by Keim, Joe
I knew I wasn’t going to be a normal missionary, because most missionaries go and live among the people they are trying to reach. That approach would not work for us and the people we are trying to reach. Not everyone understands this, and I have people call me and say, “We have groups that go on short-term mission trips for two weeks.” While we’d like to have groups come and join us, our mission is completely different.
Chapter 17
How Do We Reach Out, Lord?
With much prayer, we considered various ways to reach out, but we recognized our limitations. We wouldn’t be able to have a TV or radio ministry because the Amish can’t have electronic devices. We couldn’t even reach out through the Internet. As we prayed and brainstormed, Esther came up with a great idea that has turned into the biggest ministry we have.
Early in our walk with the Lord, Esther and I received correspondence Bible lessons out of Georgia. We even studied those lessons with our children for several years. God brought this experience to mind as we talked about ways to reach the Amish.
Esther said, “They don’t have TV, radio, or Internet, but they all have a mailbox.”
We gathered up Amish directories and went through lists of at least 50,000 Amish families. From each family, we chose one person and mailed them lesson number one. If the person who received the Bible lesson took the test and sent it back, we graded it, made some personal notes, and sent it back with lesson two. Since our first Bible lessons went out in 2001, more than 35,000 individuals have enrolled in a Bible course. Over time, some dropped off the rolls, and new ones enrolled. At this time, we are running about 5,000 active students.
The Bible Club offers forty-five courses with materials available for children from age five up through adults. Special courses aimed at teens include topics such as love, dating, and marriage. In addition, we offer about ten in-depth courses through the Plowman’s Academy. Each of these courses can take up to six months to complete. In all, we’ve seen more than 2,500 salvation decisions come back in the mail.
Both the Bible Club and Plowman’s Academy are evangelistic and discipleship outreaches. The materials explain God’s plan of salvation over and over. Most who make decisions are older children, but we also have some adults. Some who’ve been saved through the Bible Club have gone on to Bible college.
Who is Your Nineveh?
Iva, an Amish girl from Indiana, surrendered her life to Christ after doing a Bible study course. She then felt led to enroll in a Bible school in Pennsylvania. She packed her clothes, got on the train, and traveled to Pennsylvania to begin two years of Bible school. Toward the end of her second year, she heard a sermon preached on Jonah and his refusal to go to Nineveh.
When the evangelist ended his sermon, he asked, “Who is your Nineveh?”
Iva knew in her heart that her Nineveh was her own people, the Amish population. That night she went forward and surrendered to God’s call. A few days later, she found our ministry on the Internet and figured out we were the ones who sent her the Bible Club lessons. After a few phone calls and a face-to-face meeting, Iva joined MAP and served with us for six months before she married a former-Amish missionary and moved away.
Others who have been saved through the Bible Club chose to stay in the Amish culture and have gone on to become preachers in the church. Without a doubt, God is doing a work among our people that is far beyond our comprehension. He’s using an army of prayer warriors, donors, and volunteers that stretches across North America and other parts of the world.
God had been preparing Esther and me for this ministry as we had been helping those trying to leave the Amish for a long time. Our first had been a young man, Harvey, who called us from Wisconsin. He wanted to leave the Amish and needed a place to stay while he got on his feet.
“I got a bus ticket,” he said.
He rode in that Greyhound more than a day, and I waited at the bus station on the other end. The bus pulled up amid the smell of diesel fumes. Passengers started funneling out. They kept coming and coming, and I watched for an Amish-looking man but didn’t see one. When the bus sat empty, I wondered what happened to Harvey. Suddenly, a guy walked toward me, dressed totally in camouflage and carrying two shotguns that were hidden in blankets. It was Harvey! Along with the little money in his pocket, those guns were all he had. I wondered, How in the world did he get those guns on the bus?
Since then, we have taken in over 150 individuals and families who left the Amish and needed immediate shelter and help to transition. Out of those 150, one was my brother William. My brothers, Johnny and Perry, also left the Amish, but they lived with other people.
On many occasions, our dad has reminded each one of us that our marriages will very likely end in divorce. Then he’d add, “I’ve seen it happen over and over.”
He also pointed out in many of his letters that we brothers would eventually fall away from church and our children would end up not believing anything. Since he made these remarks with such confidence, we worried and wondered if our dad might be right.
However, we also believed that with God’s help, these things would not come true. Today, each one of our four families is still actively attending and involved in our local church. By God’s wonderful grace and mercy, all our children are living for the Lord, while the older ones are serving in various ministries.
This has taught us several things: (1) If someone predicts your future failures, don’t argue. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody. Just stay focused and keep walking with the Lord. (2) Just because others have left the Amish and failed doesn’t mean I will fail. (3) Our testimonies always speak for themselves.
