The Ex Amish of Maywood, MO.

[Music] foreign but if our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost and whom the god of this world have blinded the minds of them which believe not lest the light of the glorious gospel should shine unto them will we or won't we or are we going to leave actually is this actually going to happen it shook the foundation of what i was believing in and and that day right there is where this whole movement started we had liberty in christ and there's nothing man could do to us for what we had in christ no amount of emotion undoes what we know what we have experienced the new birth we can't say that we're not born again and i remember i i pounded on the table and i said they can't take it away from us we already knew the truth there was no way that we could turn around and go back god was in it from a to z it's a wonderful time but they scared me to death [Music] well of course i'm not good enough to be saved it has nothing to do with my righteousness it's the imputed righteousness of christ what's at the scripture what does god have to say about it we were actually not really thinking really the amish but we knew the truth of the gospel [Music] [Music] the lord spoke to moses [Music] foreign [Music] and cast it on the ground see what i can do you don't know the things he has planned for you he has planned for you and for century when people learn of you you'll see what a little yura yoder my dad was the staunchest amish that i would know him in my growing up years and he believed in all the traditions but he became a preacher when he was 50 years old by drawing the lot and he took it very very seriously he started studying the bible as he had never studied it before he would get up 4 o'clock in the morning i remember he would study and study and he came across bible principles and precepts and scriptures that i believe he didn't know were there and so it caused him and us to re-examine what we really believed what the bible really says and and so that put him in disfavor with a lot of the other amish preachers but i'm so glad for that because he planted a desire in us to really know the truth and so i believe he was the very beginning of this and then carl hasty came along and took us across another point of change but i'll never cease thanking god for grandpa's stand he was an amish bishop that had tremendous power when we left and he decided to leave as well he became a nobody in our circles in the outside circles and he left all that power behind um for something that was much more valuable and much precious even to him one day my folks had a problem with their milk check that they had received from the milk company which was in kirksville missouri so they hired carl hasty to take them up there and so i wanted to see the milk plant and so i just rode along when we got there the manager wasn't there and we had to wait a while and my folks went in and sat down and waited and i stayed out in the van just visiting with carl hasty he he looked at me and and he he had he asked me a very important question he said he said urban why are you homage and and i couldn't answer him growing up all those years i always knew there's there's something more like we're missing something we went on and visited there for a little bit and uh and he said do you do you know that the bible says that it's not by our own righteousness that we please god and i had no clue what he's talking about and because i didn't read the bible i read everything else but i never touched the bible because i didn't it didn't make sense to me whatever the preachers preached was final everybody was supposed to be just obedient followers he gave some more scriptures that nobody's going to go to heaven by what they're doing and for some reason that day it was almost like like you plug in a light bulb the power was plugged in but the bulb had not come on yet i knew that he was telling me that there was there was truth in it that i wanted more of carl hasty nicknamed fady by his brother bud was known to his family as an all-american man but to the curious hearted amish he would be forever endeared carl was raised by a baptist single mother he was very young when his father frank died and ate by the time his mother ethel would remarry it was only 11 years later that carl would marry florence reed and eventually moved close to bakersfield california working with horses in the rodeo we don't know when he trusted christ as his savior but it was there that he and florence were baptized into the church they moved back to bowling green missouri in 1974 never having children he taught his nieces and nephews all about horses in the rodeo wherever he went he'd never met a stranger he took a job as a deputy dispatcher but some would forever be indebted when he took a side job hauling the amish i called up carl hasty and he had not even been home all that long and i i called him up and i and i said carl and he said yeah yeah something wrong and i said i i said you know all those things that we were talking about today about the amish and he said yeah yeah yeah i asked could you come back out here and we'll talk some more yeah he said i'll be there in 15 minutes and i said no no no no no no i said you can't come out it's still daylight and somebody will see you and there was a circle drive that went around the house and i and i asked him if he could come out after dark and come around the circle drive and stop when he gets behind the house so nobody will see him the only person that i knew that might enjoy being there and and be part of it and all of that was glenn yoder brother glenn yoder and i sat in his vehicle and uh he had a battery operated tape player i have never heard the plan of salvation any clearer than i did that night rb theme preached a sermon about works and grace and and i realized for the for the first time what i have been trying to do it was being trying to be good enough to please god and it wasn't possible jesus had already paid for it earlier that day the power was plugged in but that night the light bulb came on i believed and i still believe i remember the day when when it struck me after having a conversation the day before with uh carl hasty and he explained the phrase of what jesus made on the cross it is finished and that just really hit me and him i believe that is the time when i ceased trusting in myself and trusting in the finished work of christ now i wish there was a day where i could say that was the day or that was the date i don't have that but i rest my case with what as paul said for i'm not ashamed for i know whom i have believed and persuaded that he is able to keep that which i committed unto him against that day and so the words of scripture are more important than the words of the sinner's prayer which i per se did not experience that evening when i told him i don't know if i can go on living this way if he wants to go with carl hasty go ahead and then he started talking to me and and explaining a lot of things and he thought he it was done and he gave me a hug and i said no i'm not ready i remember specifically having these conversations with mr hasty and being so glad to know this but i i told myself there's no way that ida would understand this and so i didn't talk about her which was a serious mistake the bible says the secret things belong to the