“Shunned but Not Forsaken A Family’s Pilgrimage Toward Truth” ~Michael Steury

Guide me, O the great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land. Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hope for Wandering Amish. We're very pleased to have Michael Steary with us this morning, and I look forward to hearing his life story, his testimony, how the Lord worked in his life, brought him to himself.

To all of us ex-Amish and everyone that's listening in, this will be an encouragement.

Just listen in and be encouraged in the Lord, and we're going to get started real soon here. I'd like to start with a word of prayer. Dear Lord God, thank you for this opportunity this morning to hear another testimony of your gracious working in this brother's life. Bless Brother Michael as he gets into sharing. Give him the thoughts and words that you would have him to share. May you be exalted, and may many people be encouraged to love and good works to walk with you faithfully. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I wanted to say that Michael is living in Montana right now. He has a wife and six children there. He used to be living in Michigan.

But we'll hear his story. Let's just hand it over to you, Brother Michael. Good morning, everyone. So yeah, my story probably begins like a lot of Amish people's stories go growing up. Well, we grew up in a Swiss conservative setting, so our German dialect was a little different. We didn't speak the same type of dialect, but we could kind of understand each other. So starting with my ancestors, so the name Steary, I thought it was interesting here. Was it maybe one of the last videos you made from Hope for Wandering Amish? Efram, I think you shared on the last names that came into the Amish circles from Jacob Ammons, back from after Jacob Ammon's time.

And Steary is also a name that was added, I believe. So my great-great-grandfather, Peter Arnold Steary, came from Switzerland, and he came over as a single man at the age of 25. And he was a cheesemaker by trade. And so I don't think that we can be completely 100% certain if he was Amish when he came over or if he joined the Amish after he came over. But his parents and grandparents definitely were not Amish.

And his father was a school teacher, and his great-grandfather was a school teacher also, or what they called a korkiricht in the church, which was explained to me as being kind of like, well, we would call a deacon in our church. He would kind of see that people were coming to church and doing the right thing.

And he would keep track of who was there, who was not there, and so forth. So then when he came over, the story goes that he worked for this Amish family. It's very possible. I don't know that we can be 100% certain. He worked for this Amish family and married an Amish woman and joined the Amish.

And then on my grandma's side, this would be on my dad's side, it would be my third great-grandfather, I believe it was Jacob Brandenburger, if I'm not mistaken, was also, I think maybe he was from France. I'm not even sure. But I don't believe he—I think he joined the Amish, maybe. So the Brandenburger name and the Steary name are both relatively new blood in the Amish names. They were back from the 1800s. Well, I would say new, but I guess the Amish started back in 1693 when the split began. But that being said, my grandpa, Steary, moved from Allen County, Indiana. He grew up in Allen County, Indiana. My dad was born in Allen County, Indiana, until he was like seven years old, and they moved to Michigan, Camden, Michigan.

And so my dad grew up there, got married there, I was born there, grew up there until I was 17 or 18, I think, and then we moved to Missouri. So my growing up years were good. I had a lot of good memories, but there was always strife in the church, and there was always differences of opinions and a lot of things that I didn't understand, but I always still believed that the Amish were right. I just believed that it was just a matter of deciding which church was the right church.

So my school years were all in Camden, Michigan, and as I grew up, as I became a teenager, I fell into this intersectional morality, and that had a grip on my life for many years. And also into the youth, into the sin of tobacco and drinking, not too much of that, but still a decent amount of that as I grew up in my teenage years. And then when I was 18, that was before we moved. We actually moved when I was 19. When I was 18, I started dating my wife, which was a neighbor in the community that I grew up in. And then in the spring of 2007, I would have been 19 that year, my parents decided to move because of issues in the church.

And that's when we moved to Greentop, Missouri. That was another Amish community that was started by a bishop and some people from Allen County, Indiana, which was the original community that my grandpa, Steary, had moved from in 1969 to Camden, Michigan.

