Journey Of An Amish Man - Leaving the Amish - Testimony of Elam Peachey

And I'm afraid there's too much influence in our society that makes God's word, certain ones foreign to the believer, or certain commandments that are foreign. And my question here is this morning, or my proposal is, if God's word is foreign to us, His commandments, God must be foreign to us also, right? Is that fair to say that?

Well, greetings to y'all. I'm blessed to be here with my family today. Thanks for inviting us. Have you ever heard a story of an Old Order Amish preacher speaking to someone and totally changing the course of their life? Well, that's part of my testimony.

So I'm blessed to share my testimony, my life's journey with you this morning, but I'm sure there's many inspiring testimonies here this morning that would be a real blessing to hear. Nevertheless, I'm glad to do that this morning. I was born in 1983 in an Amish home in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. My family was one of the four Amish families that endeavored to start an Amish community in Mercersburg. About the time I was born, my mom's dad committed suicide. This brought a lot of stress in my family. My dad put the blame on his mother-in-law. For me, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about my grandfather's suicide. I did hear from a few different sources that he felt like he was failing some of his younger children.

By 1991, the three other Amish families had relocated to other Amish communities. Now our family was the only Amish family in Mercersburg. This created more stress in our family. We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw a horse and buggy pool in our lane one day. John and Esther Christner from the Midwest had joined the Horse and Buggy River Brotherhood Church, which I know some of y'all are familiar with the Horse and Buggy River Brotherhood. There's no longer any Horse and Buggy River Brotherhood in, like, Franklin County.

At that time, the Horse and Buggy River Brotherhood were made up of all elderly people, perhaps upper 60s, 70s, 80s, and some even lived to be over 100 years old, which John Christner had a family of younger children. He joined that Horse and Buggy group and moved to the Mercersburg area. They became very close friends of our family. Danny and Ruth Byers from the River Brotherhood background, along with John Christner's family, we started a school together, which was a real blessing. John Christner's Christian character left an impression on me. One occasion that I remember was my brothers and I were talking to John Christner, and we were telling him of a neighbor that we had that had problems going to the bars on the weekends and driving home drunk.

And he got too many DUIs, lost his driver's license, ended up in the county jail. And we were telling John Christner, "Good for him. He got what he deserved." And John Christner just kindly told us that he feels sorry for our neighbor, that we should pray for him, and kind of challenged us a little bit with our attitude towards our neighbor. Just different things about John Christner left a real impression on me as a child.

After about a year, the Christner family moved back to Kansas. That night, I cried. I missed their oldest son, Franklin. He was my age. As a young boy growing up, I always desired to become a Christian someday. There's the picture on the screen there. That's a picture that was actually taken by a guy named Chris Lopez. He was actually our school teacher for a while. The boy on the black pony, that's my brother Enos. He's two years older than me. The boy with the gray pony, that's my brother John. He's five years older than me. The boy ducking under the fence is me. I'm the good boy. You're not supposed to pose for people when they take your pictures.

In fact, probably earlier that year, living in Mercersburg, we didn't have any Amish. So we were driving up 75 to Spring Run area where there was Amish. We were going to church there. On the way home one time, we were getting bored in the back of the buggy, and we'd always have these cars come behind us, and people wave, and we'd wave back. And so one time, these older folks were coming up. The lady had a camera outside of her car and was snapping pictures, and we were waving. So we got a good hard spanking for that one when we got home. So there's a proof from my dad. I was trying to be a good boy that time.

So yeah, anyway, as a young boy, I always desired to be a Christian. You can see that, right? I'm trying to be a good boy. But at about the age of 12, along with my older brothers, country music, tobacco, and even liquor was becoming part of our lives.

When I was 14, I was at my first beer party. All this brought guilt, which was followed by anger, and arguments with my dad became more frequent. Looking back, I would mark this as a very fragile time in our family. One time, one of my—well, I'll just stop there. So you see the picture there. I guess to your right, that's me, and then my brother John, my brother Enos, then a fella named Marvin, and then Scott.