lord but the things he has revealed belong to us and our children forever i was scared because i knew if i would get saved i knew how i would be used by my family so i bought it for a year and a half i just rolled over on my side of the bed and i just prayed that i want to have what he has and i want to serve the lord he's serving i was on the school board in bowling green and grand yoder was the teacher there and i had to i wanted some questions answered but i asked glenn yoder if if he thinks it'd be all right if i come to the meeting where carl hasty will be next tuesday night he's oh sure we'd be glad to have you so i went for the first time and i i didn't do anything i just went and wrote a few things down that's where it started for me a lot of but now glenn was a good help to me and he gave me a lot of scripture but we had these meetings with carl hastier in bowling green at ben giraud's house and so that that strengthened me a lot just to know that there's somebody out there that really knew the truth also rachel would tell me don't go to carl hasty's meeting that might not turn out well and so i just went anyway i didn't really listen to to her too much in that area but that was the beginning of it and then later after we learned quite a bit i uh me and your dad talked and we sat beside each other in church one time the preacher said he was from ohio he said now you know our people here in ohio they were studying the bible and they left the omnis and i said oh boy we we don't want to do that but i really we thought we'd never leave the elements but if that was the beginning of us thinking about moving to maywood after that experience of salvation that night i began witnessing to my my folks at home and and of course i was all excited i thought i had some brand new truth that i could convey to everybody that i meet and especially my folks and so i i went home and and uh and i said you i tried to to tell them all about this and they just set their stone cold looked at me and when i basically got done they just their only response was who in the world have you been talking to i said carl hasty and of course after that carl hasty uh probably lost a lot of business in in the community so we were dating in bowling green missouri one sunday evening on a date he started talking to me about it he wasn't sure how to go about that i won't just say hey you've been deceived so he started telling me that what we are hearing in the amish church is not what the bible teaches and i got so excited and the next morning i was telling my sisters about it and i thought wow this is you know and they kind of they were actually open to listening and we're kind of kind of excited about it for a little bit my sister emma and rosa and but of course that's about as far as it went then with them but and so it took a little bit for me to actually actually believe it in my heart and really know that i was truly born again in the amish community what we believe just didn't match up with what the bible taught this gentleman gave my brother irvin a cassette player and we would listen these tapes late at night with in secret because it was a serious thing to have a tape player in the amish church you would have been kicked out of church if it was found out so that's where it started opening my eyes to the truth of salvation because we were wrapped up in works everything we did had to do with works we would it doesn't matter if it was farming or whatever it was everything had to do with how can we better ourselves or god would be pleased with us not realizing there's no good in us without christ we started dating and along the way i introduced her to these tapes as well and we'd listen to him we've never heard this before you can know that you're going to heaven this was foreign to us because we were taught you don't know until you die and we want to know more and so we started having secret bible studies and one thing led to another and eventually when we moved up here to maywood there were about 14 families that had moved up here and started a new settlement and we were going to come up here and start the perfect amish church so we thought my wife and i we we stayed in bowling green and we continued studying scripture the truth and and all of that and but we stayed in contact with them up there and so in time they left up there and then then later uh uh later we left bowling green and moved up there and joined them we moved from bowling green because because we were under pressure to not study the scripture in bowling green we were under pressure so we thought we'd move and we didn't really want to move but we decided we best move because we were uh we were pretty much agreed with i was agreed with the yoders that there's truth to be had you know romans 3 where it says he is just justified him which believes in jesus but actually verse 24 carl history really really pushed and i was i thought about that and thought about that and that was the understanding that i had in the german and in the english you know it talks about you get actually tied for a good deal now you don't understand that maybe but the righteousness which is of faith the next spring after 82 we were working on the milk house over here and and we had a lot of conflict here in the maywood area and with my brother-in-law and with others and so i that spring of 83 is when i trusted christ as my savior and so all that summer we were we were working here on the barn in the fall and doing this and that they almost came and visited us and i thought then we we never leave the amish when we were under conflict about we shouldn't own a milk tank i said when this life life goes on and i thought you know to trust christ is the issue not whether i own the milk tank or don't own it or the company my dad would leave us boys we'd often be like hauling manure or something in the barn he'd say boys keep working you know i'm gonna go to the house we knew what he was doing he so desperately needed to get into the word and make sure that what he's studying is right because he was seeing where this is leading to i got saved that on may the 1st of 1983 and uh it was just by seeing that you know there's nothing we can do to go to heaven god i mean jesus paid it all and i was so relieved oh it just laid off we still stayed here and it was very uncomfortable here when they came worked on our barn in august of 82 some of the amish said now we've got rubber tires on our steel wheels where's this all going we said well hush hush we'll be fine everything will be fine growing up in the amish church their only solution was to do all the good we can i just knew that i couldn't be good enough after going home from church on sunday afternoons it seemed like the hardest thing knowing that i'm lost as i heard more from glenn yoder and brother joe what they believed i wanted to hear more i remember we got together and having secret bible studies it was then that my eyes were open you know that there is something more out there but it didn't really click a whole lot until a couple years later we kind of started it up again after we had kind of laid low for a while and john and matty came down one weekend and they went over galatians 3 with us and that just clicked that time and it was then that i realized that the amish system the rules and things are not part of our righteousness