Why I Left the Amish

i think the best way um to start giving my testimony is first go through uh the the timeline of an old order amish person's life so you guys get the idea of what what the steps are and what the everybody's going through what is expected of an amish person and then i can go back in and fill in what i was going through in those moments and hopefully that will help anybody who wasn't raised amish kind of understand where i'm coming through coming from so as an amish person you're obviously born into an amish family an older amish family and and i'll be speaking mostly about the community i grew up in you know every community varies a little bit but the three main big ones pennsylvania ohio and northern indiana are very similar as far as rules and the way they're raised and the church how liberal the church is how can how conservative it is you're born into an amish family um family has usually no electricity um no cars the the is now somewhat plain usually doesn't have carpet um because it's just easier to clean they'll have propane gas lights in their house there's always going to be a few acres at least because of horses having to have pasture there'll always be a barn and usually a big shop area so as a kid you're just like any other baby you raises any other baby and the first language you learn is old order amish or older english the first language you learn is pennsylvania dutch which is kind of a mixture of german dutch and english all combined in one and then as you're growing up before you head to school you learn english that way you can read and write in english and um about 50 parents send their kids to a private amish school or home school and then the other half usually send them to a public school but they will only attend till the eighth grade and then they're done so like as i was sent to a public school half of the school dropped out in the eighth grade so um other than that you know there's chores how much kids have chores taking men usually taking care of the animals and women usually clean in the house but that can intermingle and and and for the most part i think everybody enjoys their life as an amish kid because it's even though there's some work there's a lot of time to play too and we never had tvs obviously or radio so we got bored and when we got bored we came up with stuff to do we'd play games we'd play with each other it's a very interactive life and then at so at the age of 14 15 whenever you graduate from school or from the 8th grade then you typically most people will if they're not living on a farm they will go out and they will find a full-time job whether it be in restaurants or construction or wherever um at the age of 14 15 and then at the age of 16 a lot of the boys will head to the rv factories which is a huge um elkhart county is rv capital of the world and there are tons and tons of rv factories and that's the main income for northern indiana amish people ohio and pennsylvania i think there's still more in the construction and farming so 16 boys and girls will go find a job working for the rv companies and at 18 they are allowed to use power tools so they'll usually get paid full bonus at that point um they'll make anywhere from 70 80 000 a year from the age of 18 and on as of now the big age the big birthday that everybody's looking forward to as a kid is that age of 16 because at that mo at that point you get to make a choice of kind of staying kind of staying amish or you can jump over and you can get a car jeans and still live at home but uh go experience the world i guess and it's at that point you're of the age i guess in their eyes it's kind of the age of accountability like you become an adult because you kind of get to do whatever make your own decisions do whatever you want and it's also the time of the age that you can start dating so yeah you look forward to 16 you can start dating whenever you can choose to still stay in your amish clothes and horse and buggy or you can they go get a car jeans whatever and um they say experience the world it's called rochester but rumspringa which literally translated means running around it just means you're now youth you can yeah um but what you don't really experience the world you basically just party every weekend you start you know getting drunk weekends and some people start doing drugs others not um but it is just you you're always hanging around other amish kids and and the and when you have fun you go do stuff you you might go to baseball games you might you know go do once you're 21 you might go to some bars or you'll you know go see bands play or whatever it is um and and there's no there's no like time limit to that so your room spinning a stage can be anywhere from six months to 30 years if you want it to be um usually it's not past your mid-20s upper 20s um because usually what you'll do in that that time period is you'll find a partner and you'll get married you'll go back to being amish you'll join them become a member of the amish church get married and have kids and start the cycle all over again now there is a few that never ever go back to being amish and it is what it is they will never be shunned because they were never a member of the amish church the only time you get shunned is if you're a member of the amish church and you end up leaving or you sin or whatever so once you find a partner and you become a member of the amish church and you get married as an amish couple and then you have your kids they do it all over again at the age of 16 they start their room splitting a stage their dating and then a lot of them will end up being married amish again now if you do go back and become a member of the amish church after your little room springer thing if you do become a member and you go back to the amish church and then you leave say go join another church or you just leave you will be shunned and your mom and your parents will and anybody who's amish will believe that since you left you will probably end up in hell after you die because when you get baptized this is when you that's when you become a member of the amish church you do a nine week class a nine sunday class you get baptized and when you get baptized you make a promise to god that you will stay by that church you will you'll remain in that church you will abide by those church rules for the rest of your life and never leave so when you actually do leave you've broken that promise and you will go to hell is the way they view it and it is a very very sad thing for a lot of parents when their kids leave now i can tell you right now that is false it's not true they don't go to hell just for leaving but we'll get into that later so if you're still amish you'll live out your life you'll die you'll go to the grave and then whenever jesus decides to come back you stand up and jesus will judge you at that point heaven or hell like yep you're going to heaven you're going to hell so it's not like the christian faith the biblical teachings of we're already condemned to hell it's just when we trust in christ we now go to heaven and we can know that first john 5 13 i believe so so most most amish kit most amish people will say they love their childhood and they did it