talk about all kinds of different stuff. And it was very interesting sometimes just to sit there and listen. And I wanted that attention. I wanted to—that was kind of a communication to listen to them. So I would get to hear others' perspectives of things, and that was very helpful.

And then the other thing that would happen a lot of times is going to church. There were times when I was in church, and I would—it was hard to sit still. And usually, my dad was a preacher, so we would sit in the front, which wasn't very fun at all. So we had to sit up there. And it might be different for some Amish, but the preacher's children usually sat in the front where they can see you. And they usually went away for a time while we were singing. And yeah, you're kind of sitting up there kind of where everybody could see you.

So there were times when I had a hard—it wasn't very fun to sit still. But after church, usually, you're kind of done with this, and then you went out. And then usually, I was kind of finding attention with people. I would say funny stuff, and I would be funny. And afterwards, I would regret it. And my brothers would say, "Oh, the way I acted is so weird." And that was a hard time as well, so. And let me see here. And so when I was 12, I think I was 12, probably a half, now 12. So my birthday's in January. So it was like April, I think we moved to Illinois, from Cashman, Wisconsin to Southern Illinois.

And I was hoping that things would go a little different down there, things would get better. But I'm sure everybody has those hopes when he moves or does something. Yeah, my parents moved down there, and I just went with me, so.

Yeah. Things were different down there as far as we had shorter winters and not as cold winters, which I liked some of that. But then in the summertime, it got so hot and humid. It was just the elevation was so low. It just seemed to really—we were close to the rivers in Southern Illinois. And yeah, it was very high humidity. So yeah, in the spring, we would hear the spring peepers. And yeah, there were some highlights there. And as time went on, I got more and more depressed. It was just I started growing older, and there was sexual sin in the family. I won't go too much into detail there. And I would also count the years until I was 21, which helped me nothing.

It was just hard to know exactly how to cope with life. And by then, I had a deep fear for my dad. I really feared him. I did not have a good relationship with him at all. And I wanted to be underneath him so that I could—it was just I don't know how to explain the fear I had. It was just—and it's not really a fun subject to talk about because I always felt like if I was away from him long enough, I always felt like I wanted to have a relationship with him. I wanted to talk to him. But then always when we were together, it never worked out.

It was always hard to do. And I would say the easiest time it was is around my baptism in the Amish church.

I was 17 when I got baptized in the Amish church, and I really wanted to do what was right. I would say I was very sincere about the Christian life, and I wanted to get my life straightened up. And I believed in Jesus when I got baptized, and I felt like I was getting on better ground. And I would say that's probably when I had the best relationship with my dad in my life. It was at that time. Well, I know later when I was close to 21, I had a decent relationship with him. It wasn't very, very good. I finally kind of got along with him.

And I don't think that was that hard to get along with him. It was more just we didn't communicate. And it's not easy to—how should I say? It's not easy to have a relationship with somebody that's a good feeling or anything if you don't talk much. So that's kind of where some of the issues come in.

So yeah, that was at 17 when I had a decent relationship with him. The problem was, yeah, keeping up communication. There's still this—still hard to have something if you're not communicating. And I think that's what kind of took its toll back down again, where I just had a hard time with him and all that. But then I started dating a girl at the age of 18, and her parents moved to Wyoming. And I think it was like a year after we were dating for a year when they moved to Wyoming. And I actually moved out there with them, and we lived out there for eight months. But when I was out there, I was wanting to find more answers in the Bible.

And I started reading my Bible every evening when I went to bed, which was more than usual. And yeah, I started getting more of a grip over what it was talking about, and I was getting a deeper understanding of the Bible. And that was mostly in the New Testament. I read the New Testament several times.