and i saw that it's only by faith and that's when i let go of the amish rules and things and it it was the most liberating feeling i've ever had in my life and we went down to bowling green to have a bible study with my brother irvin and elizabeth they lived at my parents place just across the lane from my parents house and glenn and ida were there they went down with us and john and mary shropped they came up there too and i remember we put dark sheets or whatever we put over the windows so there was absolutely no light that my parents we didn't want them to know because this was earlier on we weren't excommunicated yet so we didn't want them to see us over there in irvine elizabeth's house and getting suspicious what's going on over there and so this was about 11 o'clock at night this is late and we stopped down the road we trudged through the snow climbed over the fence came through the field to get into their house so so my parents would not know we were there because we knew if they would find out we're having a bible study things would explode i mean it would get it would get really bad and so we were there having a good time just talking about the bible and all of a sudden there was a knock on the door and my mother opened the door looked in and you should have seen the look on her face she was scared to death what we were doing and she looked at me she said john vos and de geles or john where are your suspenders i had purpose during those first several years of getting the information that our heritage is way too precious and and we are born in this and this is something that would never leave just thank god for knowing some of these things but it came a time when we were so isolated i thought we were not talking to anybody but obviously we had been talking close friends the preachers had sent word around do not go to the odors because they have a false religion a fram the global and they will not communicate with us and i realized that even though i had purpose not to leave this it wouldn't work because doctrines just doesn't mix with light we we got caught reading and studying the scripture and and i thought we no we'll just stay honest i had questions others asked me well are you going to leave the army or something no we're not going to leave the amish that was my idea my brother-in-law glenn yoder's brother levi their family was here from kentucky and their pastor was here as well because he had heard that we were searching for the truth and so he came we were having a bible study that evening and we were really into it we were just really having a great time learning the word of god and all of a sudden there was a knock on the door and it just went deathly silent we didn't know anyone who was around but i was up doing some giving one of the kids a drink and i opened the door and there stood the bishop petey burkholder and he just looked in there and seen all of us around the table studying the bible and he just got as white as a sheep when you're excommunicated in their eyes there's not much hope for you you pretty much have settled your doom that was really the turning point when the guys all stood up and told him what they believed we after that we had three three months of our own services with your dad priests and sang songs and and it was not a plan to leave the almost really it was just god led us to where we went they had given us a book a one-way street which said that if you go this route if you leave you'll never be able to come back and then the fear was that we would lose our family they predicted we would lose our children we would lose our marriages and we would lose everything that's precious in life and there's nothing closer than your family so there was a legitimate fear of that but i'm so glad that we just trusted god with everything my driving fear was as much as anything was leaving family also to stop going to the amish church that was just you know the parents came and cried and we're both from families of 15 and they brought some of the brothers and sisters along up and the parents did and sat in our room and cried and talked and it was just hard to disappoint them van loads of amish my grandparents uh most shrock my grandma will wilma schrock my other grandparents would come the next weekend dave and sarah eicher and other brothers and sisters of my parents and they would sit for hours in our living room in the kitchen we were had a little house and sometimes we'd sit in we'd we had this stairway and we'd sit at the top of the stairway and listen and we had this we had fear disappointment sadness so often they were weeping hysterically i mean and and yeah i don't know how my parents didn't just break four straight saturdays they came and the fourth straight saturday i said take the book and go wherever you want to go we're gonna go to yuri's and and have church over there our family walked over there and they took our double bucky to elaborate quarters church and i was like proud of dad i just couldn't believe that he just stood up to them like this it was amazing it was just like and we sang amazing grace and some of these other songs that that the yoders already knew the holy spirit gave us the strengths to simply let them do what they wanted to do and we'd done what we felt was right i just remember that grandpa dave eicher sat on the buggy and he cried because he knew that there was we were gone by then after my aunts and uncles and grandparents left um i could tell they were shook up a little bit you know they were kind of weepy that night because they realized that this would mean breaking up the relationship with their brothers and sisters who they were close to their dad and mom and that this would uh impact them for the rest of their life and we had strength the holy spirit gave us strength to absolutely not question what we knew was truth so that is what uh give us strength i sometimes was working on the barn and i'd run down the ladder and run to the house and check a certain scripture and that evening we go to plenty over and say we got some we need to have some questions answered and so we came back all charged up no no no guilt there's just a lot of scripture that became alive in our time when we really needed it the abomination of leaving the amish is so objectionable in their culture the religion demands a harsh cavern of separation a separation from weddings funerals friendships including an earthly inheritance the tears that flowed nearly 40 years ago still saturate the very same riverbeds of past memories they were never going to accept us like they did before so we had to make a decision do we turn our back on the old way of life and follow what christ teaches and leave the amish church or do we go back which that was not an option we went through those things i went through those things quite a while before we actually left because i remember when the bishop came to our house to tell us that we are now will be officially shunned he gave us so many weeks and once that time is up we will automatically be in the band i thought that a little strange about the automatic ban but that's how he had laid it out but it didn't bother me at all at that point because i think we had crossed that bridge before already in our minds and so now we were much more prepared yeah as soon as i was saved i was not scared anymore i was