usually it's good um you know we'd get amish don't have tvs so they would you know neighbors would get together or cousins you could get together with the cousins and you would have ice cream suppers is what they call them and and the parents would get together and hang out in the living room and talk and and gossip or whatever and the kids would be turned loose and we would go play games a lot of times we'd be playing basketball um i don't know what the girls were doing but we'd you know just go play and they trusted us and it and it was okay it was good it you know there's nothing to complain about there's a lot of there's a lot of value there's a lot of good values that that community has now there's also on the flip side of that there's also it's also a false religion so just because it's a great community and they're super great people doesn't mean they go to heaven because they have their theology wrong so yeah i mean that kind of sums it up so you're born your kid you go to school 16 you kind of become of age you become of age you um go party or not if you choose not to you date you become members of the amish church and you get married and the cycle starts all over again i was born 1983 and i already had one older sister she was about 17 months older than me i was the second out of 12 kids and we were born i was born in bremen indiana and then we moved or my parents moved to shepherd indiana where they still reside today this was my sister and then me and then when i was 16 months old my parents gave birth to a set of twins which meant my mom had four kids in diapers and that's a handful and then there was eight more after that but we grew up typical typical little amish family on three and three quarter acres we didn't have a farm uh but my you know we obviously had a barn and some horses and my dad usually kept some ponies around for us that we would drive a ride and my mom convinced my dad to get us a cow because he thought me and my brothers needed something to do which we did and it was it was a good experience i hated it milking a cow every morning night um we had large gardens we were seemed like we were weeding all the time but typical childhood kind of um they sent us to public school which is good there's something happening something happened when my twin brother and sister were born so like i was saying i was 16 months old when they were born and and my mom had when they were born my mom had four kids in diapers so up until that point she had time for me and my sister my older sister but when when the twins were born she obviously had a lot less time and i've talked to her about it since and she said i just kind of when that happened i just kind of i don't know how you explain it i just kind of quietly accepted it but i took that as abandonment and i didn't know it at the time i discovered it later a lot later in life but what that did to me was made me um feel like i was not good enough it was it was definitely it was definitely abandoned i took it as abandonment i don't remember a thing i don't blame my parents it was just the circumstances i look back now and it was obvious god put that in my life because i wouldn't be who i am today so i'm not whining or playing the victim or making my you know i don't want anybody to feel sorry for me because of that but it did it affected my life tremendously i never never felt like i was adequate never felt like i was good enough for anybody for any um you know if for the group of boys at church that you know would get together after church and play basketball they would ask me you know hey let's go play basketball and you know the first thing in my mind is always well obviously they need another person to make the teams even and they're asking me just for that reason it's not like they actually want to play with me even around my uncles i never felt like i always felt like i was kind of the odd one out and not wanted um that was just everywhere with school friends i just never felt like i deserved to hang around a group of people or play back or play with or what whatever you know i had my couple cousins that we got along with really good that my two cousins that i saw all the time um but anyway so yeah i was i was kind of going through life um while everybody was cruising down the highway right and here i am with two flat tires trying to keep up and it was just so stupid but that's how it was you know and it definitely was a big part of my adult life but um my mom always she always spoke you know read bible stories to us and which is good and all that so um you know i grew up and obviously looking looking forward to the age of 16 [Music] because i couldn't wait to just be free i guess because we were restricted you know we had the amish haircuts and we had the homemade clothes we had and i just wanted to be free you know i i didn't i wanted you know in school i um i didn't want to drop out in the 8th grade i asked my parents if i could continue i wanted to finish school through the 12th grade through high school because of art art class art was always something that came more naturally to me i won a few contests here and there in grade school and i'm no great artist by any means but it just it came easier to me and i think if i would have spent more time invested more time in that uh as a kid i could yeah be a lot better today but you know back then everybody was focused on playing basketball and art was a useless thing kind of so but yeah they didn't allow me to continue school i had to drop out in eighth grade and i hit you know i worked at a restaurant washing dishes for a while and a couple other places and um when i was 15 i remember very clearly um in a horse and buggy you on the way home from my friend's house i surrendered my life to christ i remember as a kid i've always wanted to i've always wanted to do what god i've i was i've always wanted to be a part of god i wanted to do what was right and in that moment at 15 in a horse and buggy i surrendered my life to christ i remember that very clearly um you know i was just god i i am yours um i'm all yours you do with me what you will i wanna i wanna i wanna belong to you and why i did that i don't know because i had no idea how that works how salvation works you know at that time i was still thinking i have to become a member of a church and be baptized and then maybe maybe if i'm good enough i'll get into heaven right so anyway i turned 16 and i did what everybody else does i went out i partied and i drank and uh and i did that for years um i was sick and tired of it by the time i was 17 18. by the time i was 18 i wanted to move on i wanted to have a family and kids and i was i was tired of the partying i just it never was my thing and i don't know why everybody else was having fun nobody else thought that way but but at 18 i started we started drinking less hung around my buddy my cousin we didn't drink as much we just kind of had some clean fun hung around played on this playstation um and at the age of 20 me and a buddy bought a house together um and we lived together for like eight years and that whole time you know every once in a while i'd go party go get drunk hang out with friends i dated girls i never um i knew like