That was actually right after a beer party. Well, the next day, we were actually out catching pigeons that night, and we were at Scott's house, and his mom took a picture of us. And in fact, Scott there, he didn't grow up going to church, but at this time, God was really working in his life. I remember that evening we were catching pigeons, and he was talking to us boys, and we really had a lot of respect for him. He was telling us how God is working in his life, and he just had some different stories. I guess he faced a lot of real challenging things in life, just from the rough life he lived. And one night, he was just out praying out in the field all by himself, just thinking there must be a God somewhere that cares about him.

And so God was coming through to him, and I'm still somewhat in touch with him, and I'm really blessed with that testimony that came from him. Anyway, so yeah, it was a downhill. Our lives were going downhill over that time. So one time, my older sister talked to us boys, and she told us she feels sorry for Dad, and we need to learn to respect him more because we just weren't listening. We were—yeah, I mean, things weren't like totally out of control. My dad would always seem like my dad would always win. You know, he would always have certain things that he would use to usually get us to comply. But one evening, my sister had this story.

She was upstairs. It was after dark. His chores were done. It was time for bed, and Dad finished up things in the barn, and she saw him walk in from the barn with this storm lantern. I guess you all know what a storm lantern is. It has a little container in the bottom where you put the kerosene in, a globe, a wick, and then your wire-like handle. So he was walking in from the barn with that, and I guess he was walking very slow, and his head was hanging. It was a low time in our family, and she just saw him. She's like—something was telling her he's very discouraged. And so she was talking to us and trying to get us to listen better and not put so much stress on him.

So then the next picture here is I called a torture chamber. So what's a torture chamber? That's something what we named our torture chamber. There's a lot of difficult things that took place in our cow stable in Mercersburg there. That's a picture I took probably two years ago.

But on those windows, there's metal brackets coming out. My dad started hanging leather straps on there. You know, he thought, "Us boys are getting out of hand. I have to get stricter and whip harder." So he'd use those leather straps, and of course, we were getting older. So there'd always be these arguments, this tug of war. You know, Dad would be trying to get us back in the corner there at the barn with what we called a torture chamber. We'd be arguing, and he'd usually—over time, he would usually win.

Dad was to be feared. So anyway, so I mean, sometimes there'd be weapons like really difficult, like to the point I've had like swollen arms, even to the point of bleeding and swollen back. Like I'd bend down to pick something up, and my back would be so swollen, it was hard to bend over to pick things up.

Well, you know, obviously there was a lot of stress. And so one Sunday, there was an argument that erupted between my dad and I, and he actually grabbed me, threw me on the floor, and punched me in the face with his fist, which today he obviously denies doing that. And my face ended up being swollen and black and blue eyes, swollen lips, and bloody face.

The evidence of that lasted for quite a while. And so we'd have our neighbors or people in the community stop by. Different ones would be like, "You know, Ewan, what happened? What's wrong with what happened to your face?" Well, the first ones, the first two or three that asked me that question, I was scared to answer, but my brother Enos would pipe up and say, "Dad, beat him up." You know, and so as time went on, I felt more relaxed. Just tell people what happened.

Well, that had some bad consequences. One morning, after chores, we're in the house, except Dad was still outside, and somebody mentioned that there's a car coming in the lane. So we all went to the window and looked out, and this nice vehicle comes in the lane, parks in front of the barn. Dad comes out of the barn. This well-dressed man and woman come out of the vehicle, and they talk for quite a while, and eventually Dad comes to the house, and he's very angry. He's like, "Ewan, who did you tell that I punched you in the face with my fist?" Well, he's interrogated me for a while, very angry. So I went outside and said there was a fella and a lady there, and the lady started asking me questions, and I was answering, "Did your dad punch you in the face with his fist?"

I said, "Yes, he did." "Did he whip you till you bled?" "Yes, he did." Well, Dad got very angry, and he started interrogating them and asking them, "Who called you?" And, you know, "You're here to take away my children." Well, after a while, the fella steps forward, tells Dad, "Mr. Peachy, we're not here to take your family from you." They were from the Child and Youth Services in Chambersburg on Franklin Farm Lane. So they're not from the state. I guess they're more of a local run or private run or whatever organization. But he told my dad, "If you don't comply with us, we're going to have to turn this over to the state, and you will lose your children."

