My Salvation Experience

Mr. Clark visited our home regularly. Sometimes just to talk and other times to buy eggs. By now I tried to make sure I was hanging around when she visited to hear the stories she told. Never hearing anything like it ever before in my life! She would have the most amazing stories about how God answered prayer. That in itself was fascinating! She would talk about prophecies, the promises of God and stories about how much God loves us.

Anyway, I was walking home from school one day alone. Thinking about some of the stories I had been hearing. About prophecies that were being fulfilled and I felt heavy conviction from God knowing that if I died that day I was not ready for heaven. Not knowing what to do about it I certainly tried to forget all this stuff!

So after our family started attending this church in New Castle, I was alone in the kitchen one afternoon, ironing. God started talking to my heart that day. It was like I could see "the world out there", it was like God said to me that I could now go "out there and do anything that I wanted to do". The world had sparkle and a glitter about it too. I am forever thankful for God coming and talking to me. I knew in that moment and I told God that I wanted to follow in the path he set before me, I never served God before in my life and I wanted to try God. I didn't have any peace following my own way, so I would try this life that was before me.

Growing up after I learned to read. We had this tattered Bible story book in the desk which stood in our living room. I would read that book over and over again. We didn't have much reading material and since I didn't have a Sunday School to learn these Bible stories, I read them out of this Bible story book while growing up. Several stories would stick with me and I would think about them. Because I always believed the Bible, believed in God, heaven and hell I didn't doubt any of these stories, I just didn't know how it all worked.

One of my jobs was to go daily to get a gallon of milk from our Amish neighbor. I would walk through our neighbors driveway, but than they got a mean dog and chained him close to the drive way, so I was scared to walk past him and I would cut through our little orchard next to the neighbors property. I would really be scared because in the winter it would be dark in the morning when I did this chore. So I would talk to God trying to not be too scared. Having out door plumbing and needing to go out before going to bed I would make a sister go with me. Growing up we would tell each other ghost stories and all kinds of scary stories. So I was really scared. (We didn't have a TV or radio for entertainment either.) After starting going to this church and making a decision to serve God, after several weeks, it came to me that I could go outside in the dark without any fear. I wassooo happy! I was happy about this for a very long time!

After my parents were excommunicated from the Amish church, my dad put electricity into our house so places weren't so dark any more. This will be another story for another day.