The Story of Rosie Otto: A Journey of Redemption and Resilience

Lesson Transcript

Gott ist die Liebe, lässt mich in Ruhe, denn Gott ist die Liebe, er liebt auch mich. Drum sag ich noch einmal: Gott ist die Liebe, Gott ist die Liebe, er liebt auch mich. Good afternoon. Welcome to our second of four planned for this year, 2025. Um, we are excited to have Rosie Otto join us today, Saturday, April 26. Um, just a little bit about Rosie: she and her husband both grew up Amish, and they found themselves searching for something more.

They have shared over 18 years of marriage and a deep commitment to their faith, family, and community. Brian is a trust designer, and together they homeschool their four children, ranging in age from 17 to 6 years old. They're actively involved in their local church in Chambers, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. I'm going to ask Salome to say a word of prayer, and then Rosie, the floor will be yours. All right, let's pray.

Father, thank you so much for Rosie and the testimony that she has been, um, and the blessing that she has been in my life. Lord, I just pray that you would bless her as she shares, and I pray that you would give her the words to speak, um, to share what you have done in her life. Father, just pray that the things that she shares could be a help and a blessing to others. Just thank you for this time together. In Jesus' name, amen. Good afternoon. It's good to be with y'all. Thank you for that introduction, Autumn.

Uh, yeah, like she said, I'm Rosie. Uh, my name is Rosanna, but I go by Rosie for the most part. Uh, my husband's Brian Otto, and, uh, yeah, I'm a mom primarily and a wife, and that's kind of what keeps me busy. When Salome asked me if I'd consider, uh, speaking about my experiences, I said yes, um, not because I think my life is particularly interesting, but because there's kind of a real dearth of Anabaptist perspective online, um, especially from a woman's point of view.

We're in a unique moment culturally, and it's a good time to get the word out. Um, my husband and I have many contemporaries from our youth groups that have also left the Amish, and we've been shocked at how many of them have gotten divorced or just simply given up on churches in general. Um, I think these cultural wins, you know, I think about these and how they affect our lives and the world my children are coming of age in.

Um, just something that I've found interesting, and, uh, especially in light of my own family, I, I really find it helpful to, to spend some time thinking about that, but I'll get into my story now. So I was born the sixth child of seven to a rather non-typical Amish family. I spent the first part of my childhood in Texas with my earliest memories as a two-year-old.

Of being under a big blue sky, I remember hot sun, road runners, prickly pear cactus plants, longhorn cattle, bull fights, Mexicans, all intertwined with our family life against a soundtrack of Billy Jill and George Street coming from my older sister's hidden radio. Life was pretty freewheeling and happy in those early years.

In 1990, at age six, my family moved to Bondowell, Wisconsin, which was a shock in many ways, um, weather-wise, of course, but also culturally, since the Texas Amish churches were much more relaxed and we had electricity and telephones in our home. Our new church was what I call regular old order, and we went back and forth with Northern Indiana a lot. Um, and Wisconsin is where I spent the rest of my growing up years. I don't really miss the weather there, I will say that much.

I don't know if my early years in a hotter climate affected me, but I have always enjoyed warm weather more. Um, I was a pretty unhappy, uptight school child, which I didn't actually realize until years later when I finally had the distance to re-examine my life as I had, as I knew it. Um, I was an extremely shy, sensitive child, so I didn't know how, I don't know how bad it would have been had my beloved oldest sister not been my teacher for the first three years of my school life.

Um, it's just one of those things that I look back on and thank the Lord for. Um, by the seventh, eighth grade, I finally started finding my stride and doing really well in my studies. I used my abundant free time to teach myself science and astronomy. Our school didn't teach any science at all, which I think is somewhat typical of Amish schools, um, and a lot of other random things.

So it was pretty sad when I graduated eighth grade because I knew that meant the end of school for me, and I had just really discovered the joy of learning. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about my parents now, and I'll be mentioning my dad a bit here because he was a significant factor in my teen years. He's a brilliant man, probably neurodivergent, to put it in today's terminology, before neurodivergent was a thing.