Well, I really shook up my dad, so he really complied, but my dad still told them that I was lying, which was the evidence. Like, I'm not going to try to prove anything. Anyway, so then they had a second visit and asked questions. My dad, he quit.

A lot of things changed, you know, as far as the torture chamber and different things like that. My dad quit using his leather straps, and so he was really shook up. He was really scared of what was happening, but he still denied ever hitting me in the face with his fist.

Anyway, so he had a visit to the office and somehow settled that, and that became a piece of history, but nevertheless, that really shook up my dad. And meantime, us boys are drifting. We're changing, and you know, he's having a harder time, you know, getting us to listen and stuff. But things, anyway, in our family, just anyway, our lives kept on going downward.

Anyway, so we had a lot of English, a lot of connections that were not a good influence. We had a lot of English connections that weren't a good influence. And some people were like, "Well, what are the English?" Well, I'm speaking from an Amish standpoint. The English, the Amish use German in church, speak Pennsylvania Dutch in their home and everyday life. So the neighbors that don't speak Pennsylvania Dutch or German, the Amish call it English. They just speak English, right? So that's just real easy. That's our English neighbors that were there, whatever. But anyway, a lot of these, a number of these connections we had, we had a few neighbors that were bad influence, and through our neighbors, we made more connections.

And anyway, for me, I was personally scared where I was headed. In one way, I felt trapped, but on the other hand, I liked my friends and doing things with them. So we'd sneak out at night when Dad was in bed sleeping, and that's how we got our social life, I guess.

But I was still, I was scared. There was things kept getting, you know, going the wrong direction, even like marijuana. The first time, somebody, I was probably 14, you know, first fella tried to get me to smoke some marijuana, and I was scared. I was like, "No." Anyway, so I finally yielded, and after a while, I was like, "Well, that was kind of a neat experience." And then the second time was easier, and I did it twice. Thankful for that.

Finally, when the announcement came in 1998 that we were moving to Seneca County, New York, which Seneca County is in the Finger Lakes of New York, and the Amish know this the Romulus settlement. Anyway, with that announcement, I felt like, "Well, maybe this is my way out." So I felt hopeful of a new start. Many times, I wish our family was a normal Amish family living in an Amish community. Since that wasn't a reality, my brothers and I kept justifying ourselves. Since Dad doesn't provide Amish friends, we will make friends with our English neighbors.

So the move to New York finally came in May of 1999. It was a very difficult time. I was almost 16 years old at that time. Unfortunately, by that time, my dad couldn't do anything right for us boys, and that's a real picture of my dad. So I have to, first, I have to let you all know, any pictures I have from my relatives or my family is actually pretty precious because we didn't have cameras. We didn't get family pictures taken and stuff like that. That actually came off the internet, surprisingly.

And I didn't ask my dad where it comes from. I don't know if he knows it exists online or not, but my dad gets to, I think, a farmer's market in New York and sells his grass-fed longhorn beef and produce and stuff like that there. Anyway, by this time, you know, at the age of 16, it seemed like Dad couldn't do anything right, and we accused my dad of trying to run from Y2K.

And all that conspiracy talk was going on at that time, you know, the world was going to crash, and there's going to be robbers and thieves, and everything sounded dark and scary, which, you know, I'm sure that had an influence on my dad, but also the social workers had shown up, and my brothers and I were, you know, hanging out with too many English, and so my dad probably thought it's time for a change. So anyway, then we were making all our plans to move to New York. We had cattle to haul into New York. We had horses to haul into New York and farm equipment, but we had one special animal that my dad didn't care for, and it was our border collie dog named Lassie.

And that was actually a tool that my dad would use sometimes if we wouldn't comply or say, "We're sorry." He would say, "Okay, we're going to tie up Lassie till you say you're sorry or till you comply with, you know, whatever he wanted us to do." And of course, we felt very sorry for Lassie. She'd go out to the field with us. We'd be working the fields, spend the whole day in the fields killing mice and killing snakes and groundhogs and all kinds of stuff. So when Lassie was tied up in the barn, you know, we were out in the fields working without her. That didn't seem right. And we'd come back home to the farm, and she'd be waggling her tail in the barn, and you know, she was offended.