happy rachel schrock told me that the church ladies were wondering is ida really that happy all the time and how can she be so happy all the time and well it was after i was saved and i just thought it's everything's okay now and it'll work out and we were just waiting till the right time because i knew we were going to be excommunicated i knew my mom was going to shun me and but it was okay i had jesus the emotions that i remember feeling was some of it was removed here and we had livestock and one of the the greatest things i wanted was a battery fencer so i could keep my hulk and cattle in and we went to eli recorders up there with grandpa and with your dad to to discuss the issue of battery fencer and we come back with a bad report and i had one here and and they almost came and i quickly went down to the whole house and threw it inside so they won't see it that was a real fear because i did not want them to think that we're leaving for certain conveniences so that was probably the biggest fear i had was starting in with conveniences and i knew there where they're going to ride that horse we were on an emotional roller coaster because it was exciting to discover these truths it was liberating to think that these traditions should not and don't need to dominate our lives but on the other hand it was our best friends that took at the hardest our best friends and it's one thing when somebody disagrees with you or slanders you from a distance that somebody you don't care that much about but this was a this was the closest people to me i remember getting a letter from from eli kym which was my closest friend he also had polio and we had communicated a lot spent many hours many letters written together and the last letter he wrote in great desperation he said this is my last ditch effort to to try to keep you from ruining your life that was things like that you didn't read those letters without a lot of tears during this time is the first time i ever remember seeing my dad cry and it was he was giving the christmas story and he got to uh he was telling about the birth of jesus and such but then he read some verses about the crucifixion and how christ came he was born and he died for our sins and i was looking i believe it was out of a book and i was looking down at the book and suddenly there was a pause and and i looked up and i saw he he was weeping because it was just meaning so much to him of the sacrifice on the cross eventually we we realized where it's going where it's taking us and that we will be leaving if we continue this path we were living in bowling green at the time and after we had several bible studies with glenn yoder and other people of maywood we we realized that that is something we need to do i was concerned what what about our children and glenn glenn used to say uh well your children are are young our children were one and three years old glenn said if you see in a year from now that's a mistake you can go back i thought yeah yeah we can but i know we can they're in bowling green uh being in a partnership with my folks and we lived right across the driveway in a small house all our cows our horses everything was in a partnership together we owned what they owned they owned what we owned and so they so of course they did they would they thought that we could not leave the amish because we're tied up in a partnership we literally left everything to the partnership and walked out and even though we left everything behind it it was it was probably one of the happiest days of our life my mom's family was very much against us leaving of course and they followed through with um shunning us very very much and i remember that my mom sent her dad a birthday card and it i believe it was an 84 like the first year that we after we left and when about a week went by and then we got the card back in the mail and it said refused on the outside was never opened and my mom just cried and cried she just couldn't hardly get over that [Music] i did have fears about coming out and they were heightened when i would hear the things that were said to my parents because i would have you know i would have my basically head out the buggy listening as they were telling my parents all these horrible things that were going to happen and and how we were going to go to hell and and so i would be taking these things in uh trying to process them and that's specifically what i most remember as far as fears go that i would hear the things told my parents and and of course it was things that i had believed and and been told all my life and so it was something real to consider i guess what i feared the most probably was where will our family be in a few years in 10 years and 20 years we're going to be excommunicated from the amish for the rest of our life i mean that to them if we're excommunicated we're going to hell but after i understood that really doesn't mean anything it was really not a fear anymore [Music] the thought of leaving family friends everybody that we knew that we would probably be basically cut off from socially just just basically uh disowned where they take their scripture to excommunicate us was really not correct so whenever they talk about you're in the bond i just say well with born with the amish but not in bond with god as far as our emotions while leaving that there was a lot of sadness in knowing that we won't be with our family anymore and especially the day we left we went into to tell them goodbye the ones several of my siblings were there and my parents so that that was hard yeah a lot of the emotions was just the fear of the unknown you know it was not a road that we traveled before obviously and just to to know the separation of family and knowing that we're going to be cut off and just it was really it's hard to explain how you could have such sadness and joy at the same time because we were so excited about what we had learned yet we knew we were leaving broken hearts behind us and that was really hard it was kind of like a two edged sword a little bit it was it was exciting to think about it and at the same time the fear would grip us that wow is is this really real so there were several turning points along the way and one of them i that really stands out was after we had been excommunicated we were just having meetings ourselves and exhorting one another on sundays by way of scripture and then my sister who was on a different mail route maddie said that she got a postcard inviting them to go to a special church service where there'd be an ordination service at the baptist church in philadelphia missouri and that excited me right away because i knew that the amish way of adding preachers is is is leaves so much to be desired god calling a young 28 year old tim stout of philadelphia baptist church could not have been more timely glenn yoder recalled carl hasty didn't adhere to any single denomination but concluded the baptist is the closest to following scripture under pastor tim stowe's discipleship the loyalty that was demanded by the amish was deflected through scripture towards jesus christ well i sent flyers out to the community advertising the ordination and i had been pastor there since november the 13th 1983 and so i was only there about less than three months and so that was the fastest way i could confine in getting information out to get people in