i would know it's the one when i met her um so i dated a lot of girls and just none of them they just weren't the one and you know we hung out at our house a lot of people came over to watch football on sundays or they'd come over to play some mario kart um and i can't tell you how many days i uh how many saturday mornings or sunday mornings i would wake up with the gamecube the mario part or mario kart balloon battle soundtrack playing on the tv everybody was crashed out or had left and the sound was just running and running and running um we we played a lot of mario party it was fun uh from like 18 on i don't know why but something something started building quietly inside me um something that made me not want to be amish anymore you know because i was still thinking that i'll just marry amish and when i find my girlfriend i'll marry amish i'll marry get married amish and life is history right something inside me started quietly for me you know and and i didn't want to be amish i had this little thing but you know i thought it was you know just selfishness and i need to do what's right i need to honor my parents and join the amish church and get you know um because you're told you're told your whole life that god planted you in this community and this is where you need to stay you know and and that you're told your whole life that this is the good church this is a really good church this is the only one that's they didn't say it outright it's the only one that's the right church but they do kind of say that because they look at all the other churches and say yeah they're all those non-amish churches are they don't know any better so they'll probably go get the heaven but just because they don't know the truth they don't know that they're living in the world and so you're being taught all these things that this is the right way and this is where you were planted this is where god intended you to be so by leaving that's not going according to god's plan so this little thing inside of me that made me not want to be amish it i kept squishing it down i kept you know that's selfishness that's just the flesh satan talking to me you know and but over the years in my 20s it kept getting stronger and i started questioning some things it just didn't make sense felt like it was you know contradictory um but i wasn't really i wasn't really reading my bible so um still just you know because irish people just don't they go to church on sunday and then they don't really discuss discuss biblical things after that so excuse me i have a cold people would probably say it's the coronavirus but i get this cold every year so here i am i'm dating these girls dating different girls here and there i am sick and tired of this room spinning a thing i don't want to really want to go back to joining the church and i don't know any outside people really i'm not you know i might have worked with a few non-amish people but they weren't christians and you know i wanted to at that moment i wanted to well i kept looking at christian churches and i wanted to kind of walk into one and but i never never had the guts i didn't know anybody i didn't know which ones were you know i didn't want to walk into one where they're speaking in tongues and rolling around on the floor and all that i was scared so i just never did and you know we're always taught that well the outside the world doesn't know the truth so i didn't want to be misled uh by any of these churches that i might happen to walk into so i just never did um and i kept i was constantly praying to god like look why why why don't i want to be amish like what which which direction do you want me to go because i know i should you know this is probably the flesh and this is probably you know send me a sign which way because i don't want to disappoint my parents you know and um but something i don't know you know i couldn't something wasn't right so i kept praying kept asking for a sign there's nothing and nothing and nothing and i think i don't know how old i was 27 maybe i fell in love i met a girl and i fell in love instantly and i knew this is it that this is the woman i'm going to spend the rest of my life with however there was one problem she had already she was honest she had already joined and became a member of the old lord amish church so that meant i had to also become a member of the amish church and or she had to leave and i wasn't about to convince her to leave because i didn't want her to go to hell obviously so at first it was good you know because i was like well this god sent me her this is it this is god sent me this woman to be my wife and that means i need to be amish so um i started started trying to cope with that trying to struggle with that with being amish and we dated probably a year and this was always kind of in the back of my mind i need to join the amish church otherwise it's pointless that we're together and um but i was starting to struggle with it quite a bit and you know about a year and i told her i told her hey i you know i can't i can't lose you but i don't know if i can be amish like i'm struggling with that you know and obviously she was terrified um and you know she begged me not begged me to try you know she didn't want to she didn't want to lose each other i couldn't bear the thought of losing her and so i was like yeah i'll try i'll try i'm gonna try i'm gonna do this and um so we set a date for me to start those classes those nine sunday classes which was about a year i think a year and a half year year and a half out and so i started i started to really concentrate on trying to convince myself to want to be amish because i knew i can't like if i force myself to join the church um that's not going to be good i won't i'll just force myself i'll be amish i won't be happy it'll just make my life miserable for her and for me so i had to find a way to convince myself to want to join to want to be amish and for that next year and a half i that was just in my head constantly and the closer and the closer it got to starting the less i smiled the less i laughed life was just dull and empty because i could not convince myself to want to join and i didn't know why i something wasn't lining up something wasn't making sense to me and i could not put my finger on it i didn't know why i didn't want to be amish but it was at that point so strong in me i could not i could it was like it was a brick wall in front of me i i could not get past the fact that i just shuddered at the thought of being amish i just i don't know how to explain it but it was it was impossible for me to want to do it and you know i i i talked to i think her and some another person you know i talked to quite a bit of people about it actually and you know i talked to some men and they said yeah you know it's it's hard given up your car it's hard uh giving up your phone and all that stuff but it's all worth it you know i know you know you got to drive a horse and buggy and you gotta you know but it's all worth it it's all worth it in the end and i'm like i don't care about that stuff oh take my car take my phone i don't care i am battling with something something isn't matching up i cannot convince myself to want to be amish there's