If you know anything about the Amish communities, as I assume you guys know some, uh, you would immediately know that life was kind of hard for such a guy, especially since conformity is like one of the highest values of the community. Um, and it was hard for his children to be part of an odd family in that environment that values conformity so much and as little deviation as possible. I went through a time of fierce anger and resentment from probably about the ages of 11 to 15.

Um, my mom is a bubbly extrovert, and she had a very hard time understanding my dad, which led to a lot of chaos and drama at times. Uh, one thing that made my upbringing differ widely from the norm, and it did have a positive impact on me, which at the time, of course, didn't really see, but in hindsight, um, was the parade of professors and students that we entertained in our home.

Um, my parents are super hospitable, and they were willing to answer any and all questions from these students, local and foreign exchange students, professors, mostly sociologists and anthropologists. I credit that with my lasting interest in culture and sociology. One of them, Dr. Logan, became especially good friends with my family, and he was always interested in my constant doodling.

I've been drawing for as long as I can remember, and art has been a significant part of my identity, although much less so since I'm a mother. I really, really wanted to go to college to study art and music, or maybe be an English major since I enjoy writing as well. But that's not really something that's an option for Amish girls. Um, my parents did pay for some lessons in fine art when I was 15, which I'm really grateful for.

And I realized at the time already that that was kind of an unusual opportunity that they gave me. They always encouraged me to draw, and what I loved drawing best was always people. Still is. When I turned 16, which is a huge milestone for Amish teens, I was working in my parents' bulk food store. My three older sisters and older brother were married but lived nearby, and I always felt a lot of support from them during the rough patches with my parents.

I didn't realize until pretty recently how much that really helped me, um, as compared to my husband's life, where it was kind of a brutal fight to the top amongst the siblings. So I think some of my older siblings probably had a little bit more conflict among themselves, but I was three years behind my next, um, in-age siblings. So I don't know. I'm not sure how it was for them, but for me, um, that was really helpful.

So very soon after I turned 16, I became really ill and was diagnosed with mono and several other, several other things at the same time. Um, I'd always enjoyed vibrant good health and was hardly sick at all, so this really knocked me off my feet. I was running really hard, trying to stay so busy so that I didn't have time to think about how miserable I really was. So I was forced to come face to face with my mortality and the fact that I wasn't invincible and that I needed something better.

I began searching for God in the places I knew best, like joining church and wearing a bigger cup, you know, that sort of thing. Um, but before I went too far down that path, I read a book called Rekindling the Anabaptist Flame by a man named Ben Gerard, and I came face to face with the realization that I hadn't experienced this new birth that he wrote about. Um, and I knew I, I wanted it, needed it, and that God was calling me to say yes to him.

So I prayed and gave my life to the Lord on a March day, 24 years ago now. Some of my struggles were just beginning. I hadn't been baptized at that point, but my friend and I had planned to join church that summer. I wanted to be baptized, but I had real doubts about the church we were part of. My dad had been excommunicated, um, two years before that, I believe, and there were some screwy things that happened during that whole thing, which just really made me uneasy about joining that church.

But I was really young, and I didn't really know what else to do, so I just went ahead with it. I, I started listening to some messages on tape and try not to get caught by the wrong people, and that really helped sustain and encourage me. That was during the time when Charity had their send-out tape ministry. I don't know if you guys remember that. Um, my dad had subscribed to it, so that was, that was super helpful. Um, let me think.

Yeah, it was around this time when I was about 16 to 18 when some of my older siblings and in-laws, uh, also began searching for the Lord and experienced a new birth. My parents had various, um, acquaintances loosely connected to Charity that came by occasionally, and I really longed to be part of a community that was more spiritually alive. But I spent a lot of time reading and was able to find encouragement through channels like those too.

One author I read as a teen was David Perso, and learning about ancient ways spoke to me and tethered me to something bigger than myself and the circumstances I was in. I'm a big picture person, and I get lost in the weeds really quickly. So the Pilgrim Church, the book, the Pilgrim Church by E.H.