She was tied up, and we felt sorry for her. So eventually, we'd tell Dad, "Well, I'm sorry. I talked here," or whatever we would do, and then Lassie could be let loose. Well, there was no talk, you know, of how we're going to get Lassie to New York, so we were afraid that Dad had other plans for Lassie. Well, the morning of the move, we're in the barn wrapping things up, and here Dad's looking out the lane. You know, we look out. What's he looking at? Where's a car coming in the lane?

Then Dad was like, "Where's Lassie?" Okay, well, we knew what was going on, so an argument erupted again, you know, and what are you going to do? Then this car pulls up beside the barn, and Lassie hops in the back seat and closes the door, and it's the last time I ever seen Lassie. Well, that was, to me, I was very upset, and it was, I was, yeah, I was very, very upset about that. I felt like running to the woods and hiding and all that, but that didn't happen.

Anyway, leaving the farm behind and all that, it was a very, to me, it was an emotional time. It was a very sobering or sad, quiet time, and that's a picture of the farmhouse. Of course, not the way it looked when we lived there. That's more a recent picture.

So we had things loaded up and headed for New York. We had like a four-door truck with a gooseneck trailer that I rode in the backseat of one truck with my mom, and then my older brother, John, sat up in the front beside the truck driver, and we're headed for New York. And John, he's not in a good mood. By then, his future wife lived in a dry run area, Path Valley.

He wanted to get married to her, so he didn't want to go the whole way to New York and have that distance between him and her. Well, he was in a bad mood, and he already had joined the Amish, was baptized, and so he better comply with the rules, and his Amish in Path Valley are really strict. But on the way to New York, he was very upset, and he starts playing with the radio. Well, I don't know if you know anything about the Amish, but that's very forbidden. I mean, that's John would get excommunicated or whatever. It'd be very, very bad. My mom was like, "John, keep your hand off that radio."

He kept on playing, switching from station to station, and I was like, "Wow, my world is crumbling in here." Even though we had little Walkman radios in Haybarn, I would have never dreamed of doing such a thing right in front of my mom, and he wasn't listening, and I just broke down and started bawling, you know. I totally lost my emotions. My mom was trying to comfort me, saying, "Oh, you know, you're almost 16. We're headed to an Amish community. Maybe you can have your own horse and buggy," but I was like, "It's not listening." Anyway, but today I'm very thankful for the move to New York. I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for that move, just to break all those relationships from Mercersburg and put the five hours between me and those old connections.

After New York, I told myself, "I'll never drink again. I'll never smoke again." None of those kind of things. So it was a world I was getting sucked into that I did not want. Anyway, so after New York, now we're in an Amish community, and soon after that, we get to go to a barn raising. Wow, that's a good experience and interesting. And so in one day, here we have a big, this family had actually moved from St. Mary's, Maryland, to New York, and the foundation was in for this big barn, their dairy barn.

And in one day, the Amish erected a barn. It was like, I was really amazed. It was a very, very, to me, it was a very good experience. But towards the end of the day, I noticed my brother Enos, which he always talked a lot. His mouth would go 100 miles an hour. And I saw him talking to a fella, when I say older man, maybe in his 50s, off in the distance. I thought, "I'll go over and see what he's talking about." So he's there talking and talking and talking, really going on. And this fella's with black hair, black beard, and kind of a rough-looking face is listening, and hearing this is telling all our bad stuff about our family.

I'm so embarrassed. You know, what do I do? This fella, oh, a gruff, kind of a gruff voice, but friendly fella. And then, "Oh, this is your brother." And so it turns out he's an Amish preacher. His name is Henry Byler. And I was so baffled. Enos would do such an awful thing, so humiliated. Anyway, but with that visit that my brother had with his Amish preacher, now he goes and tells the other preachers, and they're starting to ask some questions and trying to figure his family out that moved in into our community. So that same, it's probably about the same year. I don't think it was too long later.