And then also on my mom's side, I didn't share. My mom's side would have been—her maiden name would have been Iker, and her mom's name would have been Graeber. So I had Iker and Graeber on my mom's side, Steary and Brandenburger on my dad's side. And they also would have migrated from Allen County. Then we moved to Missouri. I lived there from March, I believe, of 2007 until September of 2008. My wife and I got married. I moved back to Michigan, and we lived there, started our young married life there in 2008. And then we lived there. My parents, in the meantime, were also not happy in Greentop, so they ended up moving back to Michigan in 2009 and rented a place in Quincy, Michigan, because there was a bishop from that community that was also looking to start another community.

In the spring of 2010, my parents and this bishop and a couple of ministers from Quincy started another community, which was North Adams, Michigan. And when I talk about North Adams, Michigan, Camden, Michigan, Athens, Michigan, they're all relatively within about 50 miles of one another, so 50 to 60. They moved over there, started that community in the spring of 2010. I was still living in Camden, Michigan, the original community that we grew up in. In 2014, we had some issues with the church that we were living in, in Camden. And also, my parents were very opposed to us living in Camden because they believed that it was wrong the way that the church was operated and the way things went.

And so we had some pressure from that. And so in 2014, we had some things happen in that church that we couldn't support, so we moved to North Adams. But things already there were not going well. By the time we moved there in the spring of 2014, we bought a piece of property, built some buildings, moved in, and hoped that things would go better. And things did not go better. We lived there for not even one year.

We moved there in May of 2014, and we moved back out in June of 2015. So it was a little over a year. And so from there, we were not knowing what we're going to do, where we're going to go. And we regrouped, several of us. We had what they call friendly man. I think everybody that was Amish knows what that means. And things did not plan out. And we decided to regroup, start another community. And this was in the spring of 2015, which is when Athens, Michigan, was born. That's where we were until August of last year.

And so we moved there, and we thought that this time we would get things right. And we would use the Bible. My dad was more at that point in life, my dad, well, he was like that growing up more as well, but he had gotten to the point where he didn't want to have too many just traditional guidelines, but use the Bible more for our guidance. But that didn't really go too on. I, at that point, wasn't really interested in that. I thought that we as Amish still needed to have our guidelines the way the Amish did, because if we didn't, then what was going to hold people together and how were we going to enforce things?

So we had some disagreements on how to write up for an ordinance, but we did get through with that. We got done with that. But things went well for about five years, probably. And then about that time in life, my uncle, Dan Steary, which also lives out here in Montana where we live, left the Amish, which really put a shockwave through the community. And I, at that point, was very much opposed to what they were doing. I believed what they were doing was wrong.

I always believed that the Amish were something that I would always be a part of. They were one of the only people, places, or cultures that were right. And so I believed that they were wrong, but yet I struggled with the fact the day that we excommunicated them, I felt emotional, and I struggled with it. I believed we were doing the right thing, but yet it bothered me. It really bothered me. It's probably the first time that excommunicating someone really touched me emotionally.

And so, but before this, I'm going to say, after we were married, I don't remember the year, but I started digging into our Anabaptist history. So I started reading some of Ben Blank's books, like The Amazing Story of the Yellow Split, Resurrection, Reformation, and Beyond. And it was very interesting. And at that point, I believe I was only wanting to know where our Anabaptist, where our history comes from. Not that I believed that there was anything wrong with our culture. It was just that I wanted to know where we came from. And so after that, there was, I think it was in the budget or something that came through mail, a magazine or something came through mail.

I got this little flyer that had on it about the called the Crossbearer series. And I think many of you probably know what I'm talking about. Andrew St. Marie wrote those books about Jacob Ammon, Connor Grebel, and Michael Sattler, I believe it was. And then I remember seeing this flyer laying on the floor, and I was like, "Well, I wanted to order those books. I'm going to have to save that flyer." And I think through that is when I found out about some of David Brousseau's books.

