My Amish Childhood

by Jerry S. Eicher

  Children were raised by parents, not by their grandparents. Older people were respected and taken care of by their relatives. Community was a priority. People belonged to each other. This attitude and willingness of prior generations to live scriptural teachings, which even when known today are largely ignored, is the essence of the Amish vision.

  Of course, nothing and no one are perfect.

  The Amish are aware of the corruption that has crept into their older communities, and of the loss of their vision in those cases. It’s the impetus behind many of the younger communities being founded. But it’s also the experience of failed communities like ours—the mistakes that were made, the impossibilities revealed—that drives them to hesitate about missions and often to draw back from any attempted improvements. It’s a difficult task, this balancing act they face. Their own thinkers struggle long and hard with the issue. How do you maintain a vibrant inner spiritual life while preserving the outer shell that gives shelter to that life?

  So the bicycles raced around the community, and the ground shook and trembled from the aftershocks. Not unexpectedly, many of the community’s members were soon deep into plans for a soon departure, including Mom and Dad.

  I ignored the tumult the best I could, comforting myself with my new bicycle.

  Into this charged atmosphere, Bishop Monroe appeared with a bold proposal. They needed a new minister, and he wanted to ordain one.

  Where that idea came from, I have no clue. But looking back, the sheer magnitude of the proposal boggles my mind. Either Bishop Monroe had his head deep in the sand or he had great confidence in his own political brinkmanship. But the question that really fascinates me is why the conservatives agreed to this. Every single one of them, to a person, okayed the idea.

  It couldn’t have been because they hoped things would change. They’d already given up on the community. Most of them had plans to leave. And yet I wonder if it wasn’t hope anyway. A whisper. A dream that perhaps a miracle could yet happen.

  The influence of a minister was considerable. And what if they had one of their own in the power structure? That was an objective they had failed at so far. Would this turn the tide? Or at least slow things down to a manageable rate of change?

  On the liberals’ part, they simply found it unimaginable that God wouldn’t be on their side and elect one of their own. I know because I heard their comments to that effect.

  So a vote for a minister was agreed to. The date for the ordination was set for April. Five men were in the lot. Two of them liberals: David Peachey and Danny Stoltzfus. A neutral vote was Emil Helmuth. The two conservatives were Uncle Joe and Uncle John Martin.

  When the time came for Bishop Monroe to open the books, the worst possible candidate—from the liberals’ point of view—had the slip of paper: Uncle John Martin. The man could hardly speak Spanish, and he was a staunch conservative without any of Uncle Joe’s diplomatic skills. The hammer had fallen hard, and conservative hopes soared. They now had their man on the bench. And a strong one at that. Or so they thought.

  The liberals left the church house unable to comprehend this turn of events. This couldn’t possibly be from God. So they acted like it wasn’t. They pushed the new minister to learn Spanish quickly. They harassed him for his uncouth ways. They told him he needed to involve himself in outreach and mission work.

  It’s one of the mysteries of politics that those on the side of law and order usually fail to push their advantage, even when they win. Why do decent people have such a hard time closing the deal? Instead, they rely heavily on the virtue of their stand, shunning the gritty politics of consolidating power.

  Much could have been made of this issue, both with spoken and spiritual bludgeoning. If God ordained a man who couldn’t speak Spanish, then perhaps He wanted more sermons preached in German? If God ordained a man without mission skills, then perhaps He wanted more ministry given to the established saints? But none of this was done. And it soon became apparent that nothing was going to change. Minister Martin looked like a fish out of water on Sunday mornings, haltingly giving his Spanish sermons, agony on his face.

  He looked subordinate and acted subordinate. To the liberals, that was, of course, the proper position for a conservative. He was a man who needed to learn their ways.

  Chapter 40

  While choosing the new minister was going on, Uncle Mark was planning his last hurrah before his wedding. He would take another trip or bust. This time he would travel by public transportation for most of the way down to the tip of South America. He said it looked like the Pan-American Highway was the best route to follow. It ran through the capital of Honduras and clear down to the tip of Chile and Argentina. The highway construction had been supported and financed by the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. Sure there were still some gaps not completed, he said, but nothing that couldn’t be gotten around. The scenery would vary, he was told, from lush jungle to cold mountain passes of up to 15,000 feet in elevation. Some places were not passable during the rainy season.

