[Amish Singing in German] ♪ Es Sinn Zween Weg ♪ ♪ In dieser zeit ♪ ♪ der ein ist schmall der ander weit ♪ >>Narrator: We call them the Amish. Shunning modern advancements they drive horses and buggies. and live without electricity. Where do they come from? Are they a culture? A Religion? What made them who they are? This film series explores the inner workings of the Amish Church As told by some of their own, who no longer wear black hats and bonnets. For 300 years the Amish have been known as the 'silent in the land' but now a growing number of them are breaking the silence. [music] >> Rebecca Graber: I loved being Amish. I loved the old fashioned ways. I would have wanted to be more old fashioned than most of the Amish were. >> Joseph Graber: For several hundred years the Graber family has been Amish. My parents, Lester and Rebecca Graber had 7 children. I'm the second child. That's me right there. >> Lester Graber: And we were taught that for us, the most important thing we could ever be was to stay Amish. We were born that way, if God meant you to be anything else you would have been born something else. >> Joseph: In Episode 1 we experienced an Old Order Amish church service and a normal Sunday at the Borntrager farm. In this episode we will hear my family's story. And we will find the answer to the question, "What happens when an Old Order Amish man starts studying the Bible?" >> Peter Marshall Graber: When my Grandpa was Amish um, he preached in the Amish Church. >> Joseph: As a boy I felt important because my Dad was an Amish Minister and I would sit with him on the front bench. I loved hearing him preach. We kept all the rules and were good examples of what it means to be Amish. >> Lester: I was born in a Amish community of Middlebury Indiana. I remember the first time I drove a horse down the road in a buggy. Going to my Aunt's place. You know, a mile down the road. And they had told me, and told me, and told me, If you meet a car you have to turn to the right. Well there comes this car, and I'm pulling on that horse trying to get him to run on the left side of the road. And he didn't want to. And I'm just all over the road. And this car is behind me, like, hmmm... and I thought, maybe I'm doing the wrong thing and I turned the other way and the horse just immediately got over there. >> Rebecca: Coming home after dark in the buggy everybody together and Dad is singing up front. The buggy wheels rattling on the gravel and then on the black top. The horses hoofs going clip clop, clip clop, I loved that sound. When my Dad had the reins and everybody was on the buggy all was right with the world. We milked the cows at a certain time summer, winter, Frost und Hitz, As soon as we were done we would eat supper. and then in the summer we would all together go out and hoe the garden. Everybody would grab a hoe or some people would pull weeds. And then in the winter we had story time. My Dad was a story teller. And after supper when the dishes were washed he would get a book. We couldn't understand English so he would translate the book in German for us. The most coveted spot was on his lap, but once you got pushed off by a younger sibling you would hang on the shoulder here or there. You would be as close as you could to Dad to see the book and to hear him and feel his whiskers tickling you >> Lester: Those old Amish threshing rings, that was about the most fun. I was intrigued by the machinery. part of it. Somebody had to crank that thing and make that blower come up from out off of the machine and swing back around to where you wanted it. And then you had to do the chute off the side that goes down into the box wagon. And I'd be out with the boys, and I would drive the horses and the wagon, and they were the ones that would be out in the fields loading. Every summer we looked forward to that and then at the end of it when it was all done we'd get together one night and we would have ice cream. Big old ice cream dinner, and cakes, and more food than you could eat. It was just a great time for a kid growing up. >> Joseph: My parents enjoyed their childhood. But they both experienced some of the deepest grief a young child can have. >> Rebecca: Then when I was 10 years old, my Mother got real sick that summer, and I just remember all 10 of us children in a line there, and, my Mother- see, this is Amish, you don't hug. She just shook each one of our hand and walked out the door. And my Dad went with her. They took her to the hospital. And then one day Dad came home from the hospital and he told us all to come in the living room. We all got around him and he told us, 'Mother has died.' And she's not gonna be here any more.' [music] >> Lester: Up to this point I was the oldest child I was the only child, 1968 my sister was born. A year and a few days after that my Mother died from cancer. Dad woke me up early that morning and said, 'uh, Mom died.' [music] >> Rebecca: When somebody dies you always wear black for the longest time, for 7 Sundays. And after that I just felt kind of good when I wore