So once I started reading into our culture, kind of what they believed and how they lived, I started being challenged in understanding and seeing that they did practice what the Bible. They used the Bible for their guidelines. I'm not saying that there weren't mistakes made, but that their hearts were to follow the Bible and not just the commandments of man.

And so as we continued our journey, my uncle Dan got excommunicated, and we started kind of we struggled with that, but yet we thought it was the right thing. Things went okay for about another year. And then I really started digging in more to after I read some of Andrew's books, I found out about David Brousseau's books. And then the two books that probably changed my life the most, where I ultimately, I believe, helped me find Christ, was this book. I don't know if you guys can see it.

There was a book that maybe it's blurry. It wasn't. But it's called Secrets to the Kingdom Life. It's written by David Brousseau. And also this book by Andrew St. Marie, it's called Walking in the Resurrection. And the Walking in the Resurrection is a Schleithaim confession of faith. So it's the nine articles of faith that were written up, I believe, in 1527 in Schleithaim, Switzerland, by Michael Sattler and a group of people.

And when I read that book, it really, especially the Walking in the Resurrection, reading that book, when I started seeing what the early church actually believed about excommunication, I started seeing I was convicted that we were wrong in how we applied it. And it was very clear because it was backed up with scripture. And so the more I read that, the more I was convicted, and the more I believed that the Lord showed me. And so ultimately, I believe it was in the spring of 2022, I was in the bedroom one day, and I believe I was listening to listening or reading. I believe I was listening to the message that David Brousseau had on salvation and knowing what the early Christians believed about salvation and knowing that my sins can be forgiven, that my past sins can be forgiven, they can be washed and blotted out, and they can be made white as snow.

And I remember that thought coming to me. It was a new thought to me, and it had never really occurred to me that it was something that I knew I could believe and that I knew to be true. Even though growing up, I always believed that God would forgive, but I didn't really know exactly how I knew when and for sure.

So that was a new thought for me. And it was, I believe, ultimately that at that point that Christ came into my heart and I understood what salvation actually was. Because after that, I was reading the book, Secrets of the Kingdom Life at that time, and I became really convicted about things in my life, such as gossip and foul language and just simple things like that. I call them simple things, but what I mean is just things in my life that were just commonly kind of accepted, and they just fell away. I was convicted, and they fell away, and they were not a part of my life anymore. And so it was from there on my life continued to change, and I started seeing ourselves become distant, disconnected from the Amish church that we were part of.

And I didn't like it. I didn't know exactly what to do about it, but I knew that it was coming. I could feel it. I could sense it. We started reading our Bible in English as well and started just seeing that it was not we were not applying a lot of things correctly. And so ultimately, we were just staying undercover, trying to do our thing beyond Amish and still being convicted about certain things and just being quiet as much as we could. And so then it got to the point where in 2022, we had some issues with finding a teacher. And that's kind of a long story. But just to make it short, I ended up going in, my wife and I. I did for the most part, but my wife helped me.

And my nephew went in, and we taught school for one year in the year of 2022 in the spring of 2023. So at this point, I was just being quiet. We weren't saying much. I would talk to some of my friends, my family, not my immediate family. I could talk to them, but I'm talking about my wife's family, two sisters and brother-in-laws that we were close to. I would talk to them as much as I trusted, but I could only push that so far, and then I would just let go.

But we had a good year teaching school that year, and they wanted us to teach again the next year. In 2023, things were getting heated. Things were getting tense. And I knew that it wouldn't be too long until we would probably be found out and ultimately excommunicated. So I told them that, "No, it's probably not going to work." And I would have loved to. I enjoyed it. At this point, my family was all kind of in agreement on the whole thing as far as what was right, what was wrong in the church.