Here, things kind of, more things were sort of surfacing, and these Amish preachers were like, "Well, we need to have a meeting with his family, help him solve their family problems." Well, all my siblings from Pennsylvania, everybody was supposed to come to New York, and we all sat in this living room with all these Amish preachers. I think there's probably seven of them that came to visit. Well, my siblings from Pennsylvania, they were like, "Oh, they don't know who these preachers are. They think they're going to stay where they're safe in Pennsylvania." Anyway, so it's this whole row of preachers. Well, I was like, "This is different. I never had this before." So one by one, they all started, had their little sermon for us and what it takes for a family to function, the dad, the mom, the children, how everything's supposed to work.

And it took a while for all seven of them to have their little talk. And then finally, the bishop at that time, his name was Sammy J. Sammy J. Stolze. He's a little short fella with white hair and white beard. He's like, "Well, Mr. Easy Peachy, do you have anything to say?"

The Amish called my dad Easy. Ezra was his name. My dad was, I don't think that was my dad's happiest day. I don't think he was too excited about this preacher visitor thing. He didn't have anything to say. So if dad doesn't say anything, anybody else have any questions? And everything was totally quiet. So finally, they had their little prayer and dismissed the service. And that didn't seem like a success.

Well, here comes the story of an Amish preacher now. And I want to say these preachers in New York, like Mercersburg, was where I grew up at. My parents grew up in Bellville, Pennsylvania. And so as a child, we go to Bellville quite often because that's where our relatives lived. Those preachers, I never, I don't have memories of really understanding their sermons. Everything was high German, and I don't have any memories of friendly preachers either. Then Path Valley, those are very conservative Amish, and I don't have any memories of understanding any of those sermons. They're all in high German.

And I don't have memories of friendly preachers either, I don't think. But New York, it was like maybe the second day we were on the farm in New York, still getting things situated. There's a little short fella with white hair and white beard, Amish fella talking to my brother John. For a long time, we're like, "Okay, I wonder what they're talking about." So my brother John comes up to the barn. He's like, "Wow, that's a friendly bishop down there." So I was like, "Oh, that's our bishop. Okay." You know, it's a little short fella with white hair and white beard.

And then also, just throughout the, in New York there, I have to say there was a lot of his preachers were like really friendly. So I just wanted to say that, including the one that talked to me afterwards. His name was Fischer. So afterwards, we're outside, and he was talking to me and trying to help me work through issues with my family's struggles and ask me questions. And I just told him, "I just told him it doesn't work for me to be a Christian here. Dad's too mean. He yells at us. He yells at mom, and things aren't working. I've tried to please dad, and you know, things never work out."

Well, I don't remember a lot of the conversation, but one thing I do remember, he told me that God can use you to change your family. And I was really amazed. And I was actually, to be honest with you, I was 16 at that time, maybe headed towards 16 probably. And I have, yeah, no memory up until that age of ever having anybody really come and talk to me personally like that, you know, asking me questions and working, trying to help me work through things. But the thought, just the thought that God could use me to change my family really left an impression on me. And it stayed with me for day after day, day after day.

And my heart was saying, "Yes, yes. I want our family to change. I want things to come together where we can function." And so it was one evening, we were still milking our cows by hand. I don't know if anybody here has ever seen a cow milked by hand, but basically you grab hold of the udder there and you just squirt the milk out of the teat. So I mean, I grew up doing it since a little child, and it works. So scientifically, it works, and it's a sustainable way of living too. Anyway, that evening I was there milking my cow, and it just seemed like what the preacher said to me just kept getting heavier, like every day.

Every day I couldn't shake it. Like I'd go to bed with it at night. I'd wake up next morning, just this impression on me that God could use me was just an amazing thought. And that night, for some reason, it was just like things were just coming up to a head. It was just like I was getting to the end of my rope. I couldn't handle this anymore. So it got so, this feeling came on me so strong that I just felt like I'm going to explode. And just everything just started letting loose. And I was like, and I was about ready to start shedding some tears and, you know, just breaking down and weeping.

And but I was like, "We're all, everybody, my whole family's in the barn. Everybody else is around here milking a cow. And if they'd see me cry, they'd think I might have some major problems." So I quickly, I couldn't finish the cow. It was too strong. I mean, I was milking like faster yet and trying to beat this feeling inside of me, but I was losing the race. So I quickly ran to milk in the milk tank and ran up to the hay barn, and I just cried out to God. And I just wept before the Lord and just prayed. And I don't remember all my prayers, but I was sharing this story with a very conservative Baptist fella, and he kept going back to Romans. "Did you understand this?