And yeah, it was—I was just—but I was still depressed because, in a sense, there was a lot of times that I was feeling better, but there was a sense of like, "I'm still under my dad." And if he decides what he wants to do, I mean, I just got to go along with that. So I usually tried to obey exactly what he said. And that was—yeah, we always felt like we're going against the rule if we don't obey him. So yeah. And I think what helped a lot was that the Amish we were in, it was very conservative. And the problem was—I mean, this is actually probably a gain—is we didn't have much Bible knowledge, and we didn't really know what we would believe.

It was basically what our forefathers taught us, and there was very little Bible knowledge. So we didn't have all this modern theology. And I think that helped me a lot when I was reading the Bible because I was reading for what it is. There was a lot of stuff in there I didn't understand, for sure, in Romans or after. The first Gospels were my favorite books because I understood them better than most of the rest. So it was very simple what Jesus said, a sermon on the mountain, all that stuff. I understood that very well, so in a lot of parts. I know there was a few things that I was like, "It says this.

We don't do it." So I'm not quite sure what it means, why we don't do it. And it's like, "Maybe the Bible to people back then, we just don't know what they're talking about." But I had this deep longing to have a brotherhood that was living like the early Anabaptists did, where they had this close relationship with each other, and they were helping each other.

But it just seemed like most people, there was just not this relationship in the Amish. So that was something that was depressing to me as well. It was just I felt like there was nobody really—final, I was like, "There is nobody out there that's really wanting to do this thing like the early Christians did or the early Anabaptists."

And that was very discouraging to me. And I was like, "I'm sure I can't go out and start this new thing again by myself." So yeah. And then after eight months being out there, we went to a counseling place in Holmes County, Ohio. It was me and my girlfriend and her dad went out there to Holmes County. And I think I learned a lot in that place. I wouldn't recommend anybody going there because there are some things that I would really disagree with how they handle things and how they do stuff. But I really got a lot of help there. I remember leaving there and not feeling a lot different. And I got a lot of—I got more of a different perspective of life, I think, there because I've seen there's more people out there that are Christians, and it's not just the Amish.

So that helped me a lot to get a different perspective of how people—because back when I was Amish, you get this idea that the Amish are the ones that are right. And you can't leave the Amish if you're going to—you're for sure not going to be going to heaven if you do that. And so yeah, it helped me to get a lot different perspective because the counselor was Mennonite, and he's probably more closer to a real original Mennonite instead of an Amish Mennonite or anything. So yeah, when I left there, I felt like I would like to go back and talk to my dad and have this good relationship and give me new courage and everything.

But yeah, I think we went back to Wyoming, and then I kind of got depressed about it again because I knew I had to go back to my dad because at that time, the bishop out there in Wyoming was telling me that I need to go back and see if I can make peace in Illinois so that I can become a member there. And I kind of knew if I go back to Illinois, I won't be able to come back to Wyoming again. So yeah, I ended up going back to Illinois, and then we stayed there until I was 21. But like two months after, I think I went back to Illinois, and my girlfriend came to see me there.

And my mom and dad had a talk with her, and then finally, we decided to just stop until we were 21 to continue dating. And it never happened again that we continued. So yeah. And then I was at home working for my dad until I was 21. And that was like, I think, eight months, eight or nine months until I was 21. So when I was 21, I moved to my brother's place, built my own cabin, lived by myself. And by then, I was thinking there's a lot of people struggling out there, and I wanted to help anybody else that is struggling. And at that time, I felt I was pretty much over my depression because I would say what helped me a lot was just being free to where I could have my thoughts and be thinking about life instead of being pushed all the time.

And I started having a lot better communications with people after, I would say, even after the thing in Holmes County, Ohio, with the counselors. It just started going up from there, and I started having better communications. And I think it widened my view of life is what it helped. So let's see here.

And so yeah, and I spent a lot of money in training and different stuff so I could help other people in treatments and different stuff. And my end goal was maybe I could have a clinic where I have Amish coming in, and then I could teach them a better life. So I knew if I just go around talking to Amish, different Amish, the setting we were in, that would not work because they would say, "Oh, Atlas got a different aglava," which means a different belief.