Broadbend, is probably the single most impactful book I've ever read apart from the Bible since becoming a Christian because it traces all those threads through the past 2000 years and just weaves a really beautiful picture of the universal and timeless church of Christ that we have the privilege to be part of. Another book I have loved and reread many times is Peter Hoover's The Russian Secret.

So that really helped me know I was a part of something eternal, like a tapestry that spans the ages, even though the church I was part of fell far short in many ways, especially to an idealistic teenager who had a hard time being patient. At the time, my mom was really unfriendly towards my attempts to live for God, and she would often berate me for my deliberate choices to not get swept up in too much of the youth things and, uh, get too caught up in that world.

Uh, to be fair, there wasn't a high level of immorality going on compared to the larger communities, and that was a deliberate choice my dad made to make sure his children weren't raised in an environment like that. Still, it was quite lonely, and it felt everlasting because I knew I didn't want to stay Amish, but I also didn't want to disrespect my parents or take a path that displeased the Lord.

My relationship with my mom was quite rocky, which led me to becoming an armchair psychologist to help me understand her better. My married sisters and I spent hours dissecting each other and batting around personality theories, and we had a lot of fun doing it. It did help me understand both of my parents better and what made them who they are.

My clashes with my mom had the effect of making me draw closer to my dad, and I came to love and appreciate my dad deeply and to seek out his advice and ideas on questions that I had. That connection spared me more than one mistake. One thing I remember fondly is rarely having to use a dictionary when he was around because he had this encyclopedic knowledge that I could always draw on.

By this time, my oldest three siblings had left the Amish or been put out, to put it in their terminology, and they were exploring different ideas and churches. So I got to watch from the sidelines and kind of form my own conclusions. They had a lot of Protestant evangelical influence on them, and while I couldn't really articulate it at the time, I didn't find it particularly appealing. I became good friends with a young family who were seriously looking into becoming Amish.

The wife was an interesting person, and she was kind of the driver behind it. They were also really into Michael Pearl. But what I really found fascinating was the fact that she was an accomplished artist and musician and photographer and dancer, all things that I was fascinated by. She took me under her wing as an awkward Amish girl and taught me a lot of things that I eagerly soaked up. Her dad was a musician, and he helped me further my technical understanding of music.

Up to that point, I had been completely self-taught. So when she invited me to leave the chaos of my family home and move in with them when I was 18, it was supremely tempting. I wanted to so very much. She had connections in the music world. Her brother was a sound engineer for, um, famous R&B artists in Chicago, and I wanted to kind of immerse myself in the art world. But I knew my parents would be devastated, and I just couldn't do that to them, especially my dad.

My loyalty to him just wouldn't let me, wouldn't let me do that, make that move. Even though he was excommunicated at that point, he was still loyal to the Amish. Um, his attendance was pretty sporadic, though, while my parents lived in Wisconsin, um, because of, yeah, the things that happened in that church. So while I'm grateful for the influence that my friend Erin was in my life and the things I learned from her, it would have been a serious mistake if I had followed my inclinations.

Um, as everyone knows, the art world is fraught with debauchery of all types, and I have little doubt that I would have ended up somewhere that I didn't actually want to be had I chosen to move out and plunge into that world. So one thing the Amish do really well is ground you in common sense and reality. So I often find myself in a weird in-between space where I understand the motivations and behaviors of someone in the art world, and I appreciate the ability for expression of that kind.

Um, yet I can see how easily it becomes untethered from the right and good and becomes an expression of an evil heart. Now I have a daughter that's an artist too, and we have many conversations about, um, these types of things, and a traditional upbringing can create some tensions in an artistic person, uh, before, especially before they're mature enough to see the dangers in the world they're drawn to. When I turned 20, something happened that I considered a miracle.

My mom and dad and I and my little brother had traveled to Michigan to visit some churches because my parents were considering moving there. Soon after we came home, I got a job offer from someone in the Rosebush, Michigan community. My dad actually agreed that I would be allowed to go work there on a temporary basis at first and kind of feel things out and see how I liked the community and with the possibility of my parents moving there later.