Did you understand the scriptures?" There was a lot of theology I had no clue of. Didn't know it existed, but I knew that there was a supernatural power from God that I was encountering. That's all I knew. But anyway, so I just felt like my, I mean, I just kept praying and crying. Finally, I was like, "Man, I'm going mental. I got to stop this thing, whatever this feeling is. And next dad's going to wonder what happened to Elam. He's going to be hunting and hollering for me and, you know, and find me in the hay barn and think I'm having a mental breakdown." But finally, I guess I got my emotions under control. And but I just want to mention that all these years, the conflict with my dad, the conflict that my older siblings had with my dad created this view of my dad of this scary monster, this ugly-looking monster, just sight of him like, "Oh, you shudder when he walks in the house or whatever."

But I came down out of the barn that day, and the first person I remember seeing was my dad. And I looked at him, "My dad's actually a good-looking person," I thought. Anyway, but I went and talked to my dad then afterwards. I mean, again, I didn't have all this theology figured out. And I told him, "I want to obey you." And I might have said, "I'm sorry for the way I've talked." And I don't remember what all I said, but my dad still remembers that to this day. And I've brought it up one time, and he acknowledged it, which my dad does. Anyway, that was a big step for my dad to acknowledge it.

So then another thing that was coming up in the Amish community, I guess that must have been in the spring or something. I forget when this all happened. Yeah, it was probably in the spring. That summer or spring summer, whatever was the instruction class was going to begin in the Amish community. I don't know if that means anything to you or not, but where young people of a certain age, they joined this instruction class. Every Amish only have church every other Sunday. Those older Amish do anyway. So these youth would join this instruction class with the preachers and deacons and bishop, and they would go through these articles of faith and prepare them for baptism.

Well, I don't know. After that experience, I just felt like God is so close to me. I did a little pocket testament. I would take it out with me in the field where I'm working the fields with the horses. And when I let the horses rest at the end of the field, I'd go into woods or a fence row. I'd just pray, and I'd read this little pocket testament. And God just spoke to me through his word. And it was a hunger that I'd never had experienced before.

And along with reading God's word, many questions. I had so many questions. And I remember seeing a horse and buggy going down the road. I was like, "Okay, is that true Christianity?" I mean, where did that thought come from? I had nobody influencing me. It was just simply reading the word of God. I just felt like, "I don't know if I'm seeing in my Amish community what I'm seeing in the word of God."

With that instruction class, I always thought, you know, of course I'd follow the order that the Amish have set up and not challenge anything. But it really bothered me. I mean, there'd be nights I'd lay awake at night and couldn't sleep just battling with the thing if whether I should join this instruction class because if I go through this instruction class, get baptized, if I ever leave the Amish, then I get excommunicated. Well, I had a lot of fear, man, I have to say. And finally, I caved in. I was like, "Well, I can start the instruction class, then I still have so many weeks to decide before I ever get baptized."

Well, of course, old Sammy Jay, the bishop, very kind old man. He would always be reading his stuff and talking to the young people. And, you know, he's had his way of, you know, finally I felt like, "Wow, this Sammy Jay, he's an old man. He's a man with wisdom. I don't know if I should question anything he says." Well, finally, the day of baptism came. I was really starting to get depressed now. And of course, the service went like normal. We did our instruction class thing. The church service went like normal. Then at the end of, towards the end of service or whatever, they dismissed everybody that wasn't a member of the church. And they want to ask counsel from the members whether all these youth that are about to join the church, be baptized and join the church, if there's anything, any questions there.

I remember going outside to the barn. I just felt, I felt like running. I just, this, I didn't want to go through this baptism thing. I just felt like running across the field. I was looking at the woods way out across this field.

But fear, man. I just gave in. I have to say that night I felt depressed. I did not feel happy about a baptism. This is my story. So anyway, it was discouraging. But anyway, after that whole ordeal, I had two brothers actually that left home by then. I had my brother Enos, two years older than me. There was a hernia problem, medical problem he had that dad wasn't fixing. And so he gave dad a deadline. "You get this thing fixed for me or I'll go and get it fixed." Well, he took off then because my dad didn't meet the, my dad didn't meet the deadline. My other brother, John, he was of age and went back to Path Valley to get married.