black. I thought I was remembering my mother. >> Joseph: From the outside the Amish all look very similar. But the truth is, each church in each community has slightly different rules. And the leadership in each community has different philosophies on how to enforce the rules. As a result a lot of conflicts arise. The conflicts are usually centered around appearances and who is in control. If you don't like who's in control or you don't like the rules, your only option really is to move to another community. >> Rebecca: I began to understand why my Dad always moved. We moved to Bronson Michigan and that's where I started teaching school >> Joseph: My father was born in Middlebury Indiana. When he was 6 years old they moved to Clark Missouri. Then after he graduated from school they moved to Bronson Michigan. >> Rebecca: They moved just a mile down the road from us. >> Lester: The first Sunday we were in church, way across on the other side of the room, there was a row of girls over there and I looked at them you know, And I'm 15 years old and feeling my oats a little bit and I'm like, wow, look at all those girls. And there was only one of them that really impressed me. >> Rebecca: One evening my Dad came home and we ate supper and he said, 'As I was coming home this afternoon 'I saw this huge field of bundles of wheat on the ground. In the middle of that field there was one lonely boy shocking wheat all by himself. Who wants to go with me to help that poor guy?' So we all piled in the buggy and went down there. And that was one of the first times that I really met Lester. [music] >> Rebecca: One evening at a singing, we girls were down in the kitchen and the boys were upstairs. And we heard them carrying on up there and bumping and giggling and laughing. >> Lester: We would talk about the girls and talk about who was taking who home. >> Rebecca: They were daring each other and saying why don't we ask her for a date? So William said, 'ok, you go first, you ask her tonight then next Sunday I'll ask her.' >> Lester: So on a dare one Sunday night, I said okay lets do it. And she said yes. I couldn't believe it! >> Rebecca: And he thought that I was this popular girl that was used to having boys >> Lester: I'm sure they were lined up. And they were lined up. And there were two or three events that happened right during our first date that night That I knew this girl cares for me and I really believe we are supposed to be together. >> Rebecca: He took me home that night, and he came in and we visited. We sat on the couch. I went to get him a drink of water. He had his feet out and I stumbled over him and I dumped water in his shoe! But he didn't say anything! I said, 'Did you get wet?' And he said 'No its okay' and he drank the water. And his lantern had blown out. So I took it to light it for him and I put it on backwards with the reflector in front instead of the back. And he said when he saw that he thought 'She's more shook up than she's pretending to be. >> Lester: That was, that was how it started. >> Rebecca: I had always prayed that God would show me who was the right one. And when I got back in house, inside the door, it was like the presence of God came on me and I felt it, and I knew, that this was the one, the man that I was supposed to marry. Now, William was going to have the next turn next Sunday. >> Lester: And I went back and I said you're not getting a turn man, its over. >> Rebecca: So he asked me again and I said yes. >> Lester: There was just confirmation after confirmation that I knew this was the right one. Of course I was quite young yet, you know, 17 maybe. It was winter time, snow. You know, but I saw her every Sunday. >> Joseph: So after my parents met in Bronson Michigan and began courting, then the Grabers moved to Shipshewana Indiana and then my mother's family moved down to Tennessee. >> Rebecca: For a whole year we didn't see each other. We just wrote letters. >> Joseph: They wrote the day to day news to each other in English, but then they would switch to German cursive to write to each other in secret. On a beautiful August day in 1977 several hundred of their family and friends gathered together and witnessed their marriage. In the afternoon they ate watermelon from Grandpa's mid-Tennessee watermelon patch. Thus began life as a young Amish married couple. >> Rebecca: So after we got married there in Huntingdon Tennessee then my parents decided to move to Arkansas. And we moved over there and my Dad helped us find a place and we actually lived in Beebe Arkansas. And that is where Ruth was born. >>Ruth: I am the oldest of 7 children My parents are Lester and Rebecca. I was born into an Amish family in Beebe Arkansas. My brother Joseph was born there as well. >> Joseph: But before I was born something else happened that was to change the course of my family. That fall, as the time for communion rolled around, the Amish church there decided to have an Ordination Service because they needed more ministers. Now in the Amish the ministry is not desired or chosen based on