But I just remember that I did struggle a lot with the thought of being excommunicated because I had this deep burden. I still carry that burden for my children. I was like, "My wife and I, we can see what's wrong. We know if we step away from it, we know what we stepped away from. But what about our children? If we make a decision, ultimately, it's going to affect them. And where do we go? How do we know where to go?" And I would go and I would just go into their bedroom sometime at night and cry.

It was heavy on my heart. I didn't know what to do about it. I just wanted the Lord to guide us, direct us, and to take us where He wanted us. And that was ultimately our heart, was to walk with the Lord and know that we were walking with the Lord and find that peace. And so, yeah, it was once we got excommunicated. Well, so then finally, it came down in August of 2023. The ministry wanted to come around. They wanted to talk about some things about our ordinance.

And we told them that we had some questions about the articles of faith that we grew up with. We said, "If we can't agree with that, then talking about our ordinance was not going to change anything." And they weren't really interested in talking about the Bible or the articles of faith. They said that that was not the focus. The focus was to talk about our ordinance. And so my dad actually challenged them with the torture confession of faith with Article 6, which talks about repentance and amendment of life. And it's very clear in there, in Article 6, about that if we do not repent and we do not turn away, that going to church or baptism or any other external sacrifice will help us nothing.

And also Article 16, I believe, it talks about excommunication. And it was very clear in there on excommunication, as I had shared earlier, on how I became convicted on excommunication, which, according to the article, I became convicted or aware that in there, the excommunication was not applicable unless people were born-again believers. And then it was also only applicable to a person that was born again, that was a believer and had fellowship with the saints, had held communion with the saints, and had backed away. And it was not. So the realization hit me that we were a bunch of unbelievers, excommunicating more unbelievers. So I didn't understand how God was even involved in any of it.

And so my dad challenged them with that when they wanted to come. They weren't interested. But they did come around that Saturday before church. They came to our house, the bishop and all the ministry. And so I tried to share a little bit what I could on why we believed what we believed and what the Bible says about being born again of water and spirit. Because I was challenged when my uncle Dan left. He asked me what that meant. He said, "We know what the water part is, but what does it mean about spirit?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know.

Good question." So I was, at that point, open, and that stayed with me for quite a while, just pondering that. What does it mean? It says we are to be born again in water and of spirit. And so when they came, I asked the ministry that. I said, "What does that mean?" And then the bishop told me, "Well, that means he said it in German, but he said that means the Holy Spirit, right?" I said, "Yeah, that's what I would believe." And then he looked at me kind of sharply, and he was like, "Do you understand that?" I said, "Well, that's our heart.

That's our desire, is to understand that and to walk in that or whatever." And so we talked about some different things. And he said, "Well, today, we're not here to talk about the scripture. We're here to talk about our ordinance." And he said, "That's what we talk about on Sunday." He said, "The scripture is so holy that we need people to" they would ask testimony time. We would call it titheness after the sermon. And he said, "It's so holy that that's why we ask titheness." And he said, "If you guys aren't there, how are you going to hear it?" And so I was and coming to that, I actually should step back just a little bit and fill in.

I missed a part. So this was in August of 2023. In the spring of 2023, we had already been we were hiding and laying low and just keeping quiet. But in the spring of 2023, we had actually been out. My brother Steven and his family and my wife and my family had been out east. We went on vacation. But ultimately, the reason for that trip was because I had started listening to some of David Brousseau's messages about the early Christians. I was reading some of his books. And then I read Andrew St. Marie, some Andrew St. Marie's material. And so I wanted to meet David, and he was busy. And then I ended up finding an email or something because at this point, I had a tablet.

I did have some technology. And I emailed them and asked when I could meet. And we made out a time that we could actually meet. And while we were out there, we actually went there for church that Sunday. That's when I met Brother Elam Peachy.

And so it was very interesting. That was our first time to a church that was not Amish. And we were still Amish. We were still in good standing at that time. We were not excommunicated. And so that was quite a that was quite a step for us to even consider that. But then coming home from that, then some of my brothers, my family knew about it, but they weren't saying they weren't going to say anything. But then some of my brothers were also not happy, and my dad, they weren't happy with where they were at in the church. But ultimately, they thought that we might be leaving the Amish at that time. We did not have made up our mind exactly where we were going.