church and i knew that the plan of salvation would be given and i was hoping that lost people would come and be saved and then save people needing a church would come to hear some things that might help them to realize their need to know more knowledge of the bible and so it was on my heart to just send it out now today i probably would not send out a flyer for ordination that's more of a personal thing for a church family but at the time i was young and inexperience and that was what i did and to my surprise how god takes something like that and blesses it and little did i know that it would reach a home that that's what excited them about coming to our church was an ordination to hear what we believed why we believe it see the joy that we had and we can see how god used putting those flowers out i'll never forget that day as we because of the preaching we heard that day it was it was awesome and i and and pastor still being ordained to ask him questions and every one of those questions he had it he had an answer at the tip of his tongue with the scripture to go along with it and just amazed that this has to be of god on january the 15th 1984 the doors were open and people were coming and we were expecting a full house and in walks all these ex-amish people i had never met an amish man never seen an amish man i'm from south texas and just it surprised me but it concerned me as well and i had a couple preachers there and the preachers went and talked to the the amish folks that came in and they they explained that they weren't there to hurt anybody they were there to just learn some things because they wanted to see an ordination and so i was ordained in in the process of ordaining me 67 questions were asked from genesis to revelation and glenn yoder who was a spiritual leader of the group he said to me that what questions were asked either they agreed with it or they needed clarification but there was nothing that they heard that they disagreed with and so we could clearly see the hand of god in having those type of questions at ordination i must have asked that visiting preacher jones from michigan doesn't questions but i i remember that later i found out that he went over to to young pastor so and said you've got some people here that are hungering for the word of god and believe me he took care of us nine o'clock the next morning he was out at our house and i wanted to know we would want to have bible studies and so we planned every tuesday night he would come out and have a bible study with us some of the most precious members stand out as pastors still taught us bible songs and and bible doctrine that would forever stay with us [Music] it was those tuesday night bible studies that opened the door for me to go back to their homes and take a deacon with me and each time was a different deacon the first time i had freddie cunningham our deacon and then little by little we started winning more and more and more those that weren't saved god saved and we was able to baptize everybody brother stowe took us under his wings and he would spend a lot of time with us teaching us the basics of the christian life what baptism is about what the lord suffers about and the women had a big issue they had to deal with with the hair coverings and and just a lot of things like that just the basics of christianity and we got to the point where i realized it's not my good works that saves me it's what he has done on the cross and that's it i can't earn my salvation so pastor still came out one evening my wife and i both we knelt down in front of our bed and he led us to the lord we were studying with this group in maywood and and at times i guess even before that maybe we had gone to church up here a time or two we of course we got excommunicated from amish church when they realized that we don't believe what they do we moved to maywood and one of the first nights tim stow came out he questioned me about it and i said well i don't i don't know that i'm saved and he so he led me in the sinner's prayer just for assurance back in bowling green there was a time like that to where we had we we actually made a a choice of no longer attending the amish church services and we just stayed home that spread throughout the community real fast they don't go to church anymore and they're going to probably leave the amish they're probably going to go to maywood and join those everybody would come by and try to talk us out of this and just stay and every one of them had the same message it was works works works and more works everybody that talks about going to heaven there's only two kinds those that are trying to do it by works and those that are doing it by grace it was not that hard for me to accept the way the amish treated us by way of excommunication because we had done the same thing and we understood where they're coming from we've walked in their shoes i just so much wished that they could walk in our shoes just to see what we're seeing because i understand why they do what they do but they don't understand why we do what we do so we know we expect them to shun us because that's the way that's the way we did at one time and we know why they do right you know it's because they have to everybody predicted everything horrible from my parents they said in a few years you're going to be divorced your kids are going to be drunkards they're going to be drug addicts they're going to be terrible at life you know they've seen all this stuff that happened to all kinds of people that left the amish for whatever nefarious reason and of course we always heard about people that that left the amish and had these terrible deathbed experiences where they realized on their deathbed that they're lost so that's what we were always warned about and so there was things like that really we really had to work through and of course glenn yoder helped us to to understand how the amish used those things too so we had to overcome some things like that the stress that they went through i i didn't really understand it until i became an adult the amish made some very strong predictions dire predictions concerning our leaving and what would happen and with our families and we would lose what we would stand to lose and but today after so many years later now i think of what david said i remember the days of old i meditate upon all thy works and music on the work of our hands and uh he's just reflecting on what god has done in his life the amish were making some attempts to try to draw y'all back into the the fold and they were coming with buggy loads of people constantly and so i thought well if if they're going to do that well then this preacher is going to be out if they were going to invest time to drive to try to get them back into the fold then i was going to do all i could keep that from happening you see as a pastor that's a shepherd he protects his sheep guards over him if any of him gets hurt he feels responsible and so i did all i can do to try to go and see them to counter uh the emotions and things that they were going through in our exodus we i have often regretted that we just kind of humbled down or just simply were very shy and backward and i thought why did we not speak the word we knew the truth but we were not well enough grounded to really take the scripture to someone else i've wished sometimes that we would have