everything inside of me is screaming no and you know i talk to her and i think another person you know like something's off something's wrong something's not lining up like that there's something like the amish religion doesn't make sense to me something's off and they're like so you know they they stay they made a point you know it's like what do you think that you're right like whatever you believe that they're not that something's wrong with them their beliefs that you're right and all the amish people are wrong you know that's like one against what 300 000 people 250 000 well even more i don't know how many are out there and i'm like no there's no way they can all be wrong and be right how i would like to redo that conversation um you know and i'm i'm like what is what is wrong with them am i so stubborn that i can't just give in to what god's will is for me why why am i fighting this i couldn't it couldn't it that last year year and a half of our relationship was um it was bad you know i i wasn't smiling i was struggling with this this problem inside of me you know it was it was either i convinced myself to want to be amish or i walk away from her and i couldn't there's no way there's no way i could walk away from her because this was finally finally the one that god had given me and and so what do you do you force yourself to become amish and you're miserable and she's miserable just just battling with his problem made me so miserable and so like i just wasn't smiling i wasn't laughing i wasn't joking i wasn't myself i wasn't i was dead and in turn her having to put up with that for that long you know you can't i had to burden her too i know it did so i don't know how to i don't know how to explain how hard how much i was struggling with that it was it was it was impossible for me to convince myself to want to join the amish church and i didn't know why i couldn't understand why why why didn't why when everybody else could just become a member why couldn't i what what was wrong with me you know so we set the day that i would start and the day came and i looked at my girlfriend my fiance and i said i can't do it i can't do it so she said take me home i took her home and um that hurt that hurt so two weeks later i it was hurting bad enough that i decided i'm just i'm just gonna i'm gonna start those classes i'm gonna do it i'm gonna be amish i don't care it doesn't matter i can't do it without her you know we at that moment you know we kind of we still talk but we weren't really together what's the point of her being with me if i can't be amish right but we were still talking and she was still hoping that i could find a way so talked to the bishop he said yeah we can start two weeks later and i showed up on sunday at church and i sat through that three-hour service just wanting to do nothing but run and run as far as i could it was it was miserable and since they only have church every other sunday so two weeks later i do it again i go to my second class or second sunday and i sit there wanting to run as far as i could as fast as i could so the last place i wanted to be was in that church i didn't know why it just that's just the way it was and then two weeks after that the third time i sat in there again so wanting to run as far as far as i could i hated it it was it was miserable those three hours is miserable and so yeah after the going the third to the third class i um you know i wasn't still wasn't really smiling it was i was just going through the motions of life going to work coming home but a couple days after that third time i don't know why all of a sudden i felt peace now i can do it like i just felt peace with it all and you know oh god you took that you took that stubbornness or whatever that is inside of me away and now i can be amish and no problem right so i called my fiance up ex-fiance whatever and i uh i told her like hey i can do this now something has lifted i'm i'm good i'm good we can do this we can get married and uh that wasn't that wasn't the case um i think she came out the next day and told me that she's done that all right we're done that it's over she doesn't want to get married i can't i can't say that i blame her because i was the last year and a half two years that i was with her i was dead i wasn't myself i wasn't smart i think the camera quit on me there must have gone past the 30 minutes but um yeah so she came out and officially broke up with me and uh you know i just can't see i blame her you know i was weak i was not myself i was a downer when she told me that i i was devastated um i have never felt pain like that i don't think i ever will again but i have never felt pain like that um it was so painful it hurt physically and uh you know i took off and went told my boss that i can't come to work you know i was group leader over 22 people at the time you know i told him i gotta have a week and for a couple weeks and i can't i can't come to work said okay um so i ended up going to wyoming with my sister and my brother and her boyfriend my poor guys it was it was i probably made it miserable for them um i was in so much pain i actually was this close this close to throwing myself into a river we had we'd camped for the night a campground and the campground host was telling us how about how people had died um in that river they got lost and they just died and drowned because it was you know it was a raging strong river i can't remember somewhere in the big horns maybe i remember i woke up that night hurting couldn't sleep stepped outside you know to have a cigarette maybe use a bathroom or whatever and i almost threw myself into that river the only reason i didn't is because i didn't want the people with me my my brother and sister my brother-in-law to uh be stuck there for a couple days as a search party tries to find my body um i didn't want to ruin their trip and it's the only reason otherwise i wouldn't be here today but uh going back home and you know everybody a lot of people i'd spoken to in the past said that you know that day that you get baptized that day that water runs over your head they felt so free and so good and so pure and so i continued i continued with the classes to join the church and there and uh because i wanted i wanted to feel good something good again i i was i didn't want to feel the pain anymore um yeah i made that decision i'd only felt pain for a week little did i know that it would i would be feeling that for a lot longer than a couple weeks so i continued with the classes for those churches the whole time you know not wanting to be there the whole time just utter pain everything in the room room everything around me reminded me of her you know i don't think it was just her but the dream that i had built around her you know our life the house the barn the kids or whatever you know that i was all i had this idea this vision of us my life built you know i built that around her and you know when she said we're done then that all that all came crashing down that that was no more and um i was left with nothing again you know before i met her i was so sick and tired of that room spitting this thing i was so sick and tired of the dating i was just done with it and then i met her and and