So I was the oldest boy at home on the farm. And so the responsibility of the oldest boy was hauling manure. And so you have to ground through a manure spreader with the steel wheels, the horses pulling the thing.

So I enjoyed hauling manure. It was fun. Then at the end of one day, well, there were several breakdowns that took place on a manure spreader. Things some were my failure, not knowing how to run the thing. And not that it was that complicated, but in the other side of my control. So it was a Peckway manure spreader. So all the parts had to come from Lancaster.

And so one breakdown occurred. That was my fault. Dad was upset. We have a lot of manure to haul in this barn. Winter is setting in. And so we had to wait on the part to get there to fix the manure spreader. Then I was out hauling manure and the web broke, which wasn't my fault. And dad was mad at me again. I had to forgo the manure off my hand and get the parts from Lancaster again.

Then another crazy thing I did, it was muddy the one day I was hauling manure. And I parked the manure spreader where I always did, but it was muddy in that area. And I did this before and it always worked where I just thought horses get up and they would pull the manure spreader forward. If that didn't work, I'd pull the manure spreader sideways.

And so the one wheel would start turning over here. The other wheel would just snap loose if the frozen dirt. Well, this time was extra muddy, I guess. The mud was kicked up around the wheels. So it worked. To all of a sudden, I noticed the wheel, the manure spreader is going over here, but this wheel stops. What happened? I was alarmed. I couldn't believe my eyes. It felt like having a bad dream, bad nightmare. I bent the axle on the manure spreader.

So my dad was really upset now. I mean, I knew he was going to be very upset. And it seemed like my relationship with my dad was deteriorating again. Things were going from just kept getting worse and I was getting discouraged. Oh man, I dreaded going to the house to find my dad. He was on the couch sleeping for some reason. And he should have been out working, right? You're a farmer. So I go in the house and I tell my dad, "I bent the axle on my manure spreader." He jumped up out of the couch. He's like, "You did what?" And he was so angry. I was like, "Oh, discouraging." And anyway, so he really ramped and reeled on me that day.

But I don't know, something snapped in me that time. I was like, "When I'm 18, I'm out of here." Sad, sadly. Yeah. Anyway, so I marked the day. I would count the days on the calendar. My heart was set. My mind was set. I'm headed back to Mercersburg.

And my, you know, I just felt like everything, I was so discouraged with everything. And even though I joined church, I was like, I don't know, like I had reasoning like, "How could hell even be worse than what I'm living in?" And I would talk to the Amish preachers a lot too. And anyway, so I don't know how much counsel necessarily they had. It was sometimes comforting talking to them about the situations. But I, so June 8, 1983 is my birthday. June 8. So I'm marking the day June 8. Well, in case I get one day off or mess up somehow, I'm going to make it June 9th, make sure my dad can't call the police on me.

So that night I left, wrote a letter to my dad, just like I called him old man in a letter, things I shouldn't have said. And left it on my pillow, climbed out the window out on the porch roof, jumped into a tree, slid down the tree, off I went, you know. So anyway, so I'm sure it was very devastating to my dad. Next morning when he went to wake me up to do the chores and there was no response, of course, what did you find? The letter that I left for him.

Anyway, in the meantime, also I had my oldest brother, Dan. So there's another picture here. If we could move on to the next one, that silo there, it's a double silo. That's still standing there. So if you ever go on Church Hill Road between what they call Church, the Church Hill intersection and the Connecticut Creek, if you look back there, you might see a silo back along Lane.

But anyway, so yeah, back to Mercersburg, I went then. And my oldest brother, Dan, he was going through a seeking and searching time, working. He was single. He was probably in his early 30s at this time. Anyway, so he ended up leaving the Amish. So when he heard I was out, he hunted me up. And in my mind, I was not going to get deceived, right? I mean, I did the baptism thing. I said the vow. So I was like, either it's hell or being Amish for the rest of my life. That's what was in my mind. So if I happen to die while I'm out of the Amish here, I'll probably go to hell.