taken maybe a little bit more liberty to explain why we're leaving but it was it was kind of hard to do that i guess because they didn't really want to hear we tried really hard to witness to our parents i had two brothers and seven sisters and so it hurt me to think that i will never have a relationship with with my other siblings and my parents totally disowned us at that time and so there was a little bit of an unknown the unknown there how this all going to work out we knew we were doing the right thing by leaving the amish at that time but we didn't know all the details what we're going to get into yet we were not real bold yet at the same time sometimes i think wow how did we do that we actually walked out on them after they tried and tried and tried to tell us to stay but knowing what we do now i'm sure it would be easier but on the other hand after we had we had children at that age we realized more how we broke our parents hearts and we didn't realize at the time they treat me as someone that got deceived they believed we got deceived and so therefore they have to not let us come or be around their young people because they're afraid that somebody will pick up on what we say and they themselves have been deceived and don't know it what i would change if i could i sometimes think back and i wish i would have just going over to the bishop's house and just just uh poured out my feelings and just say how it is and and this is what i'm struggling with and i don't know it could have been so different but i remember even before that we i would i would go to church on sunday and i've just come home i was so discouraged after hearing the preaching i i knew that i was not being fed at all and i didn't know how to deal with it and i know that this was hard on on ida because i would come home and wouldn't say a word and it would take me a couple days to get over it and then the next time we go to church it was it was just the same thing over but i didn't know and so i i don't know exactly how that could have been handled differently but i just know that when the glorious light of the gospel shine into our life everything was different yuri yoder said to me one time he said well he said a buggy load of bishops come to see us and i and i looked at yuri and i said oh i'm i'm sorry and he said well i just relied on that song you taught us it really doesn't matter what the people say something mighty sweet about the lord and that just hit me in the heart when yuri said that and i said yuri you're so right what really gave us the courage to leave and to leave our traditions behind is realizing that they were just traditions and so um it once we had crossed that and become aware of that understanding it was not that hard to leave to leave it but those are the things that we struggle with that i struggle with in way in the beginning when carl hasty would talk to me about about um what really is important and what really matters he never said these traditions are worthless he never said you need to leave the amish he never said those things but he just kept feeding the word of god and the word of god magnified the word of god and the things of god and de-emphasized these earthly traditions that we had put so much stock in our current relationship with the omnis is not too good and so my brother mosey he will he'll talk with me very nicely but my brother william just passed last week and we have orders to not not come to the funeral we had orders not to go to none of us exxon which went and so our relationship with the omnis has not improved much at all i would say joe schrock's mother passed away we i dressed up in a black suit and they dressed up in their amish outfits and i drove them there in the philadelphia baptist church van which was identified on the side of the van and they got out and of course they had to take their seat at the back of everything and then when the crowds surrounded joe schrock i thought they were having a friendly family time when irvin came up to me and told me that they were just really hard on him where i could discern with the response of joe joe started talking in english where i could understand what the statements were and so then that's when i said look it's a little unfair fifty to one also they were told that they were going to be cut out of an inheritance and see money plays a big deal with a lot of people but when you put god first in your life money's going to have his proper place and joe knew then that he was doing the right thing and he kept he kept his family together kept him in church and god is truly blessed as a result most of them still shone us there's two of them that are quite friendly to us but some of them two or three of them will hardly speak to me even one of the others are well they'll visit with me but it's it's more of the strained relationship they don't they don't really accept us we never went to visit my parents for eight years and one of the deacons at church encouraged us to go visit them in fact he had gone up and talked to my dad then he said they'll take us up to visit them they lived in northern iowa and of course when we came in they everyone just cried and cried for a long time but they finally visited a little bit but not not a friendly visit it was just we asked questions and they answered and that was about it the relationship with my family now is has come a long ways from what it was at the beginning when they would not even allow us to bring our vehicle on their property and now over the years we've just kept trying to witness to them and it got to the point maybe 10-15 years ago maybe more that my mom actually said that she must admit that some of the things we've said that she has seen that they are true so our witness was taking root and over the years they have become more and more open and more receptive and to the point where now we can go visit them anytime we can stay overnight they take us in and they are as good as can be we couldn't wish for anything better and we i totally believe it's an answer to prayer when i was probably about 26 years old i was on my way to work and i was listening to my dad giving his testimony at a conference and i was just listening to it and i had never realized it until that moment at this point i would have had four kids of my own and i it just had never hit me as a youngster because i didn't pay bills i didn't have financial obligations but i suddenly realized i guess almost with a thunderbolt the immense enormous faith that it took for my dad to take his family out of the security that he was used to including a job that he lost with really no real world world experience he would have had an eighth grade education this life was so upturned and he still had the faith we're going to do the right thing he still had the trust that god would take care of us and that did not hit me until i was an adult and i tell you when it did hit me the the tremendous respect i have for not only my dad but all of the men that left their security left their families not really leaving for the sake of leaving but following christ that made a tremendous impact on my life [Music] from the very beginning when they walked through the doors the first time i had my first discussion with them they let me know they weren't there to modernize they weren't leaving the amish to modernize they weren't