I was so excited, and I felt that something interesting was finally happening in my life. We left in the fall, and that following winter, my older siblings came in contact with the Church of God Restoration, and they planned a series of meetings there in Bondwell. Church of God made some inroads into the Amish and ex-Amish circles there for a few years. Critical thinking is not a strong suit of the Amish, and they were just kind of sitting ducks when they swept in with their charisma.

So that's what happened to my siblings. I traveled back home to be a maud for my sister, a maid for those, um, German, for my sister next to me, who is still Amish at the time, and the meetings coincided with the time that I was there. So my parents, being as hospitable as they are, offered to host a bunch of Church of God people that came for the meeting. So I got to see a fair amount of them in both a formal and informal setting. I attended one or two of their meetings as well during that time.

My siblings were so excited and bowled over by the trauma and emotion they get into their services, and if noise is an indication, they would certainly read at the top. But as I observed them, I noticed there wasn't actually a whole lot of substance there. It was just a lot of noise and fluff, you know, like lawyers. The louder they yell, the weaker, you know, their cases. I got to meet their chief apostle, Danny Lane, the guy that started the whole movement, and he really struck me as being quietly manipulative.

And I warned my dad about this. As time went on, that perception only increased, didn't diminish. But I went back to Michigan and had some distance where I could think things through, you know, be a little bit away from the intense pressure they put on you. And to hear the still quiet voice of the Spirit, I was very confused about everything. It sounded good on its surface, but something just didn't sit right with me.

And by that time, I had learned a thing or two about what the voice of the Spirit sounded like, and I knew it didn't produce confusion and turmoil and chaos. And I knew that if I waited until the storm passed, so to speak, I would be able to hear God's voice and hear what He was saying to me about the Church of God. I thank the Lord many times that He opened the door for me to leave Wisconsin right before my siblings brought in the Church of God. So clearly a God thing.

I might have been desperate enough to just jump in with them and disregard my inhibitions. However, eventually, as they decided to, um, embrace the teachings of the Church of God and I remained unconvinced, we began to drift apart. On my part, I was anxious to avoid unnecessary drama, and because I didn't have the language at the time even to articulate my skepticism.

So I later learned that that's a common tactic the Church of God uses, um, to isolate people from their families and other loved ones, uh, for a number of years until they're fully entrenched. Um, for about 10 years, I think we rarely saw them, and they hardly even visited my mom and dad. So I really missed my sisters, but I still had the sister next to me in need that I could relate to fairly well.

However, a few years later, she and her husband joined the Church of God too, and this time I went through a real grieving process. I had lost all three sisters now, and my oldest brother, who I'd been close to as well, around 2018, 2019, their leadership seemingly changed policy and started encouraging them to be friendlier to outsiders. So in recent years, my sisters and I have been able to connect again, at least to an extent.

We just don't talk about our disagreements, but I'm a well aware that they're there under the surface. I'm glad for my parents' sake, especially that, um, now they come home a lot and help them in various ways as well as possible with, you know, living in different areas in different states, as all of us do. In 2020, uh, my oldest brother and his wife came out with their three teenage children.

They've had a really hard time, as is normal for people leaving a cult, but I'm so grateful they haven't rejected Christianity as most do. And yes, I did call it a cult. It took me several years of observation to become sure, but the controlling tactics and manipulation is just classic cult behavior, unfortunately. So we continue to pray for them, and God willing, they will sometime see the light with all that. So back to my time in Michigan, I really enjoyed my two and a half years in Rosebush.

And even though the church ended up disintegrating, eventually everybody that lived there seems to remember it very fondly and it being one of the best communal experiences we've ever had. Not communal as in a commune, but just an active community. And I think that's probably still true for me today. One thing the Amish are unmatched in is effortless community, and it's the thing I miss most about being Amish.

It was a New Order Amish church, but it was fairly atypical in that the services were all in English and there were people there from non-Anabaptist backgrounds. And it just made a really interesting mix that I wholeheartedly enjoyed. And it went a long way towards grounding me in my faith and Christian life to be able to experience that. It was there a little over a year when Brian and I started dating. That's where we met. And he was living in Michigan at, or I'm sorry, in Pennsylvania at the time.