then when that ended i was right back to that right back to square one you know everything was gone so yeah that whole time up until baptism i felt i was dead on the inside i was i think i looked normal to everybody else outside but on the inside i was like hollow just charred and burnt black hollow shell you know and [Music] and there was no nothing but pain nothing but pain in my life and yeah so um i continued on i got baptized and you know there's a lot of people that came out supported me through those times you know a lot of people um supported me joining the amish church and it was all i felt nothing you know i should have felt good about that but i felt nothing the baptism day came i felt nothing but pain still just pain you know and that's how the next six months or so in my life was it was just pain i uh prayed every prayed and prayed and prayed that god would just take my life [Music] suicide crossed my mind a lot the only reason i didn't was because i didn't want to put my family through that i didn't want them looking down at my body in a casket um that is the only reason otherwise if it wasn't for them i wouldn't be here today because that's the only thing that could have taken death is the only thing that could have taken that pain away um or at the moment you know i could have gotten into alcohol or drugs but i knew that was i knew that was temporary um i'd never done any of that in the past other than drink but i've never done any drugs in the past and i didn't want to start then i knew it was temporary i knew i was so sick and tired of drinking i didn't you know thank god i praise god for that but the pain was there and i would swallow sleeping pill after sleeping pill trying to just sleep it away i'd wake up in the morning trying to eat a bowl of cereal before i went to work you know just crying my eyes out wake up with nightmares soaked in sweat i think it was two two years after the fact that i had my last nightmare like that um you know this whole time i was living living in indiana i was going to work i was trying to be do my job which sucked at i'd go round and round with god i would i would like start thinking like maybe she'll come back you know she'll probably there's no way she can just walk away from us you know there's no way she could do that so she'll probably she'll end up coming back and i'd start getting happy and cheery and then i have to remind myself she's not she's done like she's done this is over i need to move on and i would just dive again hit rock bottom and um there's nothing there's nothing but darkness i tried to volunteer at a non-amish church believe it or not and other places to just to do good to others and try to get myself back up you know and another worked i actually i even went to see a counselor and that was that was one of the best things i ever did in my life she was a lady thank you denise jensen thank you um and all she really did was uh she um she did a myers-briggs personality test on me um if you guys don't know what that is that's the personality test that kind of they say there's about 16 different personalities and you're one of them and they figure out which one it is so what she does is she sits down and she asks me a bunch of questions and i answered them and then she printed out a paper that described my personality and i was blown away i was blown away because that those six seven paragraphs explain me to a t you know on top of not feeling like i'm good enough or not you know um like not feel like i've ever accepted anywhere um i always thought i was a little different i thought differently and like i just i just didn't people didn't get me they didn't understand i just i never figured out i thought i was weird everybody else is normal i'm i just i'm weird and i need to just kind of be more like them and i was kind of hard on myself for that she printed out this personality test and it described me to a t before before she even handed it to me she looked at me and was like do you ever feel like you're different than everybody else and i'm like uh yeah and she's like ah this is why because you are an infj um that is the rarest of the 16 personalities and they all have that but when i read that my description i was like it clarified so many things to me and it showed me um it showed me who i truly am and a lot of positives about my personality no longer was it negative and i had to squish it down and no longer you know like oh i got to stop being weird and be like everybody else now i could see the positives and why i'm different and maybe that i'm ahead of other people in some areas so that helped me tremendously i want to back up here so even before you know when i hit that room spinning a stage and i started making my own money and all that i would you know that that thing inside me where i'm not good enough i don't fit in it caused me to do a lot of stuff like number one at work i would constantly be trying harder and harder and harder because i never i never thought i was doing good enough at work um i yeah i just always kept trying harder faster doing it better and it actually made me into a successful employee right so i kind of climbed the ladder in that rv fact in the rv industry and you know um but it also if you know in my mind i was like if i just learn how to play guitar um i'm i don't have that music talent if i just learn how to play that guitar i can fit in people will like me then people will accept me or you know if i just learn some tricks on a snowboard because i love snowboarding and i just learned some of these tricks i'll be accepted i'll finally be there you know all these little things if i just you know and i kept buying stuff and building my life around me so it's perfect you know updated house perfect everything i was trying to make everything around me perfect so i'd be i'd finally be there you know i'd feel like i fit in finally obviously i never i never felt like i fit in it doesn't matter what i didn't matter what i achieved i never felt like i fit in and so anyway back to you know seeing this counselor i alongside was seeing her i started reading books on how you know psychology and all that stuff and i stumbled across like a dr dobson book and i'm starting to read some of the you know if this happens in your life these are your reactions later in life and i i was reading this and it and the way i handled that breakup i so clearly saw that i had abandonment issues like a bandit why do i have abandonment issues i couldn't figure out why right this is like 29 years old 30 maybe so i asked my mom i was like why i am i had clear signs of abandonment issues and why when as a kid was i abandoned was it when my grandpa died because i was five when he died and i guess we were close and she was like no no i don't think it's that it was it was when the twins were born you i had four kids in diapers and i didn't have as much time and i'm like oh my gosh and all the puzzle pieces fit together and then here i am this is why my whole life i was so insecure and and never felt like i fit in was because of those because of that that little thing that happened to me when i was 16 months old that i don't even remember but it was great because after that i could start