going from buggies to buicks that that was not in their thinking their thinking was bible truth [Music] we knew it's going to be a totally different life there was excitement too in uh knowing that we're going to be driving car and doing things in a totally different way and wearing different clothes that's not what we went for but that was exciting to experiment with someone invited us to their house for spaghetti and so we of course didn't know how to turn the fork turn the fork and so it was it was very interesting and i remember that spaghetti did not have any meat in it it was only sauce and then the next thing they gave us was a piece of cake and it was on a plate and it was with a fork and it was so dry i was used to putting it in a bowl with milk and eat it with a spoon when we moved there the bathroom was there and we had just taken everything out so now we reinstalled it i remember the first time i put a ball cap on and i went and looked at myself in the mirror and it shocked me because it just didn't look right the challenge of transition it was not maybe as much material things as just mentally i mean our mentality we can have a refrigerator and it's not wrong and i don't have to wear a head covering and i'm not sinning by not wearing it and just to to realize that we can be different than homage and not still not be wrong we thought that we would never need electricity so we let the electric was turned off and the kids took the took the receptacle boxes out i said well that's one thing to play with we didn't have money to buy and play things so when we got modern we had gary chamberlain comfortable and he helped wire up our old house temporarily and when the first lights come on we shouted the farmhouse that we rented it had a uh it was furnished and it had refrigerator it had a stove and and uh and running water that we had never experienced before and all of that and and uh and here i was uh 24 years old and had never driven a car or anything like that and and i literally stood 24 years old opening and closing the refrigerator and watching the light come on and off a year or so after we left i thought well i've really adapted and really adjusted to this culture and a few years later i realized i hadn't that was a challenge to know what to match up and dress and how to dress and how to it was more of a challenge that i was thinking so much of the amish was thus saith the bishop well i didn't want anybody doing anything because thus saith pastor tim stowe i wanted them to do what they were doing because thus saith god through his word so uh when questions were asked of me i would say what saith the scriptures and then there's songs they were learning bible songs so i felt like i felt like you know god's word is not going to return void and we're doing something with the word of god and i think that was the the attraction the big attraction uh from uh the yoders and the shrocks is because we put so much emphasis upon the word of god and not upon me as of asia there are few contrast to cultures within a society that would supersede the english and the amish for example all amish babies wore dresses so you can understand the surprise of church nursery workers it seems the young pastor had some adapting of his own i was just barely 30 years old and i started learning some things about the amish that i wasn't accustomed to when they came to church they set up their pretty close to the front pew as close as they could get and while i'm preaching the women started breastfeeding their children and then when we got to uh talking about mary being pregnant that was like cussing to them you just don't talk about things like that so we come to a a conclusion there that they won't breastfeed in front of the church and i won't use the word pregnant snitching apples and things like that and smashing them down and realizing there's worms in some of them yuri yoder says oh yeah that adds to the flavor going to the shrock's home and they had all these kittens beautiful kittens some of them were just they're just cute you know and joe would say to me he says take as many as you want i said no i don't want any he says well i'm going to kill him tomorrow what are you going to kill him for he said they're not all white we want the old white ones and that was a shock to my system [Music] i think the one thing that really motivated me was that i did not want our children to grow up in the same same way we did with in the in the darkness or the deception of their religion that that's what really motivated me to do something because at first when we would make the change there was always the question are we doing the right thing but after we had been at the philadelphia baptist church under the leadership of pastor tim so it was the children started getting saved and and the preaching was just in itself a strong confirmation to us that we are at the right place at the right time doing what god wanted us to do i was a young pastor i took over a a church that had not been too long independent baptist and then i came on the scene and so i had my own struggles with with um growing in the faith and learning to lead and being young i honestly believe i wouldn't have lasted at philadelphia had it not been for the amish that came in those doors the church doubled in size uh that first year and they they were they were happy about all that we knew we could ask him any questions that we had and you know the ladies had a real issue to deal with their head coverings and he spent much time teaching those issues and about foot washing and to hold a kiss and i'm sure we asked some of the most stupid questions that he and he never berated us he always just he loved us as soon as we uh moved to maywood uh the others that had were already in the process of leaving and had begun going to the local baptist church where tim stowe was was was the pastor uh and of course tim stowe was right out there and we were the new family moved in had just left the amish and uh i don't know what we would have done without him to proceed forward in in worship going to church somewhere and all of those kind of things uh that's where tim stowe just played a major role in our lives [Music] one of the things that people ask us about having been amish they say wasn't that a hard life i mean you worked hard a lot of hard work and all that and and i always respond with the hardest thing was going to church and and being told that i'm a sinner but there's no solution and coming home and it's just sunday afternoons were depressing knowing that i can't be good enough that was the hardest thing for me of being amish we believe that the lord protected us by other from other denominations because we're very vulnerable after we were excommunicated from the amish there was many hands that reached out to us by way of religions and i remember the suitors were good friends of ours and they were part of the apostolic church the very first church we went to and and the mennonites they also wanted a strong with a strong draw because mennonites are similar to the amish many ways but we recognized that a lot of those denominations were works based for their salvation and i remember how carl hasty showed me the truth of eternal security and so i'm so glad that the lord led us to a bible believing baptist church glenn yoder was really my right hand man