calling or skills. Rather the congregation chooses a small handful of men and then lots are drawn. >> Rebecca: If the lot falls on you then you are a preacher for the rest of your life. It is God ordained, and so you don't argue, you just accept it. They sit there holding these books. Then the Bishop, comes along and he opens the first one. Then he goes to a certain page in the book, at the Lob Lied where they have this slip of paper that has this Bible verse in it and this little saying in German. So they opened my Dad's book, and it wasn't there, gave it back to him. They opened Dave Miller's book and it was there, gave back his book. They opened Harley's book, it wasn't there they gave it back to him. And then they opened Lester's book, and there it was. The Bishop read it and then he shook Lester's hand and welcomed him to the ministry. >> Lester: After I was ordained a minister in Arkansas I had a real desire to really get into the Word. >> Rebecca: Lester started reading the Bible like he never had before and getting ready to teach it. >> Lester: We still believed that the Church that we were familiar with, the Amish Church could be a biblical church and it would be a bilical church and it should be a biblical church. And that everything we do should be, um, based on the biblical patterns. In my first year, there was an issue that had come up in the community and I asked the Bishop about it. And this was my uncle, Ura, and he says, 'I know. But don't rock the boat. We can't do everything at once.' 'We can't do those things'. You know it was kind of disappointing to me because I thought if its Biblical everybody would want to get on board. But they didn't want to you know. Tradition is a very strong horse. It will carry a long way. >> Joseph: In the early '80s my family moved to Smiley Texas to work on a chicken farm and to be part of a small Amish community that was just starting here. When I was about a year and a half old my little brother Timothy was born. A week later he died. Having a child in heaven caused my parents to have a greater awareness of heaven and of God and of things eternal. The shared grief of both of my parents losing their mothers in their childhood, reawakened by this fresh grief, gave my parents a longing for heaven and questions about how to get there. With this perspective they looked over the widely varying churches within the Amish community and tried to understand what was the best way to be righteous and holy. How could you really live a life that was pleasing to God? In one community modern things like bicycles were permitted. In another community they were told that owning something like a bicycle was enough to send you to hell. >> Lester: If I had lived in one community all of my life, you'd have accepted that and never thought much of it. But we did move around. We did ask questions. You know, Why can you have one set of Amish over here and they're so liberal, and another set over here and they're so conservative? Trying to work though all those things and not understanding exactly where they fit and how they fit, I became conservative, and decided that if I'm going to be Amish I'm going to be the best Amish there is. We're going to be conservative, we're going to be the real Amish. >> Rebecca: We're going to obey the rules. >> Lester: We're going to be what it really means to be Amish. As years go on, it leads to emptiness. You know it gave you purpose when you were young but it kind of leads to nowhere. >> Ruth: Then we moved to Michigan. My sister Rachel was born there. >> Joseph: Each of these moves were outward indications of the inward condition of my parent's lives. With each new community came the hope of a better opportunity to serve God. And with each new community came its own challenges. In Michigan the challenge happened to be my great uncle Ora Graber. He was a minister in the Amish Church. >> Rebecca: It soon became very evident, that Uncle Ora expected Lester to walk right behind him and yea whatever he said yea, and not have a conscience of his own. >> Lester: He said, 'You preach the wrong thing. These people do not need to hear grace, they need to hear fear.' And whenever you heard him preach, he preached fear. And his philosophy was that if you scare these people enough they'll fear God and stay out of hell. >> Joseph: Great Uncle Ora wasn't the only one to disagree with my father in Michigan. One of the elders in the church was getting quite frustrated with this young preacher who kept trying to apply the Bible to Amish Church rules. >> Lester: And he called my a young whipper snapper who thinks I'm smarter than the rest. Now, I wasn't trying to be smart. I was trying to say, look, there has got to be a Biblical response to this. You have this issue, and you have a Biblical solution but you can't accept that because we also have historical precedent. That really really started to bother me. >> Ruth: After Michigan we moved to Tennessee. And my brother Jonathan was born in a log cabin that my parents built. Tennessee, I think was one of my favorite places to live. >> Lester: Tennessee was probably the last place that we were still Amish at heart. We had no intention of leaving. You know, we are Amish. We were raised this way and we're going to stay this way. >> Joseph: The first people to move into an Amish community are the one who get to set the rules and the written standard the way they want them. >> Lester: We weren't the first ones to move into the community. In this case there was a buggy shop and there was a harness shop and they had some tools. The buggy shop had a diesel powered arc welder that they would use. And several other things like that, and they said, well we need that, and thats what we agreed at the beginning, but when I asked about certain things that I wanted to for my business, they said, 'Well you weren't here when we started and we can't change it now'. And they refused to change it. I bought a Woodmizer© Sawmill. The motion control that moved the carriage forward and back is powered by a 12 volt electric motor. And they said, 'You can't have that.' And I said well you have a welder. 'Yeah, but we were here when the community started, you weren't.' So I actually replaced that, took all the 12 volt electrics off of that sawmill. Replaced it with a hydrostatic drive out of an old lawn mower and used a Briggs & Stratton engine running independently of the other engine that actually cut the lumber And this one engine with the hydrostat drive moved the carriage forward and back. You know, So we went to a lot of trouble to live simple. [Amish preaching] Now sometimes in our preaching we would say things that we had heard from others, and I was challenged on a point one day, and I really couldn't answer it, there in Tennessee because I didn't know the point behind it. And I realized man, I need to study more. There was in Rebecca and my life a constant growing of spiritual awareness. We finally left Tennessee because it was just... ...there were things that were just...we couldn't... They couldn't be resolved that we believed was a spiritual resolution to it. >> Ruth: And then we moved to Missouri for a short time. To be close to my Grandparents who were working on a chicken farm. >> Lester: At this point I had decided that I would take the standard, we had a written standard "Ordnung's Brief'. I was going to take it, rewrite it, Make it Biblical. Make it perfectly Amish but perfectly Biblical so that everything was substantiated by the Bible. And I actually tried. Started working on it. But I didn't get very far, I could never finish it, because it couldn't be done. >> Joseph: We had not been in Missouri very long before all the other Amish families began moving out and eventually we were the last family left. But another group, the Beechy Amish, had started moving in. Now the Beechy Amish have a plain dress code but they're allowed to have electricity in their homes and they're allowed to have cars as long the cars are painted black. >> Rebecca: The Sundays that we didn't have church, they would invite us over to their services. >> Ruth: I remember Dad was wanting to go. You know he would take us sometimes to the Beechy Amish Church. Or Dad and Joseph and Rachel would go and I would stay home with Mom, because Mom was sick at that time because she was pregnant with Rosemary. So she was home in bed a lot and then Dad would go. And he was really excited about it. >> Lester: The Beechy Amish I think helped me to become more aware of spiritual things. >> Joseph: There church services were in English. >> Lester: They made it easier, much easier to understand than just the old German. I told Rebecca, let's just join them. >> Rebecca: I said, let's stop and look at this. The only difference between them and the Amish where we come from is that there fences are just farther out. They have rules too! They're in the same legalism that we are. I mean if we were to go with them, we would just be going for the modern stuff mainly. >> Lester: I would have left but she didn't want to, she said there's no difference between us and them, and she was right. >> Ruth: Then after that we moved to Montana where my two youngest sisters were born, Rosemary and Dorcas. My Grandfather was very concerned about where my parents were going. He was just talking about how, you know, we have bicycles and next we'll have cars. >> Joseph: Grandpa had reasons to be concerned. The community we were moving to in Montana was not as conservative as other communities we had been in. They had bicycles and tractors. They used propane and they built beautiful log cabins that would have been considered too prideful for most of the communities we'd been in. They also had an element of New Order Amish people in the community. And several years earlier a number of people had actually left the Amish from the community there. >> Ora Eash: And I remember them moving in and your Dad coming off with this big old hat, I mean he had a huge hat, which was a sign that he's more righteous, or more conservative. So that's the picture I got right away, Who's this guy, what's he gonna do to us? [laughter] But as time went on we became friends. [hoof beats] >> Rebecca: In the Montana community there were a bunch of single guys that lived on what we called Bachelor Hill. >> Lester: They had escaped to Montana where they could live unhindered. They could hunt, fish. >> Joseph: We are on our way down to see Homer Miller. Homer was a bachelor on Bachelor Hill while we were in Montana. >>Homer: I did my thing, just lived as a hermit. Being Amish, I really liked it. I train horses now and it really helped me. >> Lester: I worked with a lot of them at the mill, got to know them, they'd come to the shop. >>Homer: I really liked your Dad, he always made sure he did more than his share. He was a little hyper every now and then. >> Rebecca: We would invite them in for supper and they would eat with us and they would tell us more of their stories. >> Lester: If in the evening one of the guys would go out and shoot his gun, pretty soon the next guy would shoot his gun, and pretty soon they'd have a whole chorus going back there. >> Homer: Bang, bang, bang, Bang, bang, bang, It was just a whole big circle. >> Joseph: In the evening when it was time for bed I would climb up the ladder to my loft And Dad would be sitting down there reading the Scriptures, poring over them. In the morning when I awoke, Dad would already be up and he would have the Bible on the desk again. >> Lester: During this time, this last year that we were still Amish, a group of people a group of families got together on Saturday nights and we had our Saturday night prayer meetings. And that was really a wonderful time. It really helped us, encouraged us, and strengthened us. >> Ruth: I definitely saw a change in my Dad. He and my Mom would be getting along better, or their relationship was better. And just that he was excited about living life. >> Joseph: My Dad had a good relationship with many of the bachelors, however some of the other men of the church wanted Dad to enforce the rules, because a lot of the bachelors had things that they weren't supposed to have in the Amish Church, like a guitar, or a camera, or a radio. But my Dad was more concerned with their inner struggle than with their outward conformity. >> Rebecca: This one week, one of the guys came and told Lester that he's really been being convicted of something that he did that was against the Amish rules. >> Joseph: So the following Sunday after the service my Dad asked the members to stay seated for a members meeting. >> Lester: I announced that there were several boys that wanted to make their things right. And then I just mentioned that if there was anybody else who wanted to make their things- if you got things you want to confess that you feel you need to confess Now would be a good time. >> Rebecca: And so when he told these 3 boys to go, over a dozen of them got up and went outside. >> Joseph: In the Amish Church the offending member first confesses in detail to a minister. >> Rebecca: And then they took turns saying what it was they wanted to confess. >> Joseph: The members are informed of the nature of the infraction and a vote is taken to see if any punishment will be given. In this case, they just voted on whether to restore the young men to good standing with the church. >> Rebecca: And so they went around and everybody was 'Einig mit der Vorshlag', everybody was agreed with it. >> Joseph: At this point the offending member makes a general confession on bended knee in front of the congregation. >> Lester: I confess that I failed and I sinned and with the Lord's help I want to do better. >> Joseph: In the dialect we call this, 'Ihra sacha macha,' Or making their things, meaning making their things right with God, and the Church. >> Rebecca: It was like a revival meeting in the Amish. >> Lester: Within a week I heard from the Bishop, 'You don't have the authority to do this.' 'To take sins off of people.' I said I did not take their sins off. They confessed them before God, I let them do it. And that was one of the counts that was against me. >> Rebecca: And then when they found out that we were meeting in houses and reading the Bible in English and praying in English, they said this is enough. >> Irene Eash: Your Mom and Dad had started going to some of the prayer meetings, and we kind of saw the direction they were going. So we thought, why don't we try to become closer friends with them so that we can keep them here. Because we need them here. Your Dad was already starting to preach a little different. than when he first came. It was like there was new life there. >> Ora Eash: The elders of the church saw that we were close friends, They thought they needed to silence Lester because he was going to this non-Amish prayer meeting So they came to our house saying, 'What do you guys think if we were to silence him?' So I asked the guys there, 'So what's your relationship like with the Lord?' And they didn't know what to make of it. They left thinking oh this is one of the 'ungehorsam' which means disobedient, people. >> Rebecca: I remember one Saturday I was sitting at the quilt, and I think Ruth was helping me and some of the children were there and all at once, 'Somebody is coming!' And here come these black hats bobbing up there. A whole bunch of them. They came in and they sat around in a circle there. All very solemn. And they talked to Lester about the error of his ways and that he better consider things. >> Ruth: The thing that I really appreciate about my parents is that they kept all the rules of the Amish church. and everything, making sure that they were doing everything right except believing that Jesus is the only way to heaven. >> Rebecca: That's one thing we always talked about, we do not want to be put out of the Amish Church because of material things, I don't want anybody to say, 'She had a tape player' or, 'She had a camera', or 'she had a radio, that's why we put them out.' Or 'she wore the wrong kind of dresses'. I said, let's not do that. Let's make them put us out because of Jesus. >> Ruth: Everything just happened with us having Bible studies and prayer meetings with our neighbors. >> Rebecca: The Bishop was back in Indiana, and he would call in and tell one of the members of the Church, 'You have to go talk to him,' And the one man especially- he told somebody later he said, 'I couldn't go talk to Lester! I couldn't go tell him he was doing anything wrong.' 'He always smiled at me and was so friendly I couldn't tell him he was wrong!' >> Rachel: I remember when our neighbor lady came over to talk to mom one night. and she just was so nervous. I was just like, something, I wanted to know what she was talking about because it seemed that something was going on! But I didn't realize at the time she was actually talking to Mom about us leaving the Amish. >> Lester: When we first came to Montana I was of course the lead minister because I was the only minister there. But it was toward the last year we were there another minister had moved in and by Amish tradition I was ahead of him because I had been ordained longer. But the Bishops had requested that I let him lead out. And I step back. And I knew what they were after. And he was caught between me and the bishops. As time went on that summer, the Bishops had requested that he take counsel with the Church and silence me, and put us out of Church. So he called this member's meeting after church this Sunday, and he gets up and he, uh, he starts, he starts to say something but he can't say it. >> Rebecca: He opened his mouth and he tried to say something and it just wouldn't come out. >> Lester: He finally starts crying, and he just stuttered, and he couldn't say anything and finally he just dismissed church, said 'I'm supposed to do something but I can't do it.' Two weeks later he calls members meeting again. I think he had some more encouragement, and this time he actually gets to it, and says, 'Well, Lester and Rebecca, they need to give the church room, and go out because we're going to vote about them.' >> Ora Eash: You know the person to be voted about leaves the room. Then they go around voting with everybody, and so when they came to us, We said, 'No, we're just going to go outside with Lester and Rebecca. So we went outside.' >> Lester: So he actually votes and gets a vote very strong in our favor. >> Ora Eash: That day didn't work! Because we had friends, Lester had friends. >> Rebecca: The bachelors lined up kind of behind Lester and us. >> Ora Eash: They knew we weren't just being wild or worldly so they couldn't get an agreement. >> Rebecca: They never could get an Einige Rot to put us out. because of all the bachelors that would oppose it. >> Lester: And we were now coming into the fall of 1993, so finally Eli Miller(Bishop) just came out on his own. He took me aside one day, and said, 'Look, I'm going to ask you a question, then I want an answer from you, and I want you to answer me in church Sunday, not now.' 'Do you support the standard that we have here, or don't you?' And I said I don't really have an issue with the standard for the most part, That's not the problem we're facing here. We have a spiritual problems that are a whole lot bigger than the standard. But there are things that clearly aren't Biblical. And I upset him and he yelled, 'I DON'T CARE WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS, WE DO IT THE WAY WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE IT!' He said, 'You know what, we've 'been going through this all summer, I don't need a vote from this church, 'I can take care of this myself. As of today you're silenced.' 'You can no longer preach in an Amish church.' >> Ora Eash: They had convinced everyone that we were not obedient to the church. And that was ground enough to silence both of us. So we- us and Lesters together got the silence thing. >> Joseph: One of my uncles took me on a long walk on the mountainside. He tried in multiple ways to get me to go home and live with one of their families. But I was on to him, and I wasn't about to leave my family, things were just getting exciting. >> Ruth: My aunts and uncles, they all came. And I just remember I was outside hanging up laundry and they came out and talked to me by myself, asking if I wanted to come live with them. But I said,no I don't. And I was happy about it. I didn't even feel bad for saying no! >> Joseph: They sat down with my Dad and tried to convince him that he was wrong. 'You say, you know you're saved. You can't know that! How can you know you're saved?' Then my Dad's answer 'Jesus said my sheep know my voice' They were so nervous, but my Dad was so calm. Over and over again they tried. They finally concluded by saying that Dad's confidence was just pride. And Revelation clearly says that all the proud go to hell! So the fact that my Dad thought he was saved, proved that he was going to hell! >> Lester: We had fought the battle for 14 years. It was time to leave, it was time to go. >> Rebecca: I didn't want to leave the Amish, because I loved the way we worked together as families. I loved the way the people got together for threshings and hay making, and ice cream suppers and frolics, and barn raisings, and all those things! >> Ruth: I don't know that I ever had that one defining moment, Oh we are going to leave the Amish. But it was more like, we are following the Lord and this is exciting. >> Rachel: I thought they were moving too slow! I wanted to go out and buy clothes and just everything right now: change! You know, just go! >> Rebecca: I wanted to be a special aunt to all my nieces and nephews. I wanted to be there so my children would know their uncles and aunts, and their grandparents. >> Ruth: One of her sisters wrote her a letter saying that she hopes that her children never find out they have an Aunt Rebecca. And that if anybody in the family dies she hopes my Mom never finds out. It was really hard for my Mom, but she knew that that what she was doing was right. >> Rebecca: I mean it came down to the wire. Following Jesus. Leaving all that behind. Being willing to leave it behind. I was having a real hard time with this, because I knew if we left the Amish that would be the end or our relationship. We couldn't go back to family reunions, no weddings. >> Joseph: When the struggle would come too strong, Mom would walk up the mountainside to be alone in prayer. >> Rebecca: I said, Lord, even Jesus didn't have to go through this. He was always with you and he knew he had your approval. And I'm going to have to lose my father's approval if I do this. >> Joseph: Other Christian families in the valley would sometimes invite us over in the evenings for special services with traveling missionaries and evangelists. On the day of Mom's desperate prayer, we received word that there would be a meeting that evening. >> Rebecca: And that night, Ray Wenger preached a sermon on why Jesus suffered on the cross. And he told us that it wasn't the physical part that hurt Jesus the most. The worst part for Jesus was the rejection he felt from his Father. Because his Father had to turn his back on him so he could die. Our sin on Him separated Him from His Father! It was as if the Lord was speaking directly to me. Answering my question that I had asked on the mountain. And it was just like that, one thing after another, that I would just cry out to God. And He would either show me in the Bible, show me a verse, or else a preacher would preach about it. Or I would open a book and the answer would be there, or some way, I always got an answer. >> Ruth: When my parents were agonizing through leaving the Amish and what that would mean to our family, our relationship with their parents, with their brothers and sisters. >> Rebecca: Lester and I, we found that verse in the Bible >> Ruth: There is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, >> Rebecca: Father, or mother, or houses, or barns, >> Ruth: ...or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the Gospels who shall not receive a hundred fold now in this time, >> Rebecca: And in this time, not in the future, not in heaven, the Bible said, 'In THIS time.' >> Ruth: and in the age to come, eternal life. >> Rebecca: And so we thought, that is a verse we can stand on and it turned out right. >> Ruth: As our Amish relatives shunned us, the Lord provided us family, Christian family, >> Rebecca: The brothers and sisters in the Church, they were there for us. >> Ruth: Dad would read this verse a lot. He would walk around the house and he would say it a lot. I think that was very comforting to me. My cousins were no longer allowed to write to me. We used to have a cousin circle letter that we would write in, and they didn't write to us any more at all. And I remember the first time I saw my cousin that is closest to my age after we left the Amish, my Mom and I wanted to go talk to her, but she would just look the other way, and she wouldn't say a word to us. And that was, that was a little hard. Because we had grown up together. >> Rachel: But the thing that I really appreciate as I get older. And just recently, I've realized how much my parents did for me as we were leaving the Amish. Because that is very traumatic. But it was not traumatic for us kids. I mean Mom and Dad made it so safe and full of love. And it wasn't traumatic. >> Ruth: I still feel like I come from a different culture. A lot of times. And that most of the time people don't understand that. >> Rachel: Just feeling different, just feeling like I don't fit in. You know, everybody sees me sticking out like a sore thumb, and I know they didn't. >> Ruth: I just remember the first day we spent all day with non Amish-speaking people, and I felt like I had been chewing gum all day because my jaws were so sore from speaking English. >> Rachel: But it was an adventure: making new friends, getting to wear different clothes. and getting to do things. We watched our first movie- we hooked it up to a generator. And watched Anne of Green Gables with that motor going the whole time. But it was so awesome! [ laughter] I remember buying our first car, that was amzing. >> Rebecca: I like horses and I got motion sick when I got in a car or a vehicle of any kind. And I had to throw up when I got in a car. When Lester said he was going to go get a Suburban, I went into my bedroom and I sat on that chair, I said, "Lord, if it is right that we drive vehicles, 'if it is not a sin, then show it to me, 'by helping me never be motion sick again.' You know what? I got in the car when he came home I never was carsick after that. I could sew, I could do anything while driving. I was not carsick. So God said the cars were alright! [laughter] We were facing this, how are we going to dress? Now that we no longer had to dress Amish? And it was kind of hard at first to start cutting the boys hair different. And then my husband started losing his beard, And you know, when you do that, echoes of sermons, I sat under so many sermons they would preach about, this man left the Amish, and then when I saw him he had cut some of his beard off, and next time his beard was more gone, And then pretty soon he didn't have a beard at all! And there was nothing Amish about him! And he was totally out in the world. He was serving the Devil. And that's just the way it goes, if you take off a little of the beard, more and more will get off. You know you would hear these things, I guess it was like flashbacks from soldiers in war. You would get flashbacks every once in a while and you would have to deal with them. And say, Okay Lord, that was not your voice that I just heard. So we had to resist the Devil. I would pray about things, and ask God, what do you want me to do about this? How shall we dress? And we started learning how modesty and things like that it is taught in the Bible. And so we started seeing principles- principles in the Bible that we could stand on and tie to. >> Lester: You can't read the Bible too much, no matter what language it is. It's not gonna hurt you. >> Rebecca: One time my sister was calling me. She was saying, 'The rules are for our fences,' 'How do we keep the sheep in the pasture if we don't put a fence around it?' 'Those fences are for the rules, you have to have rules!' Okay, this is the difference, I said. If the Shepherd was with the sheep, then the sheep would follow the Shepherd and he would go here and there and lead them to the pasture. And they were okay as long as they followed the Shepherd. But I said if you take the Shepherd away from them, then you have to put fences around them. [singing] ♪ I have decided to follow Jesus ♪ >> Lester: We decided to follow Jesus, you know, that's what I decided. >> Ruth: We sang the song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus so many times. >> Lester: That became a part of my life, it became a part of who we were. Just following the church rules and regulations did not bring us peace in our life. Reading the Scriptures and seeking God, That brought peace in our life. >> Joseph: Watching my parents make this discovery, helped my siblings and I in our personal journey with God. [ Background Singing] ♪ Tho none go with me, still I will follow ♪ >> Lester: They told us that if we left the Amish our children would all leave the faith. >> Rebecca: Because there would be no rules there to hold them together. We would lose our children. And they would all get ungodly partners, because if they didn't marry Amish, what was life? >> Lester: The things that we were told would happen if we left the Amish, didn't happen. God is faithful. Today our children are all serving the Lord, some of theme are married and we have some wonderful grandchildren. [singing] ♪ The world behind me, the Cross before me ♪ ♪ The world behind me, the Cross before me ♪ ♪ No turning back, no turning back. ♪ [music] >> Joseph: This has been my parent's story. But they are not alone. Join us next time for some more stories, including one with heartbreak, and romance. [music]
There are similarities between the journey of either being kicked out or leaving the Amish community as JW's. This is part of a 6 part series documenting Amish and exAmish communities and their issues. Fascinating.