We didn't know. But we could see that it was definitely heading that direction. And so I told my brother one day, he was like, "Well, are you then just done with the Amish? Are you just leaving?" I said, "Well, I don't know. I mean, it's not right. We can't continue how we are." I wasn't sure where it was ending up or where it was going at that point, but it was definitely heading that direction.

And he said, "Well, would you be open to go with us to visit another church?" I said, "Sure. Yeah. I can ask my wife, but I don't think that we would be opposed at that point." They wanted to go visit a church in Colorado. And I can't say the name.

It was more southern, Equitapaxy, Equitapaxy, Colorado. And so there was this Amish church there, but they were all but not Amish, more or less. And we were like I told my brother, I said, "If you want to," I said, "then make it. If you believe that God's calling you to go, then go. Just move ahead with it and do it." We called a driver, found some vans, it all fell together. And I don't know, it was a couple of days later, I think, we were heading to Colorado.

We went to that church and came back. And then I think we went to another church before that or after that. I'm not exactly sure. But long story short, we weren't attending our own church much at that point. And so they were not liking that as well. So by the time that they came to our house in August of '23, they had told us that after they had talked to us for a while, the bishop said, "Well, I think we've heard what we need to hear. I think we can see where this is all going." He was scared with the mindset that I had. And to this day, I was not upset. I was not mean.

I knew that they wouldn't agree with it, but yet I tried to share a little the best that I could. And it was not received at all. And so one of the ministers asked me if I was in agreement with a 1955 writing where all that they called it a bisheless, where all the churches got together and it had to do with excommunication. And I said, "Well, I wasn't" "No, I don't." I said, "I don't have one. I have not read one." He said, "Well, you've had quite a lot to say today to think that you don't even know what's wrote in that letter." And I was like, "Well, I'm sure that maybe there's some good things on it, but I'm not sure what the people done before 1955, before they had that letter."

I mean, they had the Bible, and I believe they got a long fine. But yeah, those were the types of things that they really held themselves on. But anyhow, ultimately, they told us that day that if we weren't in church the next day, that our things would be finished. So we spent the next day together with we did with two of my brothers and just spending time reading the Bible and expecting to be excommunicated, which we ultimately were that day. My dad and mom not my mom. My dad and five of us brothers and our wives were excommunicated.

And so we knew that we weren't going back. And so ultimately, from that point on, there were the rest, my mom and then my younger brother, his wife, and my sisters at home got excommunicated throughout the process of we got excommunicated. I believe it was the end of August.

And by March of the following year of 2024, I think everybody else was excommunicated, including my wife's oldest sister and her family because there were some children from their family that married into my family. And so it brought them into the mix. They weren't going to shun their children. And also my sister that was dating their boy. And so they ultimately got excommunicated as well. And then so now, after we got excommunicated, we were like, "Where do we go? What do we do?" It just felt like the walls had fallen away. Even though I knew it wasn't right, but yet it was what we knew. It was what we grew up with. It was what was dear to us.

It was near to my heart. It wasn't that a lot of people and I think maybe that that's the mistake that is made sometimes. We were always told that the Amish people or that the ex-Amish people were always pointed to the people that go because they're just rebellious, that might still be in the flesh wanting to have fun, wanting to go experience the world. And so we're always presented with those examples.

And so that was another thing that happened in my to anybody out there that has afraid of reaching out. I had afraid to reach out to anybody ex-Amish because I believed and felt that they would just tell me to leave the Amish, that I would just get a biased opinion. And so I just want to assure you that there are people out there that have a heart for the Amish. There are people out there that are not out there just to live life. They're out there for Christ. And that their heart is not to tell you to leave the Amish, but to point you to Christ. So then after we were excommunicated, we were like, "Okay, where do we go?