And I knew that wouldn't work the best. So my ideas were I would become kind of like an Amish doctor, and then I would get people to come in and then talk to them and kind of get them on better feet. So that was kind of my strategy there.

So when I was 23, I started dating my wife, and she had moved over from Carrollton, Missouri. And it was only four children. They were all on—I think they were all on their own except Barbara at that time when they moved.

And they only came with their mom. And I think they were there about a year when I started dating Barbara. And her dad was still in prison at that time, and he had come out about—I think he was out when we got married. Yeah.

I think he just maybe a month. He was out for a month or so. But he couldn't come to the wedding because he's still on probation, so he was there. And then as time went on, or I should say we were married for, I think, almost six months. And while we were there in Illinois, even while we were dating—I should kind of give a brief idea of what was happening there—church was having problems most of the time while we were in Illinois. We were there, I think, 11 or 12 years. And I think most of the time, the church was having problems. People were moving in, moving back out. And yeah, we were caught in a lot of stress as a family there as well.

So people were moving through. And finally, me and my brother started thinking about this. Is this really right? What is going on in life? And where is God in all this? So we really started studying, and we started buying books. And I didn't read that much myself, but we got a hold of David Rousseau's books. And six of his messages were in the PCBE. And I started listening to those. And I don't know how many times I listened to those. And yeah, it started giving us more of a broader view across the family. And Dad didn't really like it. So yeah, he was kind of against the new ideas we were getting. So yeah, half a year after we got married, we moved to Roberts, Montana.

And that was kind of a big step. That was Michigan Circle, which is almost like New Order.

So we lived there for two years until we finally—it was less than two years until we finally decided, "This is really not what we wanted. We thought it was." And we decided to move on to raise our children. We didn't want to raise our children there. It was like, "Is this where our future needs to be?" And so we actually moved to Cincinnati, Iowa, and lived there for, I think, it was a little over a year. We were not expecting to live there that long. That was only temporary. And we visited many churches. We went to Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky. In Iowa, there was a church we visited.

In Minnesota, we also went to Boston, Massachusetts, several times. And finally, we thought we moved to Wisconsin, and that would work out. Then we thought we might move to New York. That didn't work out. Finally, we decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts. So we moved there in December, end of December, first of January. And we were there for, I think, two months. And I kept thinking, kept hearing stuff. And I knew Dean Taylor had left there. And I kept hearing stuff, and I was like, "What's going on?" That was where the stress started there.

Yeah. I was not hoping for—we had moved there. We were hoping we had high expectations. And we thought we finally found a church that kind of matches what the early Anabaptists were like. We had a close communication, discipleship.

Brothers were helping each other out. Yeah. We thought things were very good there until we just kept hearing stuff, and something was very much wrong, so. And I don't want to say much about it at all, but if somebody wants to move there, yeah, I wouldn't recommend going there for church or college.

And I don't want to give any names out about anything, but if you have more questions, if you're very serious about moving there, you can contact me by email. We'll probably have that in the description box below.

So yeah, we were there for, I think, six months. And the rent was very high, so we kind of lost money there. And then I called Brother Elam up and asked him if I could move down to his property. By then, we had built out a bus inside, and we were living in that still.

So we moved down to Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. And that was very helpful. Yeah. I don't think Elam knows how much he helped us out, but don't tell him that.

So yeah, that was a great journey. I mean, it has been a great experience since we've been here. So I hope that can stay up, and we can have—we've been doing a lot better than what we have been doing in Boston after that last four months. It was not a good feeling.

So one thing that I was wanting to talk about a little bit for the Amish that leave, you see a lot of them; they might go to a conservative church outside of the Amish, and then later, they just keep going.

And I wanted to give some idea maybe on what could be wrong that people keep going. And I don't want to claim to have the answers. I just thought I would share some stuff here. One thing is, if you go look back to the Amish and you have nothing good to say about the Amish, you have only a bad view of them, a negative view of them, that could be a problem.