But his brother had married a girl from the community I was in. And that's how we met each other. So yeah, we started dating in February of 2006. And the Lord spoke directly to us both and told us we were meant for each other. Up to that point, we had literally never spoken a word to each other, at least that I can remember. I know it's not that clear-cut for most people, but in our case, it was. So I don't feel like, you know, it has to be that way for everyone, but that is the way our story rolls.

The first conversation we ever had, we talked for like several hours. I could hardly get finished. So we had a long-distance relationship, but we spent many hours on the phone with each other, talking and talking about all sorts of things. We both agreed while we were dating that we didn't see ourselves being Amish long term. We got married about a year later, and I moved to Pennsylvania to his community.

They were having a lot of trouble in his church, and because of that, we ended up leaving sooner than we'd initially thought we would. So like about three months into marriage, we weren't sure what to do or where the Lord was leading us. So we decided to attend church at Faith Builders, which later became Shalom, while we prayed for God to show us what He wanted us to do and where He wanted us.

We traveled down to Shippensburg to visit my great aunt and then visited Shippensburg Christian Fellowship on that Sunday morning. I knew the Brousseau's were there at the time. My family had actually met them while we were living in Texas. I believe we were the first Amish family they had ever met. And my David, or my dad always had David's books around, so somewhat familiar with them. Don Martin was also there, and we enjoyed listening to some of his sermons.

So that together kind of, um, drew us to visiting there and seeing if it would be an option. When we walked in the door, it felt like a spiritual home to us, and we moved to Shippensburg the following year to be part of the community there. And we lived there nine years and trying to think, I think it was in 2017. Yeah, we moved to Texas then. But I'll get into that a bit later. So now we move into the health part of my story, and I apologize in advance if it's boring.

Unfortunately, chronic illness kind of ends up taking over a large part of your life in a way that I had never understood before going through it myself. So now I'm far slower to think that I have the answers for someone else that is dealing with chronic problems because I know how complex the reality is. So I like to think that if nothing else, God has used this to forge more compassion in me than I would have naturally had. I think it was in 2014 that one of my girls first started becoming sick.

By the fall, she wasn't able to walk at all some of the time, and we just crawl around the house when she needed to get around. Symptoms were more dramatic at that point. So she was the first one to get diagnosed with Lyme disease that winter. A few months later, she tested positive for Babesia and Bartonella. My oldest daughter's symptoms manifested more in like panic attacks and more psychiatric symptoms. By midwinter, the entire family was having Bartonella symptoms and Babesia.

I'm sorry, it was Babesia is what I meant. And all five of us tested positive. We had three children at the time. So we had unfortunately gone camping in an endemic area, um, in conditions that were totally optimal for tick bites, and we were just kind of ignorant, didn't realize how big a deal Lyme disease really is. So when I picked some nymphs off my children, I wasn't, I didn't worry about it at all.

But that all happened quite a long time before the symptoms really kicked in, so we didn't connect the dots for quite some time. And that started an almost 10-year-long journey to better health. My three oldest children all had their, or had their individual issues, and it manifested somewhat differently in each one. Brian and I being sick as well, it was beyond challenging. It's impossible to realize the compounding effect when both parents are sick, but we tag teamed as best as we could.

Many times we cried out to the Lord and prayed for healing. We just wanted answers. We tried the whole gambit of known treatments at the time, from antibiotics, microbials, and antifungals to all types of herbal formulas. We spent several hundred thousand dollars, and of course, none of it was a magic bullet. I've heard of many who've ended up bankrupt or losing their homes because of it, and I'm grateful that didn't happen to us.

In the midst of this, in 2017, my husband's work took us to Texas, and we lived there two and a half years before moving back to the same area, except the next town over Chambersburg this time. I left a part of my heart there again, but I know it was the right decision nonetheless. I'm happy to be a part of our church here, and it's been here that I've gotten to know Elam and Shalom much better, and I've gotten to know Autumn and Terry as well.