What do we do?" The walls fell away. They were stripped from us. We were now shunned. And then I found the lessons encouraging that Ephraim shared earlier in this Hope for Wandering Amish. Now you're excommunicated. Where do we go? What do we do?

And people think that you leave for pleasure and just because you want more material things, that's not how it is. Yeah, we lost convictions on some material things, but I could have cared less if I drove a vehicle or not. That was not in my that was not in my in my life at all. It became the practical thing to do, and we lost convictions on it being wrong or not biblical or whatever against the Bible. But so I just wanted to share that if there's people that are wanting to know that there are people that are not Amish that have a heart for the Amish and are not just there to bash them or tell them how wrong they are, even though there are things, there are things that are wrong, that that's not the heart.

Their heart is not to tell them how wrong they are, but to point them to Christ. So we were wondering, where are we going to go? What are we going to do? And I told my wife, "Well, now that we can," because we had attended a church singing in Allen County, ACCF, Allen County Christian Fellowship, before we were excommunicated. This was not too long before we were excommunicated. We went down there. We snucked.

My mom knew and some of my family, but the church obviously didn't know. And that was also a big stretch because these people were excommunicated. And so I told my wife, "Now that we can," I said, "I want to go visit churches. I want to go see what church life is about, what it's like, how it works, how they function, how it operates." So we started attending Allen County Christian Fellowship quite regularly. And most of my family started attending a church that was in affiliation with the church in Equitapaxy, Colorado, which was in Holmes County, Ohio. There was an Amish bishop there by the name of Norman Yoder. And so they started attending there. But my wife and I, we felt that they were spiritual.

They were following the Lord. They were walking by the word of God. But we felt that they were more kind of the same place that we were in. And we felt like, "Why walk through the same things that everybody has walked through if there's people that can give us direction and advice?" So we felt called a different direction a little bit at that time. And so ultimately, through a series of events, we ended up visiting this church out here because my uncle was out here. We knew about it. And their pastor had visited at our house. And we also went to another church in Shipshewana several times. And we visited the church one time with some people from Allen County up in Millington, Michigan, which had just kind of left the Amish a year or so before that.

Nathan Miller, I think, was the guy's name. He would have been Omar Miller's son, if I'm not mistaken. So we visited that church. And we had just we really enjoyed it. And the more we visited, the more we knew that we wanted to be a part of something and we wanted to grow. That was our heart, was to belong and to grow. And we ultimately decided to move in the spring of '24, move out here, which was not in our schedule at all in life. It was where God called us.

And so in August of '24, we moved out here. And it has been a great blessing. It has helped us to grow. It has helped us to just have people that care around you, that walk with you and encourage you. And so that has really helped us. And then my wife gave her heart to Christ in October of last year, which was a great blessing.

And then in this spring, we were both my wife was really strongly convicted that she was not baptized unto Christ. She was baptized into the church. I was as well, but it wasn't as big a deal to me at that point. I felt like I had other things to work through. But then we talked about it, and we talked to our pastor about it. And he was like, "Well, it was up to us." And whenever we felt like we believed that we should or it had to be something that we were convicted of, that wasn't something that was forced on anyone.

And so I had a struggle the day before we got baptized because and I believe that God used that to make it real to me because the more that I struggled about some things in life, just in general about knowing for sure, because I couldn't point to a the biggest thing that bothered me was because I couldn't remember and point to a specific day and hour that I just had a light bulb experience.

I struggled with that. And so I shared that with my pastor and them. And they encouraged me to just that if I had a clear conscience, to just walk by faith. And they shared some scripture. And it really encouraged us. And what was interesting, the more that I struggled with it, the more it became real to me and the more I wanted it. And so I believe that the Lord used that to show me.