Because I look back, after I kind of get away from it long enough, I look back at it, start seeing a lot of good stuff. I see my dad taught us how to work, how to be honest, a lot of stuff like that. And that has helped us, helped me very much. And even in—I think what helped me a lot to see good in the Amish was the church in Montana because I have a lot of good members from being there. And so if you just have such a hard time seeing anything good in, that could be a problem. So I think we could stop and try to think if there is nothing good about them and try to see some good and forgive.

David Rousseau has a very good message, and it's called Forgiving the Watchtower. It's on YouTube. And I think that was very helpful to learn how to forgive and move on and realize where there's a lot of good in the Amish. Because if you look at the evangelicals and the Protestants, their teaching is very shallow. They don't have much to show. And another thing that could be a downfall is if we have Protestant theology, even in the Amish or Mennonites where we're at, if we move on and then we have Protestant theology, that could be another downfall as far as if we just keep moving on. Because if we feel like our works have no role in our salvation and we're only filthy rags, our works are only filthy rags, if we have that theology, there's no reason why we'd stay in the Mennonite church.

I mean, our work don't matter, so why not just move on, make life easy? So I think if we have that theology, that's probably what's going to happen. Our works don't matter, so why not just move to a church that we can do however we want? Or I can divorce my wife, and now I can have the wife I want or whatever you want to do. You don't have to live the kingdom life. And the other day, a man told me that, and I thought it was a very good idea as well. And he said he thinks that Amish, the reason they move on is they feel like they don't measure up. They don't measure up to these high-up people, these college-educated people.

So they need to keep going to get up to that level. And yeah, I think that's a problem as well. And I thought he had a good idea when he told me that, but I was like, "That actually is probably a lot more true than I think it is." So if we don't feel like we measure up, those people that look like they're these high-educated people, these way-up-there people, they're probably not as good a people as they appear to be. In their everyday life, they probably have a lot more things going on than you think. So I was just going to say this higher education is not that helpful. Even Elon Musk says college education is of very little value.

He would not hire you because of your college education. Most times, he looks at what you are. So just take that for what it's worth. So I thought that was just different people's perspectives. But yeah, I would encourage anybody to, if you're thinking about just moving on in life and going to a Protestant or evangelical church, to think about it a little bit, what Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount and things like that. So yeah, I'm done for this talk now. I want to open it to other people.

Yeah. Thanks for sharing. There were many things there that would parallel my journey. It took my memories and heart back to just times of longing, times of searching in my own life, and then getting an intense desire to read the Bible and to understand it and find ways of putting these things into my life and where that took me and where it has taken you.

One of the things I heard you say was that life didn't get easy when you made changes for the Lord. And I think that's reality. I mean, when we look at the Bible, like Parable of the Sower, the seed is the word of God. And when it takes root, there's going to be some that they start growing, and then storms come, and they get offended and give up.

I hear you say that you would have had opportunity to get offended and to give up if you'd chosen to. And I think that's going to be real for everyone. When we surrender our lives to the Lord, that we're going to find difficulty because we surrendered to the Lord, not just as a natural part of life, but our decisions took us into difficult places.

And I think everybody should be aware of that and prepare their hearts for it so that we don't give up in the hard times.

Jesus said, "Let me see if I can get that scripture here again." In Luke 9:62, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God." And that looking back, I think it can be done maybe in longing.

Life was actually pretty good back there. Why did I ever make these changes? Why am I here? I just want to get back to the good old times and be who I used to be. I didn't really hear you say that, but there are times where if we get into new difficulty, that maybe that can be a temptation. The other thing, looking back in resentment, looking back in unforgiveness, looking back and just talking bad about the people back there, that won't take us good places either.