But now, about 10 years into the Lyme world, there's more knowledge and even simply acknowledgement about the disease, including its unknowns, especially from doctors, but also, unfortunately, from friends and family, um, which is very much harder to deal with. Medical gaslighting is a thing that still happens far too frequently.

Three years ago, we ran across an old friend of ours who had struggled for years with Lyme disease, and he told us about a new therapy that was being used for it, and we hadn't heard about it before. It was called B-Venom therapy. Brian was very intrigued and immediately, like, delved into reading about it. Um, the therapy itself is millennia old, um, and has been used for arthritis, for example, for a long time. But what is new is the use of it in treating Lyme.

We decided to give it a go because we didn't really have anything to lose at this point. People look at us in disbelief when they hear about it because I think they think it sounds so extreme, but I just kind of laugh and say, you know, once you've tried everything else, it's definitely worth a try, especially since it's one of the cheapest things possible to use as treatment. So that's a big thing as well.

So we started sticking ourselves with live bees, first Brian and I, and then as we got the hang of it, we started the children on it as well. I should say the three older ones that were sick too. I don't think my six-year-old would take kindly to it, and she certainly doesn't need it. She's praise the Lord, very healthy, and it just, it does my heart a lot of good to see all her energy. And now that is a different topic.

But it's nearly three years ago now since we started, and some of us are symptom-free at this time, and some of us are close to it. So it has been by far the most effective treatment and really has given us our life back. As far as I know, it's the only treatment that is able to permanently eradicate Borrelia from your tissues and joints. Other treatments help short-term and may help your immune system to get on top of it, but there's always a risk with stressors that it can reactivate.

So the hope that it could be eradicated permanently was really appealing to us because needless to say, by then we were absolutely sick of dealing with it, reading about it, or trying to figure out what to do for our children. The third child, our only son, was born with it. I had had low-key symptoms ever since I had gotten sick as a teen, and I was able to live with it pretty well, um, and, you know, developed a few strategies to keep things low-key enough.

But so it all went pretty well until my third pregnancy with Miles. Um, I really went downhill and got extremely sick, and unfortunately, he was infected while I was pregnant with him. That's been something for me to work through because it feels so unfair to my child. Um, I feel responsible, and yet I had no idea at the time, you know, what I was dealing with.

In case you're wondering, yes, some people really are more susceptible genetically, and as are women, they don't really understand why, but more women have it than men for some reason. So we've walked through dark valleys, sometimes valleys that lasted several years, but we've gone places we thought impossible, but we have found treasures in the darkness. Treasures we wouldn't have known if we hadn't walked this path. So I know there are more families like us out there.

I've heard of a few that have, you know, four or five people sick out of the family, though it's not really common to my knowledge. One of the things that really stands out to me is it feels like God must have a sense of irony. An insect made us terribly sick, and an insect brought us the cure. There's some cosmic justice in there somewhere.

Currently, I'm spending a lot of time, more than I want to, in fact, reading medical papers and studies and connecting the dots on how to help with the many secondary issues that a chronic illness ends up causing. But it's worth it to me. I do anything for my husband and children. One of my major, our major breakthroughs we have found through our own research, um, some things like fixing zeta potential. Um, yeah, that's that's a big one. We've started using red light therapy.

That's been really helpful for some of these secondary issues. Um, there's like a lot of inflammation that we're dealing with, that sort of thing. I'm really grateful, um, that my memory is improving and I have the brain space to do this because there was a time when I wasn't able to, just barely surviving. Oops, excuse me there. But this has brought our family together in a way that nothing else could, and we will definitely never take good health for granted again.

It's only through the grace of God that we have come through this whole and better. There's a, there's like a grief anger process that you go through when you have to give up what feels like pretty much all your dreams, and particularly the hopes we have for our children, only to see them, what it feels like, waste so much of their childhood. It kills me to know my child, my son doesn't even have normal as a frame of reference, at least yet. But I read a C.S.