to cycle through this and and work this out in my head and every time i didn't feel like i fit in i was like oh well this is just a lie because this is just feelings from way back then and you know you guys know how it works anyway so i've seen this counselor i was going round and round with god i was in darkness there was there was nothing nothing good in my life there was nothing people tried to talk to me and help me out and you know i tried volunteering here and there it just didn't you know nothing and and it was it was painful and dark and i was still i was taking these sleeping pills and trying to just sleep a sleep this whole thing away and um and this idea started forming in my this little like in all this darkness there's this little tiny little light shining and this little idea of uh maybe i just need to move out west or something um and start over you know when we were when i was probably 21 or 22 my parents took us to colorado silverton colorado for a week on a vacation and it was the first time i had seen actual mountains and i fell in love i i clearly remember in silverton i saw a dirty couple get out of their car i had a couple dogs in it they were dirty you could tell they were just off of a trail um and they walk into a little cafe to probably grab something to eat and i looked at this this is an older couple 50s i was like man i want that i want that life like i envy that life and ever since then i had the desire to live that type of life but i never figured you know i was i'm just i'm just i'm i'm just kidding i'd never move out there i'd be living in indiana for the rest of my life well so anyway through all this darkness this light started appearing maybe i just need to move away out west to start over where i know nobody and that light grew brighter and brighter and life didn't get better around there so one day i walked into my boss's office and said uh my sister's getting married at the end of may and i am done i am done after that i am gonna quit i'm gonna move out west i don't know what i'm doing i don't know where i'm just going and i had no idea i was like i am going to go and god if you're there if if i'm jumping off this cliff into darkness that i have no idea what i'm doing you'll either catch me or you'll let me fall and if i fall i'll come running back i'll just continue this life of darkness see i told my boss i'm quitting so are you sure i don't think that's a good idea and you know this is still a month away but yeah i'm sure i'm i got to do something i can't here i can't do this here anymore so a couple days later i was working on the floor and the vice president of jayco i had been working there for 11 years and the vice president jayco came down and said hey so the vice president of jayco came down one day while i was working and he said hey man i heard i heard you're quitting what's going on so explain a little bit and he was like well hey let me let me pick you up saturday um we'll go have breakfast and so he did he took me out for breakfast and he said look man i we don't want you to quit we think you're valuable here um but if you're if your mind is made up if you're gonna quit you know maybe maybe we'll send you to our idaho plant plant in twin falls idaho we'll send you out there for a week if you like it you know if you like the area if it's what you're looking for we'll pay you and you know we'll make it worth your while and you know we'll pay for your trip out there to check it out and if you still want to move you know move out there if if you don't want to if you don't like it then do what you got to do so um so yeah that was definitely a godsend because i had no idea i figured i'd be making 15 bucks an hour you know going from 30 bucks an hour to 15 is a big pay cut that's what i was making at jayco in indiana and you know i just figured i'd move to colorado or arizona maybe or something and make 15 bucks an hour somewhere but so yeah they paid for my trip out west out to idaho and i you know i set up some appointments to look at apartments while i was out here but i got out here and it's desert there's nothing like it's just farmland and desert flat you know there's mountains to the north and mountains to the south and um it's kind of a little disappointed i was like i don't think i want to live here because i wanted mountain biking rock climbing snowboarding that type of stuff so anyway i did go look at a couple houses and the one house i looked at around all i looked at was shown to me by um a girl who was into all this stuff of you know hiking and mountain biking and all that stuff and she we started talking and she started explaining to me all that there's so much to do around here she explained to me you know where it was and and i think that's what sold me okay i'm in i didn't know i didn't see you know there's canyons around here there's hills and there's a lot more than meets the eye so um glad i we talked and we you know i think that was a godsend too that she could show me or tell me that there is a lots of outdoor activities this is a hot spot for outdoor activities so um i did that made my decision i was like okay we'll move to twin falls idaho and i could get paid more at jayco than i would have getting a job somewhere else so i took my little vacation out here and i went back and i told him i'm in i'll do it i'll move out here and they say good so i sold or gave away everything i had that i couldn't fit in a little five by eight trailer um i bought a car i stuffed i think a sofa in there some tools maybe and a bed i think no i don't think i even had a bed i don't think i had room for a bed um i just stuff much stuff everything i could in there and packed up my dog and i headed west i you know i started driving away from everything i knew away from everything i had ever known anybody all the people that i knew my family um just away and it wasn't easy it was uh you know it was hard everybody everybody i knew was against the idea not everybody but most people i knew were against the idea and said it was a bad idea you know the pain will go with me and i knew it would i knew it would but it i figured at least maybe i could distract myself in a new area enough to that the pain would fade away so i drove out west and um i didn't know anybody but i worked with people and i kept getting my ears open you know and things to do and where all the local stuff was that nobody you know not the you know all the local secrets and i think i knew this area of idaho better than most locals by the time a year was up just exploring and hiking and all that stuff um yeah the pain was still there but at least i was busy i wasn't reminded um everything i did or saw i wasn't reminded of that pain and uh and i on the on the way to work in the morning it just so happened that charles stanley was on the local christian radio and i would listen to him um and slowly my slowly the truth began to come out because like we we were taught as kids we were taught that you know we were raised down we were born amish that's where god planted us that's where we need to stay um we were taught that you know that is the right church um we were taught that you can study the bible too much um if you read into it if you read