he he helped me he he don't understand this but he affected me as a young pastor my life is better as a result of the amish that came into the church because you know i can tell you stories about joe strock and uh uh john bontrager and urban and john schrock and others you know we can talk about all of them they all played a part every one of them it's a real sweet consolation to think back that what how god has blessed us with these blessings we were not assured of back then but we're enjoying these blessings in a great way today um the blessings that we've had it's just uh it's amazing i guess the most of all is to have peace with god therefore being justified by faith we have peace with god through our lord jesus christ um having fellowship with other christians i i did not anticipate that i didn't never really had experienced that it's it's a wonderful thing to be in a good church where people believe the thing same thing we do it's just god has blessed us in so many ways we didn't anticipate how god will replace all those friends we lost we didn't know what to expect of course but not regretting our decision to leave and you know we were afraid maybe we'll regret it someday but we have never regretted it the hardest thing for me is when i left missouri um my last goodbye i stood on the platform and i cried like a baby i turned my back to the crowd and cried like a baby it took us five years to feel toward this church like we did toward philadelphia [Music] my wife cried herself to sleep just about every night now these folks were fine but it wasn't philadelphia baptist church and our wonderful friends that had come out of the amish and yes i love this church more than i do philadelphia but it took me five years but i never told them that during those five years philadelphia could have been a preacher killing church they had some rough goes and it was the blessings of the the amish that really really established me i'm really thankful for pastor tim stowe for what he did during that time because it was not easy but we still we love them dearly to this day when carl hasting was talking to us many times he would drive out 15 miles through the little curvy hilly gravel roads from bowling green to talk to us he would come sometimes and asking we got eggs to sell because it was not kosher for him to come and have a bible study but just somebody coming dropping by we got many spiritual conversations and incidentally he had never remembered to take the eggs and so i now look back and i know you know i know why he came he came to witness to us and i i just think he would he would be so glad to see in fact i have an ocean he does see he had a heart attack and died about four months before we left carl didn't have all biblical answers he wasn't a member of a local church he was a smoker no one could have accused him of being the model christian he wasn't a preacher the amish and he listened to tapes of preachers he did know how to befriend and point those who listened to the one they needed most god's divine hand moved carl to bring them to the truth of salvation soon after their ex-communication god through an unusual postcard invitation brought pastor tim stove for the furtherance of the gospel and discipleship but looking back now someone leaving the amish there's going to be hard feelings no matter what and you might as well just overlook it and stand for the truth and um and and be bold in it truly to be released from the army system was absolutely awesome we forget how it was but it really was wonderful to think that we're not in that bondage anymore we were convinced it was the right thing when we left and i can always say that i never ever considered a mistake i always believed it was the right thing to do it didn't matter what came or went from that day until this day i i i never ever ever uh thought i'd done the wrong thing the blessings that we had that was not really foreseen at the time we began to have a lot of friends that were saved people plus one of the great blessings was that our family wanted to serve the lord and they all followed the lord and are in some kind of ministry there were three things that i would like to do someday be an auctioneer drive a charter bus and be a mail carrier and i was blessed and fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do all three i have it thirty five ninety nine forty nine thirty five dollar nine four eight i don't hear them forty fine i'm fifty if i don't hear them fifteen fifteen fine 75 put god first in your life put god first in your home and god will work out the details what a joyous what a wonderful experience the christian life has been ever since the seeds of the gospel coral planted fell on good ground ground that opened wide the mouth is for the latter rain as carl planted pastor tim stow water and this fruitful orchard still grows today as the second and third generations have answered the call of ministry pastors missionaries deacons alongside their wives continue to serve as faithful members in christ for the local baptist church with a minimum of casualties additional amish families has since received true liberty in christ and are now missionaries to the amish are you planting are you watering who are you reaching these people this story are no more peculiar than you that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light [Music] don't wait until you have all the answers just answer every man the reason of the hope that is in you god put you there act upon it tell them what christ did for you you too can be a carl hasty god's plan and cast it on the ground and see what i can do you don't know and for [Music] what centuries little faith can do noah built an ark though he had never seen it and abraham led isaac down though it cost him great praise what is the trial of your faith what is [Music] [Applause] [Music] see what i can do you don't know the things [Music] they'll see what a little fake thing god can do learn what a little faith and god can do [Music] [Music] god and be uh faithful and was that a clock it says mcafee your computer might be susceptible and uh but uh what was the question again the [Music] i remember i just remembered i just remember remember i do remember i remember i remember i remember that i remember remember i remember i do remember i remembered i remember that and i remember that morning i remember i just remember that and so i remember i don't remember yeah yeah as far as um [Music] what's the question probably the biggest fear i had was starting in with conveniences and i knew there were they gonna ride that horse ride that horse we drove the van the vans had been baptist church and um we got there yeah philadelphia baptist church the band said philadelphia baptist church am i on camera or are you okay i'm sorry are we recording that's my famous quote [Music] i'm i've lost my thought uh what was the question again okay write some scriptures down that we discussed you can stop there that particular day i remember but i do remember i remember some of the i remember but i also remember i remember that i remember in i remember and i just remember thinking and i remember i don't really remember much it was kind of funny [Music]

Channel: Floyd Yoder

Views: 255,310

Keywords:

Id: vXGLOD95Yus

Length: 86min 56sec (5216 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021