Lewis quote that kind of captures the stages of acceptance that I went through. I met anger, and I sat with her until she told me her name is grief. And now I can tell you with joy that I sat with that grief until it turned into redemption. One thing I need to mention yet is Brian and I chose to be rebaptized a number of years ago. I know people have varying opinions on this issue. Some of them held very strongly, but I have, I never quite rested easily about my baptism because of the bishop who baptized me.

Brian became a Christian after he was baptized while we were dating, in fact, which is why he was also rebaptized, and our two oldest daughters were baptized with us. Interestingly enough, it was the next day when we met that friend I spoke about, um, that told us about B-Venom therapy, and we started our healing, our journey to healing, I should say, with B-Venom therapy. And I just can't feel like that was a coincidence.

Since we chose to be obedient and be truly baptized on our faith, our life as a family has started changing for the better. It's been like a years-long process, but we have truly found our home in each other, in the Lord, in our church, and we have found healing physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So I continue to homeschool my children, which I've been grateful to be able to do.

Our three oldest have all made Christian commitments now, and it's just absolutely the most humbling feeling to see my children follow the Lord and choose right in spite of my being such an imperfect example. Only by the grace of God. My parents have come to terms with our decisions and acknowledge we are serving the Lord to the best of our ability, but of course, they still prefer that we be Amish. Dad is still not a member, but since they moved back to Ohio, where their roots were, the children there don't shun.

I'm sorry, the children, the people in their church don't shun him, except for the Dan people and Swartz and Troubers, which the UX Amish people will know what that means. Um, the people in their church have been extremely welcoming. They're one of the most progressive old order churches in the area, and they'd make it extremely easy for him to be taken in. I think I kind of hope he does. I really think belonging would be healing for him.

I was neighbored with Zanna after Rizanna, the Amish by my dad, so that's something I kind of still struggle with a bit. I do still consider myself culturally Amish, even though people call us Mennonite sometimes. Particularly, particularly when I'm around born Mennonites, the differences become very obvious to me. Um, still struggle sometimes with English being my second language. The German grammatical structure just pops out at times and sometimes embarrasses me, but it's a part of me, and that's okay.

I realized in more recent years that my interests are kind of atypical for Mennonite and Amish ladies, and at times I've kind of felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole. I've become even less of a crowd follower as I've gotten older. Thanks, Dad. I like to think it's a net positive, though. I do know it's helped me walk against heavy peer pressure at times when I needed to. We've been members here at Chambersburg Christian Fellowship for two years now.

We've found it a real blessing in our life to be part of a brotherhood. There's some things in Christian life that must be experienced collectively, and it's important to stay humble and learn to work with others rather than think that we have all the answers ourselves. So I encourage those searching to learn to know the voice of God before you are ready to start making decisions and not be afraid to wait on the Lord as long as it takes. He's always on time, even when it seems way too long to us humans.

So in closing, I just want to thank God again for the loving grace He has poured on my life. So many times He has saved me from the abyss, and His grace is always sufficient for me. All right, I'll turn it over to you, Salom or Autumn. Thank you, Rosie, so much for sharing. Really appreciate your testimony. Um, as we're still new to Chambersburg, I'm still learning about you, so I've learned much more through your talk. I appreciate that. Um, I did have a couple of questions.

Um, about what age was it that you were, you had made your decision to follow Christ and not so much the Amish ways, but more, you know, whatever you believe that God was telling you to do? Uh, so I was 16 during that whole time. It would have been, I would say from start to when I became born again, it was about six months. Okay. Yeah. And then, um, when you were able to be rebaptized, as you said, um, about how long later was that? I know you said obviously you'd married and had two children by then.

Oh, well, no, I said our two oldest daughters were baptized with us. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. So that was four years ago, I believe. Okay. So not super long, but yeah. That wasn't done within the Chambersburg church. That was pre our membership here. So, um, just some, a dear Christian brother of ours baptized us back here in our creek. Okay. So yeah. What a neat experience. Yeah. Yeah.