Lessons to be Learned
A young girl named Elizabeth came to MAP from a Schwartzentruber sect in Tennessee. She barely spoke English when we first took her in. We helped her get a birth certificate, Social Security number, and finally a job where Esther worked. Elizabeth was excited about her new job and could hardly wait to get started. About half-way through her shift, Esther glanced over and noticed that some of the employees were giggling and whispering behind Elizabeth’s back. One of the employees even picked up a spray can and sprayed above Elizabeth’s head, and the giggling continued.
What the employees didn’t realize was that Elizabeth was from a different culture that did not allow deodorant or shaving legs and armpits and they only took one bath a week. Suddenly two cultures clashed in the workplace, and by day two Elizabeth was let go by the company.
Elizabeth refused to let the incident stop her from moving forward. She learned from her first job and moved on to another. She decided to get her GED (General Education Development) certificate, which took about two years to finish. Sometimes she wanted to give up, but we kept encouraging her to persevere, and the day she graduated, we celebrated and told her how proud we were of her accomplishments. Elizabeth went on to nursing school at a local university and graduated in 2016.
Esther and I have had to sit down with many adults over the years and teach them the basics of English culture, such as using deodorant, matching colors in clothing, shaving legs and armpits, brushing teeth, leaving tips for the waitress, operating electrical appliances, and changing into a clean set of clothes daily. This process is uncomfortable for everybody and often feels like parents talking to their five-year-old child. Some must be taught simple manners, such as saying thank you, holding the door for others, and using the word please. Others have to be taught that opening the refrigerator, eating out of ice cream boxes, and drinking from milk jugs before returning them to the fridge is a no-no.
Before I go any further, let me say that these are mostly issues with those coming out of the ultra-conservative groups. The more liberal Amish know about hygiene and have been taught better manners. They have a much easier time transitioning into English culture.
Samuel
In 2012, an Amis
h man from Indiana moved into our home and wanted us to help him make the transition. About six months earlier, someone had given Samuel Girod my number, and he decided to hang on to it, thinking it might come in handy someday. Late one afternoon, he took his forbidden cell phone and walked out behind the barn so no one could see him. He was thirty years old. Later he told me, “I shook like a leaf when I punched your number in the phone.”
Not only was he using a phone he wasn’t supposed to own, but he was calling an ex-Amish man who had been excommunicated from the church. His dad was a bishop, which made it even more important for Samuel to follow the rules of the church.
Today Samuel says, “Joe, I’ll never forget that first conversation I had with you. I thought you’d tell me to leave the Amish. Instead, you just sat back and listened, which is exactly what I needed at that moment.”
Samuel shared some of the turmoil he was facing in his Swiss Amish community. When we finished talking, he asked, “Is it okay for me to call you again?”
“Of course, Samuel! You can call me anytime.”
Six months went by. During this time, Samuel called every couple of weeks. Some days he wanted to leave the Amish, but within hours, he’d change his mind.
I did not try to persuade Samuel in any direction, but only cared for his heart and tried to encourage him as much as possible. Truthfully, I didn’t think he’d ever leave the Amish.
But then, he called again. “I’m leaving the Amish!”
I could hear determination in his voice – determination I knew so well on a personal level.
“Here I am at thirty years old, co-owner of a construction business. I own two properties, I don’t have a wife, and I’m utterly miserable,” he said.
Samuel belonged to a Swiss Amish group that didn’t allow members to get a wife outside of their own sect. In Samuel’s case, there weren’t enough ladies left over for him to get married and have his own family. He was totally miserable.
“I just can’t continue to live this way any longer,” he said.
On September 22, 2012, Samuel left everything – his business, properties, family, culture, and community. He just closed the door, walked for several miles in the dark so no one would see him leave, got a taxi, and showed up at our place in Ohio on Sunday morning with two duffel bags. For the next two days, we sat in my office and covered scripture after scripture.
“Samuel, salvation does not come from belonging to a certain culture; it’s not a list of dos and don’ts that makes the heart of a human being right with God. Salvation only comes by God’s grace through faith,” I said. For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).
I will never forget. It was all so precious. We were sitting in my office for the second day in a row, covering God’s simple plan of salvation, when suddenly the Holy Spirit of God opened Samuel’s deaf ears and his spiritual eyes to the truth. A once dead and ignorant Samuel shouted out, “I get it!” It was so like my own experience on July 28, 1985.
When Samuel called on the name of the Lord for salvation, God totally transformed him from the inside out. He turned into a totally different person. Before his transformation took place, his eyes were filled with torment and pain. When Christ came into his life, all that changed immediately, right before our eyes. He was instantly filled with peace.
We helped Samuel get his driver’s license. He bought a truck and a smartphone, and he lived with us for a while. Before long he found out about a former Amish lady who had left her community much the same way he did. Polly was about his age and was also looking for a man, preferably former Amish who would understand her ways. Within two months they were married. Today Samuel and Polly are missionaries with MAP. They travel all over the country, speaking in churches and encouraging former Amish to continue in the faith.
In 2016, Samuel became an ordained preacher by his home church, Hope Baptist Church in Indiana. He loves to preach and is continually burdened to reach his family and other Amish people who do not understand the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
Unsuccessful Contacts
Though we have been able to help many of those who come to us, not every case ends up being a success story. We took in a young man who traveled all the way from Texas. Mario was twenty-two years old and very depressed when he found our ministry on the Internet. For the most part, we communicated via email. He was just three years old when his mom passed away, and shortly after, his dad left the Amish community in Ohio and moved out west with Mario. For some reason, his dad never got a birth certificate for him, and in time, the relationship between father and son completely deteriorated.
When I first heard from Mario, he sounded desperate. In one of his emails, he wrote:
I will be around 23 and a half by the time I get my birth certificate, and I will barely be starting school, and I will be fighting for so many other things, I could just cry, thinking about all the wasted time. I feel so useless. I feel so worthless. I feel like just lying in bed, pulling up the covers, and just shutting off my brain forever. I don’t want to think any longer. I feel like giving up because I am so tired of fighting, I don’t want to fight anymore. ALL my entire life has been spent fighting, I am so worn out, Joe, and I want SO badly for just someone to take me in their arms and just let me cry there, for them to tell me that it’s going to be alright, but I can’t. I don’t like people to see weakness in me, and I am terrified of being pitied, I feel like if I were to do something like that, that person would pity me and feel sorry for me and for all my struggles, and I don’t want that. I’ve worked and fought so hard all my life to ever deserve the pity of anyone. But I am DYING inside, I want so badly to just scream forever.
Please Joe, pray for me. I feel so lost, so stressed, and I feel such a dark sadness washing over me. You are one of the only people I can confide in with these things. Nobody else knows what I’m going through besides you, I have found a trust in you I have found in no one else. I feel like I can tell you everything.
For over a year, I encouraged Mario to come to Ohio, so we could go down to Holmes County to see if we could find his Amish family and perhaps get started on a birth certificate. Finally, in 2012, Mario had saved up enough money for a Greyhound bus ticket to come to Mansfield, Ohio. We immediately got in the car and traveled to Holmes County and began our search for his family. Since he didn’t know what Amish sect he was from, we checked in with the New Order, Old Order, and Schwartzentruber. No one knew about Mario or his family. Not a single Amish person was able to help, which devastated Mario even more.
One night, as we sat in Dairy Queen in Ashland, Ohio, Mario broke out in sobs. He wept so bitterly that his head and shoulders shook all over. I honestly did not know what to do, and a feeling of helplessness came over me.
Finally, Mario looked up at me and exclaimed, “In the eyes of the world, I don’t exist. I’m a nobody.”
Mario went back to Texas without a birth record.
Every week, we get phone calls and emails from those who have left Amish communities and need birth records, photo IDs, and Social Security numbers. The stories are all so familiar, “I tried to get my birth certificate, but they require a photo ID. Then I tried to get a photo ID, but that requires a birth certificate and a Social Security number. When I went to the Social Security office, I was informed I first need a photo ID and a birth certificate.”
For some, this game goes on for several years, while they meet with lawyers and judges and spend thousands of dollars. As a ministry, we have contacted our state representative and congressman, asking for help. Most of the time, they are not able to help. It’s heartbreaking, and at times, people have broken down like Mario and wept. These are all lifelong American citizens in good standing, but they cannot get a driver’s license, open bank accounts, or get jobs until
they have a Social Security number.
The parents of these former Amish who are seeking birth records and Social Security numbers often refuse to provide any help or information. They hope their son or daughter will not be able to make it in the English culture and be forced to return to the Amish community.
Chapter 18
Former-Amish Church
One day a non-Amish veterinarian came to Sam Schwartz’s house to check on a sick horse. The veterinarian was a Christian and asked Sam questions that eventually led to Sam placing his faith in Jesus Christ. Since Sam and his family only lived forty-five minutes from us, I went to visit them. Before long, it became clear that Sam, Laura, and their four young children were going to leave the Amish church. Sam got his driver’s license and bought a car.
Not only was I concerned about helping them with physical needs but with their spiritual needs as well. One Saturday evening, I called Sam and asked, “Where are you going to church tomorrow?”
He said, “I was thinking I’d drive to the end of the driveway, and if God tells me left, I’ll turn left. If He says right, I’ll go right.”
I said, “Sam, there are so many churches.” I knew the importance of a sound Christian foundation. “Do you mind if Esther and I come to your place in the morning? We can have a church service in your house.”
Sam didn’t hesitate. “I would love that.”
We started meeting every Sunday. Before long, more people joined us. Some were English neighbors, and others were Amish people who still attended the Amish church but secretly stopped by and participated in our Bible studies.