it too much study it too much you're probably going to end up leaving you know get distracted or get misled and leave just a lot of a lot of those little things you know we were taught that you need to be baptized in order to have a chance at salvation we were taught you know just a lot a ton of ton of stuff and as i was listening to carl charles stanley every morning i was a lot of these things things started to be debunked and i began to realize that we are sinners we will always sin we will always be sinners but god forgave us for every sin for every single sin that we have caused or we have done committed and that we will commit that he's forgiven it all and that we are if we believe and trust in that work in him in christ then we can go to heaven and it's guaranteed you know first john 5 13 says these things are written so that you may know that you have eternal life and this began to sink into my head that it's no longer just i live the best life i can and then hopefully god will choose me for heaven right it's now because because that leaves a burden that you sit there with a burden like am i doing good enough am i doing good enough oh i messed up am i doing good enough you know and you look at the next person like yeah i'm doing better than him or you know not doing as good as him or he left with that burden when i started to realize that he has taken all that sin and erased it even the ones i haven't committed and he erased it this this burden was lifted from my shoulders and i wanted to it was just so freeing so freeing and i wanted to um stand on the tallest mountain just shouted to everybody just it i still do you know it's it's how much love does god have for you that he erased all your sins even the ones you're still about to commit against him he has wiped them all out he says believe in me in my work and my perfectness and you will be mine and you are free that that is such a if that doesn't make you sing shout for joy i don't know what does you know and and i had and i still had some pain i still had a lot of pain right but that was so freeing is so awesome and then you know that coupled with um what i had learned from that counselor and and just growing myself i just i just grew so much in such a little bit of a time so much you know and and jumping off that cliff that cliff into darkness was the best thing i ever did it was it was so it was so scary so scary i had no idea what was gonna happen i i was walking away from everything i had ever known and i was jumping and hoping for something good and then god comes and he shows me the freedom i have and just how glorious he is and how free i am and then and then just growth of of me as a person my personality seeing that i am who i am and that um i'm not dumb just because i'm different i'm not um then i might be smart actually um i don't know about that but uh i thought i am somebody that i am capable and i can be confident and it was just it was such a great journey you know and and coming from that dark desert that desert experience of just pain and horror you know it i would say it was all worth it it was worth all that pain just to become who i am today um i don't know how to explain it any better you know i i i god put that desire in my heart years ago when i saw that couple step out of that subaru um because he knew that someday i would need to move to the mountains you know year and a half before i moved out here a dog showed up at my house just rain soaked i tried to skinny i tried to chase him away he came back the next day and i saw him in the daylight and i'm like oh that poor dog so skinny so i put him in my garage went grab some dog food i didn't want a dog at the time [Music] and of course you know i fed him and he became my best friend he wouldn't stay off of my heels after that he was still kind of a pup he was annoying he chewed everything i pulled 30 ticks off of him [Music] but it's kind of a dog i've always wanted a golden retriever and this guy was you know he wasn't the golden retriever color but he was kind of like a golden retriever and and i he stuck around so i kept him and um he came west with me and he was his name is bear um he was exactly what i needed because he understood me i know he's just a dog but he was there when i needed somebody when i needed somebody desperately i had a companion and we had great adventures together and he's still here with me today and i can't i'm really hoping jesus comes back before he dies because that he is such a big part of my life and he was he was such a good part of my life god knew i would need a dog so he sent a dog you know anyway so yeah i've been living out here four or seven years and i've gotten married to a beautiful bride three kids that we're trying to raise [Music] i no longer work at jayco but it's a good life we uh i finally started going to church um we attend calvary chapel in buell we are a big part of that we do a lot of the media i'm actually um i do the shoot the video announcements now i do some sound for sunday's worship and i also do shoot video for the bearded biker bible man our pastor jackie roberts so go check him out the bearded biker bible man on youtube great pastor great teacher and yeah i have i have studied i've even studied you know mormonism and jehovah's witnesses a little bit and i i've debunked all the lies that we were taught as amish people all the lies and the false information they don't do it intentionally they that's just what was passed down from their forefathers and they keep teaching it but it's not it's just contradictory to what the bible says and i've debunked all that and i know the truth i know what scripture says now and it's i'm so glad so glad that i am where i am today and and you know i look back and that that's still a little voice inside of me all those years ago that said don't be amish you know you don't want to be amish that that desire was god god put that in my heart god put that desire for living in mountains in my heart that was all his work knowing what i would have to experience and and you know that desire for not being amish it grew and it grew and it grew and i started questioning things and that was all god working in me trying to get me out because if i'd be amish now today i would i would be relying on a false religion to for salvation right i'd be i don't think i'd be saved i wouldn't be going to heaven and and a lot of amish people watching this if you're watching this i'm i know i know your feathers are ruffled right now because that's you're thinking i'm a liar and i'm i'm misled but i'm not you guys are you guys are not following scripture and i'm i'm telling you right now you need to open your bibles and you need to start studying because you're taking what your forefathers taught you and and believing it and and what the forefathers taught and what scripture says is is different the salvation message is different they're not what the forefathers are teaching is contradictory to what scripture is saying and and you're making a choice right now to um say that i believe the forefathers i believe what they taught us i believe what they believed over what scripture says over what this god's word says what the scripture is god breathed right