In fact, I was working with a construction crew at that time, setting these pre-poured basement walls, pre-cast systems. And I was actually supposed to be the good boy. I thought I'm a bad boy, but on a crew of these rough fellows, I was the good boy. And they always asked me, if they had any religious questions, it was usually I was the one they would usually ask.

So the one fellow named Joshua, he actually lives in Chambersburg here, he asked me, he said, "If I would die," he was asking me, "If I would die right now, would I go to heaven or go to hell?" Well, that's a tough one, but I had to be honest. I said, "Josh, if you would die right now, you'd go to hell." "Really?" And as I'm explaining to him why he would go to hell, you do all this bad stuff, and I'm explaining everything to him, well, he started getting a little offended. And I was like, "Well, Josh, I would go to hell too if I'd die." He's like, "Well, why would you go to hell?"

Well, I told him I got baptized in the Amish and explained that I'm excommunicated now. So if I die, I go to hell. So I don't know if that made him feel any better or not. But anyway, but in the meantime, but I was not going to get deceived. In my mind, I was not going to get deceived. But here I got a call from my brother, Dan. I was like, "Okay, I understand he's getting deceived." He's my oldest brother, single.

And he supposedly is looking at getting rebaptized. And leaving the Amish, getting excommunicated is one really, really bad sin. But if you cross that line of getting rebaptized, you really did it. I mean, you're probably really doomed now.

So that's where my brother Dan was hit. And I was like, "Yeah, he's probably deceived." Anyway, so I remember the first time I was with him, he was trying to talk to me about the Lord. And you know, he showed me a picture of his baptism and different things. We're going down the road. I'm like, "Well, he's deceived and he doesn't know it."

You know, and I'm being a bad boy and I know that. Anyway, but over time, if we can show a picture of my brother Dan there, over time, that's him. He was still dressing Amish at the time. That might be on a trip somewhere.

But anyway, over time, my life sort of kept slipping again. Like I told myself I'd never drink again, never do all these kind of things. But it seemed like over, let's say a year, a year and a half, I started getting discouraged. It's like, "What is life about?" I'd be driving down the road. And I was going, at the beginning, there actually Scott Klein had come on the scene, the tall fellow that I told you about. And he was taking me to church. But I didn't feel like I was getting much out of church.

And so eventually church had some issues. And we didn't like, some of us didn't like the way they treated God. And so we just sort of stopped going to church. And I remember driving down the road and I was thinking, "Will I ever walk in a church building again?" And I just, and I just felt like unless God does something supernatural, it just seemed like church was becoming foreign to me and not part of my life anymore. But my brother Dan, he kept coming around and kept reminding me of things. And I'd be like, "Yeah, well, I got to shape up. I'll do a little better here. I think Dan's probably right about certain things."

But then one night I get a phone call from my sister. And she said, "Dan's in the hospital. And they don't know if he's going to live or not." And I was shocked. And she said, "There's this surgery that he needs.

And if he doesn't do it, he's going to die." So I called him up and I was like, "Dan, you need to do this surgery. Do the right thing." Well, he sounded very weak. And but he ended up dying then. So I just, he died in Lancaster General Hospital. But beside his hospital bed as he was dying, I mean, I was scared. Like I was like, "If this was me on that bed, I would be so scared." But it seemed like he was so calm. And he had a lots of variety of different friends, like immigrants from Russia and Ukraine and then some house church kind of friends, some more friends from charity kind of churches.

They were all gathered in that room and they would sing and they would pray with him. They'd read scripture. He seemed so peaceful as he was dying. But not me. I mean, I was, I don't know. I felt like this would be the worst nightmare could ever happen, me dying.

Anyway, but then he did die. And these people started really reaching out to me. And I felt like I'm finally meeting some people that I feel like have answers to life. And I was very attracted to a lot of these people. And we spent hours just asking questions. Of course, I was faced with the thing of returning to the Amish. And how do I handle that? Like I did this baptism thing. Well, a lot of the Amish, a lot of these people didn't really know if that was so important. But I felt like, well, a lot of them don't really understand because they're maybe not from the Amish, but others, there were some that were from the Amish.