Sunday, July 29, 2007

History Continued

I received healing from God when Mrs. Clark prayed for me. My father was a "bishop" and he started talking to other Amish about what he was hearing from Mrs. Clark about God. When my dad told the Amish that God healed me, they said that I was a child, it was . . . OK? Looking back I have a hard time believing they oked this. But they didn't think I made this up.

Mrs. Clark gave mom a book about healing written by an evangelist of that day holding tent crusades, he's still around but not "out there" any more T. L. Osborn. She told mom to take her Bible and look up the scriptures, not just read them out of the book. There was a prayer for healing in the back of the book, so mom prayed the prayer and believed that God healed her. She was bothered by congestive heart failure, looking back on this, her heart bothered her. I don't know because of my young age what was really wrong with her, but she doctored all my life with her heart whatever that might have meant. Martha, one of my older sisters who by the way is still with the Amish, would be able to explain all of this but that's not the point here. Anyway, dad went and told the Amish that God healed mom, well, they said that she could have made all of that up. (Several years later my dad ended up in one of Osborns magazines as a testimony)

So all this time, Mrs. Clark looked for any type of excuse to visit our house. She took her daughter Mary Beth out of public school and put her in the dutch school, (one room school) and got her to walk home from school most days, so Mrs. Clark would pick her up at our home. Poor girl, children can be cruel when people are different. In an all Amish school, this little innocent girl was the odd person! Looking back on all this I feel sorry for her!!! Anyway, we continued to hear "God stories" from Mrs. Clark. Walking home from school one day I felt a great conviction that if I died today I would not be ready for heaven. (Alone again? strange with 9 sisters and 2 brothers!) Many days passed while all of this was happening in our home. One winter night Mrs. Bright visited our home and spent the night talking to all of us. I remember at one point of the evening that we sang some hymns that we knew and she knew. I am sure that she closed the evening with prayer.

Remember I turned 14 in the midst of all this stuff going on in our home. I remember one Sunday when it was dads turn to preach that he mentioned stuff about God answering prayer today, I don't remember the stories he repeated, but I know that I sat up much straighter and couldn't believe my ears! Its easy to tune out the norm that happens around, but not this. I am sure I flushed and couldn't believe what I was hearing!!! I am sure the entire church flushed!!!

Part 3 will be coming up later this week.

Friday, July 27, 2007

Some History

Maybe I could talk about the beginnings. I was going through life minding my own business, I was restless, around 13 years of age. We sold eggs on our little thirty acre farm, on a main road for our area in New Wilmington PA, one day this lady stops in to buy eggs, she started talking about how God provides for her needs, regardless of what it might be. She started talking about this God how he's interested in people. I tried to be around whenever she would come to buy eggs, which started to become almost weekly.

One of the reasons I am remembering this is because I tripped and fell this week while walking. I have this ripped up knee, which will soon scab over. :-) The year that I was thirteen my knees were scabbed over most of the year. I kept tripping while playing hard at school. I must have been trying to prove something . . .

Anyway, one of my trips were BIG, I attended a one room school house out in the country, the name of the school, Cotton School. One dayI hurt myself pretty badly. I went inside to see how to get it taken care of and while I was putting something on my leg, it started swelling up right before my eyes! Whoa! This was going to be serious! Anyway, I limped home that day and crawled into my bed upstairs and stayed there for several days. Overnight my leg turned black and blue and got even more swollen and painful. It looked awful!!!

In the meantime Mrs. Clark visited again and asked my parents if she could pray for me, since she was continueing to talk about healing, she thought this might be an opportunity to see God is action. She prayed for me that day, and came backt he next day to see how I was. In the meantime, mom would have taken me to see a doctor in town, but one of my older sisters went into premature labor and mom went to spend the day with her. So Mrs. Clark came back that day to see how I was and mom was gone so dad gave her permission to go upstairs to visit me in bed. After visiting with me, she decided that day to pray the sinner's prayer, I repeated after whatever she told me to say, and than she laid hands on me and prayed for God to "save" me and left. That night I felt different deep down inside and I got out of bed to kneel, the only prayer I knew was what we call"the Lord's prayer". Anyway, when I woke up the next morning, getting out of bed as usual, as I put my foot down, the pain had gone away. Whoa!!! I realized that God had healed me in answer to Mrs. Clarks prayer. No, I didn't try to stay quiet, I ran downstairs and told my parents that God healed my leg! I went back to school and told my teacher that God healed my leg. (Remember, I was 13 years of age.) Anyway, the school nurse came and looked at my leg and said I had better get to a doctor to check my leg out. But I declared that I was healed by God. She said to me that later on in my life this could flair up again and I could lose my leg over not seeing a doctor.

So . . . I will post the rest tomorrow. This is only the beginnings of what brought me to where I am today. This is what changed my families life forever! Of course I could have made the story longer too. but for everyone reading this, I'll leave it like this.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Amish/English

I grew up Amish in New Wilmington, PA. When I was 14 years old my parents left the Amish church and started attending the New Castle Revival Center. This happened in the early 1960's. My parents were excommunicated and shunned so my family split down the middle. My older brother and 4 sisters stayed with the Amish. After I started driving a car I would visit them at least annually. I love my family and always have. In my young life I looked forward to growing up because children should be seen and not heard was the motto at that time. (You can tell that I never taught my children this motto!!!)

What I wanted to talk about today was my family reunion held the end of June. There are many varieties of Amish today. The home that hosted our reunion (we aren't supposed to call this day "reunion" because the New Wilmington group aren't supposed to be "friendly" with the english people.) Anyway, this home was very modern according the the way I was brought up. They had gas piping all through the house (much like electric lights in our homes) . The kitchen floor was tile and they had an indoor bathroom along with a bath tub and shower!!! Wow! Another big surprise for me was the location of their farm, about 4 miles south of Greenville, about 5 miles from the Homer farm off of Colt Road! I had no idea I would have relatives that close when we got moved to Transfer!