Just yesterday, I talked to my dear friend Edith, Steve’s wife. We have become close friends over the years. Edith was recently in her attic. She found some of the old letters I had written to her from those early days of our journey, She plans to send them to me when she finishes reading them. It may be a while, that is thirty years of letter writing. So I got out my stack of her old letters to read while I wait.
Back to the story: Steve talked to Ammon about us renting the dawdy house. This was no small thing for him to consider. The fellowship had just gone through two unpleasant incidents with ‘seekers’ from the outside. These people came in, were accepted and then left again into a sinful life or defrauding the church financially. They had excommunicated one man, which is something the New Order (more on that next time) does not do often. So this was an amazing risk. The dawdy house was an addition connected to the main farmhouse, usually built for aging parents. In this case, it was connected via a closet between the living room of the dawdy and the kitchen of the main house.
Ammon’s dad farmed that land, and so did he. Ammon and Ada were in their mid-fifties with one adult son still living at home, six others were married. Ammon was the deacon of his church district and very evangelistic. You didn’t talk to him long before you knew where he stood and he would ask a person point blank where they were spiritually. The man was on fire for the Lord.
As they considered the idea, they wanted to meet us, so we loaded up the car and went. I was expecting baby #5 and baby #4 was a very fussy guy, so I was not at my best. But that did not matter much, our second oldest, Heather was five and had the vocabulary of a ten-year-old. She was very small due to kidney disease and looked to be about three years old. She charmed Ada so completely that we had Ada’s approval right then. 
Ada told us that they had just heard a sermon on “The Mission Field in Your Backyard” and she felt that it was God convicting her heart to take us in. After meeting us, Ammon was also agreed and offered us the three-bedroom place once they finished the renovations. So we went home and put our house up for sale and started packing. We would move in July 1990. The Lord had now taken full control of our journey, we could not have arranged it better ourselves. The house we owned sold for a $33,000 more than we paid for it. Another miracle that financed the changeover. Each step was set up for us in such a natural and clear way that we knew this was of God.
My next post will explain the difference between Old Order Amish and New Order Amish. Feel free to start a conversation in the comments area. Scroll to the bottom of the page.
- How have you known when God is leading you in a certain direction?
- How do we navigate between the faith and the culture of the plain people?
- Do you enjoy the Amish lifestyle or their Christian testimony most?