It looking back, it's just we've been bowled over by, it just seems like that kind of set this chain of events in motion in our lives in a way that's kind of hard to articulate, but it's undeniable to us. Um, yeah, we're thankful for that. Yes. I love how the Lord uses, like you said, you believe it was that step of obedience that brought ultimately the cure and then help for most of your family. Yes. So it's amazing. Um, we are open for any questions.

I know if you are on a voice call, you can go ahead and say any questions that you may have, um, and Rosie will be able to answer them. And then you can, um, send in questions through the link, um, text-wise if you don't want to speak out loud, and we'll be able to read those and get those to Rosie as well. So the floor is open for any other questions anybody may have. I want to say thank you, Rosie, for sharing. Um, I definitely learned more about your life than I never knew.

Um, yeah, you've, your life has definitely been an inspiration to me. Just, um, since we've been here at the Chambersburg church, I've definitely gotten to know you better, and, um, I've just always been encouraged by the, um, seems like you tend to see the bigger picture than some women maybe. Um, I think I did mention something about being that kind of person. Yeah. So the flip side is I get lost in the weeds super easily. So, you know, there's always, there's always the, the flip side to that.

But yeah, I, I've enjoyed very much getting to be friends with you as well. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks so much for sharing. It was a blessing to hear it. Yeah. I would just like to thank you for taking the time to sharing this, all sharing your life story. I'm sure there's a lot more that you didn't share, but yeah, it was very interesting. And, um, this, this B-Venom treatment that you take, that's, that sounds really interesting too. Maybe I'll have to contact you separately to hear more about that. Yeah.

It's, that's a whole rabbit hole you can dive into. Yeah. But yeah, it has been, it's been a blessing for us. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. I know my mom used to, to take, she loved, she had arthritis and she loved to take a bee and get it to sting her. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something, that's something people have been doing for a long time already. Yeah. Yeah.

And how you mentioned when you were young, uh, how you felt like God protected you from, from some things that, uh, or you would now have ended up, you know, way somewhere from where you actually want to be. Yeah. That was, that was my story too. I could, I could identify with that. Mm-hmm. And the thing that you mentioned about how the spirit doesn't cause confusion, I, I think that's, that's very true.

If you feel like it's everything that's just confusing and you just can't make sense of it, it's like, okay, it's time to back off and just wait until it gets more clear. So, yeah, that's, that is true. I think that keeping that in mind for, especially for younger people just starting out in their Christian life, that is so helpful. Just hold on to that, even if you can't feel it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Just thank you. So that's all. It doesn't look like we have anything that's come through the chat.

Um, I'm looking here. I'm not seeing anything. Are you seeing anything, Salom? Not either. Okay. All right. Well, I do want to remind everybody that this is the second of four different meetings that we'll have this year. The next one will be in July towards the end, and I'm not sure that we have a speaker lined up yet. So all of us will be just as excited to see who we have and who the Lord provides to speak for us. So we will be looking forward to that.

We will get that information out to you as soon as we know it. Um, just look for it in the chats, um, on WhatsApp, and then we will look forward to seeing the rest of you ladies then. Until then, God bless you. I will close us in prayer. Father God, thank you so much for this time that we got together and just use this testimony of Rosie's Lord to help encourage others in the path to righteousness and seeking your face, Lord. I pray that you would just use this as a pathway to show that there is freedom in Christ.

I pray that you would be able to use it to encourage others that maybe are breaking free from the Amish or any lifestyle that isn't what you would have them to be in, Lord. I pray that you would just continue to bless Rosie and her family. Lord, I pray that you would just continue to heal their bodies with the slime disease and the other things that may be affecting them, Lord.

I thank you for Rosie and her family and their testimony and just the amazing God that you are and that you've proven yourself, especially through their family. Lord, I pray that you continue to bless and keep each one of those that have listened to this, Lord, and that will listen to it in the future. I ask all these things in the name of Jesus. In your name we pray. Amen. Gott ist die Liebe, das Wiegenlied, und Gott ist die Liebe, er liebt auch mich.

Drum sag ich noch einmal: Gott ist die Liebe, Gott ist die Liebe, er liebt auch mich.