And because the reason I wanted it to be real, I was like I was already sprinkled one time. And I wanted this to be real. I wanted this to be I wanted to feel it. I wanted to know. I wanted to it wasn't just something that I wanted to do because it's just protocol or it's just what we do. So in March of this year, we were baptized. And so it's been very it's been a blessing. It's been quite a journey. And we're still learning. We're still in the process of wanting to grow deeper and to continue on and being a blessing. So one thing that I want to share as I wrap up is that one verse that really stood out to me as we were growing up is people we talked about salvation.

We talked about being saved that we could not really know if we were saved or not. And I run across this verse. And I'll share this verse. It's in 1 John 5, verse 13. And John wrote, he said, "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he will hear us." And I was like, "Wow, that says that we may know." I was like, "Well, I got to read this in German. I got to see if the German Bible reads like this."

So I read it in the German Bible, and it read the same. So I was like, "What are we doing with these verses? What are we doing with scripture?" It's not that the English Bible isn't reading it different. It's just, I don't know, understanding it more clearly, maybe. So I found that interesting. And also, I wanted to share that people that like David Berso, I'm sure a lot of people have other authors as well that write books.

I just think we should remember them and bless them for their work because they do a work in people's lives. Those books that I read really helped me. They encouraged me. Ultimately, I believe helped me find Christ. And so I'm not wanting to promote that outside of scripture. I believe that scripture is our final authority, but I believe that there are people that can give some insight and encouragement. And one reason that I felt safe, so to speak, to read David's books was because he did not have no Amish background. And yet, I found that he understood a lot of the things that we believed and understood. So it was just encouraging. It was like somebody that I trusted to listen to or read books from because he seemed to have the same values.

But yet, I believe that because he was not Amish, in my mind, he wasn't biased. So I just wanted to encourage people that write books that you never know who will read them and what for change they could bring into their hearts. So with that, I think that concludes of where we're at. Our story is still being written. And may God have the glory. And I'll turn the time back over to Brother Ephraim.

All right. Thank you so much, Michael. I really, really enjoyed hearing your testimony and about your walk of life and everything that you shared.

In a lot of ways, it would parallel our own experiences. And I think the other Amish, ex-Amish on here this morning, and they'll listen to it later, will be encouraged. And that's our goal for Hope for Wandering Amish is to encourage each other in our walk in life in seeking Jesus and being his disciples, walking a walk that's clear where there's no doubt, confusion, where we know him. We know him as our teacher, as our Lord. Our vision on Hope for Wandering Amish is not to encourage people in a rejection of the Amish, their culture, the things they stand for. There's a lot of good. And there's a lot of precepts that they have held on to that most of the churches in the day and age we live in haven't.

But our goal is to encourage folks to latch on to Christ and to embrace the light and walk in the light. And then if you find yourself in a church that doesn't appreciate your genuine walk with Christ, then you'll probably be forced to find another church. And our encouragement, our goal is to help those kinds of people to find a church that really is walking with Christ in the historic faith.

And we are blessed with many churches across the country and across the world that are seeking a genuine walk with the Lord Jesus. You mentioned Scroll Publishing, David Berso, and Sermon on the Mount Publishing. I'll put a plug in for that as well. Those were authors and bookstores that really encouraged and blessed and helped me in my own searching years of wrestling. And I still enjoy reading those books and be encouraged. And the walk isn't over.

As long as we're living this life, we're to be continuing to sit at the feet of Jesus and learning of him. We never get done. I think too many times, people, they have a crisis moment. Maybe the light comes on. They realize what the true faith is, and they reach out for it. And maybe they genuinely receive it, make changes, whatever. And then I think the temptation is to feel like, "Okay, now we have it," and start tooling off. And we quit learning and being encouraged, and we can cool off. And that's why so many people have a good start, but years down the road, you wonder what happened. They're not on the straight and narrow way anymore.

So yep, our encouragement is to keep our eyes on Jesus and walk in the light and pursue the light.