So we really need to keep our eyes on the King, keep our hands to the plow, and keep moving forward. So appreciated that. Appreciated your testimony and giving acknowledgment to God as good and having led you, and you want to keep letting Him lead you. It's not a once-and-done thing. We have to continue to yield our lives to Him and continue to hunger and thirst after Him, continue to let Him fill us. So yeah, thanks again for sharing. I'm going to open it up to anyone else that would have any comments, questions. Feel free to speak out.

Well, good morning, Brother Atley. Thanks so much for sharing. Wow, you've definitely gone through some trials with the depression and different church experiences. I really feel for you in that. And I can see God has been doing a good work in your life. And yeah, that's just a real blessing. And I pray that you and your wife can continue to grow and, yeah, grow and become even more developed as far as being disciples in God's kingdom and being a testimony to your neighbors and, yeah, just other people.

I know your heart is to help others that are going through similar struggles and stuff. I've heard that from you over the last year or so. Yeah, it was a real blessing. I did want to mention we have a couple of people that called in by telephone, and there were a couple of times—well, I guess when I set up the settings on the computer here, people that call in by Zoom, they're automatically muted when they enter the meeting. But the telephones, I don't have any way when people call in by telephone, yeah, they're not muted. And then what happens when they make background noise, the telephone number flashes up on the screen. So I manually muted the telephone numbers that flashed up on the screen.

But if any of you from the calling in by telephone, if you want to talk, I did ask you to unmute in case you want to talk and say something. So thanks. Appreciate you all joining us.

All right. Thank you for sharing that, Brother Elam. Is there anyone else that would like to say anything? Yeah. Something else I was going to say is looking back and laying the hand to the plow, I could look back and not forgive. And I choose to forgive. So that's what I wanted to do. And yeah, as far as I think they have to forgive me as well because I was not a—I was not a fun person to be around.

I was just—my personality, I can explain. I was just not a good communicator back in those days. So yeah, now my life has really changed from there.

Praise the Lord.

He did that for you, and He'll do that for everyone else. He's the great physician. Take our problems to Him. He can always solve them.

All right. Anyone else?

Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. So I was very interested in—glad I joined in. Question that I had, you mentioned from going from Cincinnati—was it Iowa or Illinois—to Boston, Massachusetts. So my question was exactly when did you leave the Amish, or how did that go with your family? How were you accepted? And did they excommunicate you for doing that step? I wasn't clear. Maybe if you could elaborate a little bit on that would be good.

Okay. No, I'm not excommunicated from the Amish.

So we had lived in Roberts, Montana for two years, and they're almost like New Order, and they do not excommunicate for leaving. Now, if we did not join a church that was biblical as far as head covering, communion, and some of that stuff, we would have got excommunicated. Usually, they give about a year's time for you to join some church too. I see.

But my parents don't really accept us as not excommunicated because they're still in the conservative church. But most of my brothers are open to us. They would come visit us, and I would go visit them. And actually, two of my brothers have left the Amish since that, so. Nice. I see. Well, that's good.

Yeah. I just had a question. You mentioned about basically going kind of from Amish to not Amish, and I was just wondering where that actually happened or how that works, so. Yeah. Actually, when we went to Cincinnati, Iowa, from Montana, that's when we left. We were out of the Amish a little over a year before we went to Boston, so yeah.

I see. Well, very good. May God bless you as you continue.

All right. Thank you. Anyone else?

All right. If not, it's been good. Let's keep going forward and serve the King and rejoice in His kingdom. Brother Atley, would you close us in prayer this morning?

Sure. Let's pray. Lord in heaven, thank you for this day. Thank you for helping me, and thank you for these other brothers that have come on. Thank you for everything you've done for us. Just want to ask you for your blessing on our lives and help us to grow and become more like you and help us to see you in your kingdom. Help us to just be in your kingdom at all times. Help us to grow and reach others. Help others that are struggling and help those that are not sure where to go. Help them to become part of your kingdom and not just go out into the world. Help them to become more like you in every way.

Just want to pray this all in Jesus' name. Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren.