Joseph and Mary Yoder's Testimony (Leaving the Amish)

joseph and mary they um are when i first met them they were out in davis county they moved recently up to jason to indiana but joseph mary come from davis county and mary would be actually ida's niece um glenn and ida uh reached out to them and then i reached out to them too so we went out and visited them and i shared about it in our church here when we went and visited them but uh mary has a powerful testimony joey joseph has a powerful testimony and so i'm going to let them come up and share a little bit how what god has done in their life man it's nice to be here praise god i realize that i'm a little bit smarter than glenn because i passed the third grade and i went up to fourth grade and i had to do fourth grade over so i'm a great smarter than him wait a moment no just just kidding yeah well it's uh it's a great blessing to be here um i'm not sure how to start it's been it's been great for the lord has shown us and what he has shown us ten weeks ago we were amish but we were searching i was very uncomfortable in the amish settings i knew a lot of their practices are not right and are not scriptural and i was very uncomfortable and i had a brother brother bill i don't know how that's also not amish and mary had an amish she still got an amish sister in wisconsin that she was very close to and she said you would gain somebody i would lose somebody and that was that was a struggle she had a tremendous struggle till later when she found out she's got an aunt that she could come closer to as well that was a tremendous help to her but in the meantime before she before she was really um wanting to go or anything you know before in that time that she didn't want to leave and i wanted to i knew it would not be right for me to drag her out and or leave her so i waited and i praised god for that but i um i worked at dinkie's auction barn there in daviess county indiana and i was went to a building material sale one saturday and mary was at home with the children and i did not know it but well i had left early that morning to go to the sale to help there i did not know it but that day she was especially burdened and she was praying god whatever is your will please show joseph amen and i was there helping at the auction not knowing this and i was assembling the wheelbarrow on a table that i clearly cleared off nothing on it anymore when i put the wheelbarrow on and i assembled it and well then the auction started and i was uh i was helping as a ring man and i was uh the format of the auction was you know i was helping him as ringman and uh he said go over there and get the uh wheelbarrow and stuff that's on the table and uh we'll sell it too and i came down there there was this track from a buggy to a pulpit and i did not know who it is and like yeah and that happens to be a picture of pastor glenn and ida their family and his son that wrote the track which he would be my wife's cousin first cousin and i i picked up the track burden of my heart that here must be an answer and i picked up the track and i put it in my pocket went on and helped the afternoon when i came home i told her that there's something i want to read to you there's something that i want to read here and before i could even start reading it she said read it out loud i might have said the title of the hamlet first but i read it and she was like she just she just asked me to give this to her no she after i read it yeah she asked me to give it to her because it sounded familiar and i would like for her to share a little bit of how how with her experience on it it's really amazing what god did because i did not know this family i'd seen glenn and ida maybe two or three times in my life but i was looking at this picture in here of pastor ivan yoder and i kept thinking that he looked like my dad i didn't i didn't know why but after i kind of i just stared at him for a while and think and i was thinking that i started looking at the lady in the picture and i told jo that for some reason she looks like she the way she's dressed you know we all know to stress if we're amish i said she looks like she could come from riceville iowa that's where a whole bunch of my relatives lived and then things started piecing together in my mind and i said is this for real and i would look at her again and try to figure this out i said she looks like my relatives she looks like my cousins my sister and so i started thinking more about their family i knew my oldest sister was close to ivan's age and i knew that she had told me that she remembered playing with your oldest son and his name was ivan so that helped me piece together a little more of the story and i also remembered mom told me you had five kids so that added another thing it was like fitting a puzzle together and i don't remember how long this went on that i was just piecing little pieces together and suddenly i just said joe this man this ivan yoder is my first cousin and he was like let's let's call him is there a phone number there so we we tried to call him but he didn't answer his phone then i said i have to know if that is my cousin or not and i called my mom my mom lives in michigan i called her and i told her the story i told her what the pamphlet said and i said is that glenn and ida's son and mom said it has to be it has to be him i don't know if mom since then what was going on but i had also felt a deep i don't know i don't know how to explain it really when he was reading this to me god just kept impressing on my mind that this is exactly what you've been praying for that this is a sign from him we need to take this step and so after i talked with mom and we got in contact with ivan it just all fell into place god god worked it all out for us and there has been a time that i wished that i would have never picked up this track because it only created strife opposition and all that and yet i knew that there was some answers if god would ask me and his for his for the benefit of him if i'm sorry i picked up the track i would have said no but for my culture how i paint them i wish i would have never picked it up and yet the spiritual side i was glad i did and but we got the time came where we uh actually am i going over time okay um the time came where i actually um um where we let work get out what we're planning to do and um and i told my boss and he he was you know first he was very you know not not as harsh about it until i told the deacon and he was about overthrown backwards then my boss decided he'd better measure up with him the way it seemed to me and then he said he talked about re-baptism now you ain't gonna get re-baptized are you i said well if that's what what we you know i don't know you know i won't say we won't he said you know the bible talks only about one baptism amen and i said but what does baptism mean baptism the definition in greek greek right is immersion and he was like he was just kind of shook up that i would that i would actually consider re-baptism because he he said the bible talked about one baptism and this came on to where finally he said you know you realize the church was probably going to excommunicate you and this might be your last week at the job too i said you know what because the amish based a lot on the anabaptists what they suffered and i believe they they suffered you know they they suffered and they were probably more born again of what his claim to be followers are but um i said well you know what the anabaptists suffer persecution death and all that for their faith if i don't get more than just being excommunicated and a loss of job i can do it he looked at me straight in the eye he said you better be careful you better be careful what i what you say and in that moment and during those times my my job was just at a shaking thing i couldn't do anything right i had my mind in the gutter because i was thinking about this baptist church deal you know and stuff like that well i guess it is what it is praise god that i can say that i'm born again and i'm saved but there's one thing that i want to be honest with you about these strongholds of what we have been taught for 30 years growing up and being in the amish those strongholds want to keep a hold of us of the work salvation and it's still it's still a process for us but several weeks ago i nailed it down at the altar call in the church there in the baptist church nailed it down for the new birth and my wife has been born again several years and but yeah it's definitely a process and we we still desire your prayers in this transition it's just been in the matter of weeks not years and uh so it's still a it's still a process and uh yeah it's great to be here thank you all very much and god bless you all thank you joseph mary what a powerful testimony how god can do a great work just from that little bit of a track so never underestimate the power that that little message could do and it's the same way with uh when glenn got saved in 1982 80. okay he has an answer to 80 or 82 okay that's fine okay yeah not in that era anyways i'm just trying to get you off track there but anyways uh he got saved by the grace of god by you know carl hasting you know told them the gospel then i don't know how long after that glenn yoder uh reached out to a guy by the name of paul koblenz yeah paul koblenz paul grooms got saved and several years later paul coleman's reached out to joe kaim and joe kim got saved then many years later many years later joe kind reached out to me and i got saved so glenn is my uh great great spiritual grandfather so or a great great or whatever but anyways so and it all started with that amish driver yeah you know hauling the amish around and being so sure about what god did for him being so sure and being so um to the um solid about it and god has blessed it and i can't it'd be amazing to see the descendants from that you know it'd just be amazing to see that and so that's why i'm here today you know and uh something came to me the other day is like when i die i don't want to be remembered who i am i want to be remembered who and dwells within me that's what i want to be remembered by and so that's what i strive to do as i live is that whatever we do we do it for the sake of prison for the cause of christ so that we can get the gospel out there and be a light and be that shining light joe come on up you can start here

Channel: hbcofdillsboro

Views: 19,280

Keywords: leaving the amish, amish salvation, tract, Bible tract, john and mary yoder, amish awarenss, amish awareness conference, hbofdillsboro, hope baptist church, hope baptist church Dillsboro Indiana

Id: xUle7bev-Y8

Length: 16min 16sec (976 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020