The whole reactionary thing can be so powerful. If we look back at the darkness and react to it and run from it, it's not going to work out well. You try to run from something that's trying to get you or something that's dark, something that's bad. You look back and run away from it, you're going to stumble and fall. You're going to have your eyes on Jesus and then run to him. So just really encouraged by this morning.

Thank you again, Michael. I'd like to open it up. If there's anybody else that has anything to add, questions, whatever you might have, just a word of blessing, I want to open it up and give you a chance to do that.

Well, Brother Michael, I just want to say thank you for getting up early in the morning. I mean, you're like in Montana. What time is it at your house right now?

About 4:45. Okay. Yeah. Thanks for the sacrifice you put into this. It's okay. Pardon me? I said it's okay. Okay. All right. Yeah. I was definitely blessed and encouraged by your testimony. And I don't know, there's a part you were sharing about the many different church starts you were part of growing up.

You'd try something, it would fail. Start another church community, it would fail. Yeah. That actually touched my heart. And I had to think of the woman at the well where Jesus said he would give her living waters where she would not thirst again.

And I know the world is full of people that are thirsting. They're looking for things, but it's found in Christ. There's the verse in John 7:37. On that last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out. So you can see where Jesus stands, and he cries out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." So I guess that's an invitation for the world that is hungry, thirsting.

Jesus is offering that living waters. He's offering that drink to come to him. So thank you and blessings to you and your family. Thank you. All right. Yeah. Thank you, Elam. Is there anyone else that would like to share something?

Sure, I would. It was good hearing that testimony. I would say it's one that I've heard bits and pieces of in the past, not about Michael, but just about people who have gone through what he has. And some of it resonates with what I went through being growing up Catholic.

Some of the things that he said were very similar to what I was told. One, don't worry about what the Bible says. You just come to church, and we'll tell you what it says. And I think, Michael, you said something similar to that when you went to a bishop or something.

Yeah. He just said that that day that they came to talk to us, he said that we're not here today to talk too much about the Bible. He said, "We're here today to talk about our ordinance or our rules that they wanted that they enforced." And they also another thing that I wanted to add was they were very strong on shunning. That day, they asked us if social shunning. So if somebody was excommunicated, we were not to have anything to do with them socially. So when my uncle got excommunicated when he left in 2020, they started coming back and stopping by occasionally. And so that day before we were excommunicated, they asked us if we agree with my uncle.

Do you agree with your uncle? And I just kind of kept brushing it aside because I knew where it was going. And finally, I told them, I said I had told our deacon, I said, "I understand what you're asking. You're asking me if I'm agreeable with my uncle. That way, you can just write it off as, well, yep, he's a heretic. Yep, he's lost." I said, "I don't understand why we have to say that while we have Catholic theology, we have Mennonite theology, or we have Dan's theology, whatever you want to call it." I said, "Our focus is to serve Christ. We want to walk with Christ. We want to walk according to his word."

I said, "I know where you're getting from." And they didn't really like that answer, but I knew that that's where they were coming from. So yeah, it was very much like when if somebody that's excommunicated, you're not supposed to let them in the house. You're not supposed to give them anything to eat. You shouldn't have much conversation with them. So the excommunication is being expulsed out of the church, but you're also to shun them for life. I mean, until they come back and repent according to the church.

Okay. Yeah. That was one thing. And then the other you mentioned about getting first, is my sound okay? I got my engine running so I can keep my computer charged. Yeah. You're coming through nice and clear, John. Keep going. Okay.

So at one point, you said about getting you thought you needed to make some changes, and you got some things cleaned up in your life. You stopped swearing and different things like that that you knew were wrong, but you evidently weren't trained that way.

Because I can remember doing that myself when I was a drunk. I mean, I knew about God, and I knew some of the things I was doing was bad. And that was one of them that I came along and said, "I got to change this. It's just not right."

Well, I had tried to change some of that stuff earlier in my life, but the only way that I knew how to do it was to just tell God, more or less tell God what I was going to do.