it's it's the word of god it's god breathes it's it's alive you're taking what man is teaching what man has taught you and you're holding that more valuable you're holding that as your final authority and not scripture what god has taught us so that is a that is a big thing and you need to um you need to look into that you need to um decide whether you're going to take what man teaches or what god teaches and you you you need to die dig into your bible and you're gonna you're gonna need to compare what the forefathers have taught us compare you know compare that to what scripture says and you're gonna find if you compare it you're gonna find that they're wrong and um you know that's why that's why people tell you not to read scripture too much that you can read into it you can read it too much you can study it too much because the people who do that the amish people who do that they end up leaving and you think it's because they're they've tapped into some kind of stuff they shouldn't have in scripture but the reason they're leaving is because they have found truth they're finding the truth by studying the bible and they're seeing that the truth isn't what we were taught so they end up leave end up leaving you know so if you're amish and you're watching this i need you you need to set out to find truth you need to question things and you need to start searching searching your bible you need to look and you need to read and and and the the idea that the king james and the german version are the only legit bibles is is another lie they're not the esv and the nasb and the new king james version they're they're they say the same thing they're just easier to read so don't throw your king james out you can read it you study it and when you come up to a problem where you don't quite understand it because it's written in older english you you come over to these newer translations and you see um you read it in that and it'll it'll clarify the king james bible it'll it'll it makes it clear it's amazing like the best way to study scripture is with three or four different versions or five different versions um and and you'll see that and um this idea that the newer versions the new modern translations are changed to say what non-amish churches want them to say so they can have their do whatever they want is that's a lie it's simply not true it it scripture says the same thing as it did when it was written um it's amazing when you start looking into that stuff so so take a look take a look at what you've been taught and take a look what scripture teaches and you will find that there's that we've been taught a false religion i know it wasn't on purpose i know they did it accidentally but stop that chain right now break that chain teach your kids the truth so anyway that's my uh that's my story i um i can see now how even before i hit that age of room springer that i was saved i would say i was saved and god the whole times the reason i didn't like all the drinking and all the um partying as much as other people i think that was because god was trying to get me out of there the whole time and i just ignored him um and that's why i wanted to find a church and go and i kept ignoring him and i needed that relationship to go the way it did so i could finally break away so i was finally forced to break away from that community uh to live out god's plan for me um and i never never did i imagine i'd end up in idaho um or that my life would go this way but i like it i would never want to move back i miss my family obviously they're all still there i miss the camaraderie but i have no desire to ever move back why why am i sharing my testimony um i don't know i just i guess i hope i hope that my family can better understand what i was going through because because obviously at the time they just thought i was rebelling and doing the wrong making the wrong decisions and i just hope that they can see that i wasn't really left with a whole lot of choices that i had to do what had to be done and the way god has directed me and i just hope i hope that they can understand better because i know i know i hurt my parents when i left the amish i know i hurt my brothers and sisters when i left i know um that that hurts him and stresses him out terribly but i can sit here and assuredly tell you if you're listening mom and dad or brothers and sisters that i'm not going to hell when the bible says i'm not and i can show you i can show you exactly it's not because of anything i did it's because of jesus christ and his work and i can lean on him and i can and i can tell you it's it's i'm going to heaven not because i deserve it but because he paid the price for me i deserve hell just like anybody else but because of his great love and gift i have a free ticket to be with god for the rest of my life another reason i think is to if any um there's anybody amish watching this right now or in that room spinning a stage i'm telling you if you if you have that desire to get out then get get out call me contact me the email should be down below um and i'll we'll swap numbers or whatever i want to talk to you i want to talk to you um [Music] because there is a much better life outside there don't give me your own homage people are great and the community is great but the the biblical truth is not that is not where you will find it you will not find it in the amish community if you want god if you want jesus christ if you want to live for him you need to step outside of that and just call me get a hold of me i will guide you through it because there is churches out there you don't want to step into um and i all i can say is just just go through the pain be okay with the pain of leaving because the reward on the other side is so much better and always always seek out follow truth that should be everybody everybody's number one goal you know and um yeah for anybody else who has any questions um about my life or about the amish community in general i don't care you know do ask any questions you want i'll try to answer them i'm hoping to do more videos and starting and debunking each and every one of those false proverbs those false teachings they had i want to go through and debunk them all [Music] and share the lie part of it and the truth side of it and but if you have any questions just uh comment below put them in the comments below email me i will do my best to answer them um it even the simple ones like why don't they have tvs or why don't they have electricity or do they wear underwear i don't whatever questions you want i'll do my best to answer them so i think that's uh that's it i'm hoping i'm hoping i can reach some amish people with this if you are wanting out of a community find a way to get a hold of me find a church tell them about my video find my video find a church ask them for help they aren't bad people christian churches are not misguided some are there's a lot of good ones out there most of them are willing to help

Channel: the amish potato

Views: 129,949

Rating: 4.8481884 out of 5

Keywords: Amish, plain, mennonite, testimony, god, Jesus, church, cult, buggy, Hutterite

Id: 2iUpGoXEBAw

Length: 81min 36sec (4896 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 02 2021