  Uncle Mark asked around for fellow travelers, but this time—after the Patuca River ruckus—there were no takers. He would be on his own. And so he set out in August. A few letters dribbled back at first and then nothing. Silence. Almost two months had gone by, and the whole community was in a stir. Deeply so in some quarters. Over in La Granja, Dora Miller had been busy with her wedding plans, and now Uncle Mark had disappeared. Their planned wedding date was in January.

  One of Uncle Mark’s planned stops was known to be the Mennonite community in Paraguay, but there was no way to contact the Paraguay folks by telephone, and mail was much too slow at this point. A telegram was considered but not tried. Who would they send it to? Besides, Uncle Mark had probably already passed through there by now.

  Uncle Mark solved the problem by walking in late one evening. He was surprised at both the concern and gladness expressed by the first people who saw him. They asked where he’d been. Uncle Mark responded by saying he’d been held up a little longer coming home than planned, but he’d written all about it in his letters.

  When his greeters informed him the letters had not arrived and that Dora was sick with worry, Uncle Mark hightailed it for the far corner of La Granja to reassure his future bride.

  What I was interested in was Uncle Mark’s tale of his travels when he held forth at the family gathering in Cousin Ira’s rented basement.

  On the way south he’d stayed on the west side of the Andes, taking in some Inca ruins along the way. I can’t remember their name, but they may have been at Ingapuca, just a little off of the Pan-American Highway near the town of Cuenca. These ruins are in southern Ecuador, near where Uncle Mark would have passed. They take up nearly 240 square kilometers of populated area and would have served as a magnet to someone like my uncle. For years those ruins had been uncared for, and the stones had been taken and used for the construction of present-day homes. Placed under historical care after 1919, many of the sites have been reconstructed and are now open to the public.

  Uncle Mark loved Peru, he said, where the lower part of the country is irrigated by the far western tributaries of the Amazon. Here the Andes Mountains exceed 20,000 feet, leading up to the ruins of Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca, the world’s highest navigable lake.

  He’d gone down to the tip of Chile to see the ocean before swinging over the mountains and north again on the Argentina side. The Southern Cross had been an awesome sight, he said. The constellation obviously visible every clear night, hanging high in the sky. (From the brief glimpses I’ve obtained of the Southern Cross in the summer, I would have given a lot to see the display in all its glory.)

  Uncle Mark had stopped in at the Beachy community in Paraguay, he said, which had failed to impress him. And neither had the country of Paraguay. It wasn’t like Honduras—something about being hot, dry, and dusty. And the Beachy community was a great disappointment after he’d entertained high expectations of seeing good things at another missio
n project run by Amish-related people. Perhaps he thought the Beachys would be making a better go of it, even as he watched the Amish failure in Guaimaca winding down. The Beachy community was in a discouraged state mentally and physically, he said. From the talk he heard, thieving seemed even a worse problem than in our community. One of the founders of the community had either left or was speaking of returning to the States.

  From Paraguay he visited some city high in the Andes. Again, I don’t remember the name, but there is a city up there that fits the description he shared. La Paz is the highest city in the Andes mountain range. At 11,910 feet in elevation, it would have been a site Uncle Mark needed to see.

  He told of coming down the mountain and missing his bus. With dusk fast falling, he didn’t wish to stay for the night—not with the trouble he was experiencing breathing in the high altitude. So he went out to thumb a ride. The fellow who stopped was middle-aged and driving by himself in a BMW.

  Just outside of town, as they started down the mountain, the man clutched the steering wheel and violently shook the car back and forth.

  Was he in the car with a madman? Uncle Mark experienced some serious doubts about the wisdom of riding with this fellow. Should he perhaps attempt an emergency exit? Keeping quiet, Uncle Mark soon learned the reason for the violent shaking. Apparently the fellow was testing the vehicle for roadworthiness because he took off down the mountain road going at least seventy miles an hour. Uncle Mark was unable to see the speedometer, being too busy hanging on, so he could only guess. Down mountain they went, the curves taken by driving randomly on either side of the road with tires squealing. Apparently no one came up the mountain that late in the evening. Somehow they made it down safely, but it had been quite some ride.

  Going back to public transportation, Uncle Mark left Bolivia and traveled toward Brazil, expecting the Portuguese language to sound something like Spanish. But it didn’t. He was unable to communicate in that huge country. His eyes grew large as he tried to express the vastness. To give us some idea he said the equator passed through Brazil. And yet the distance of the land mass in Brazil, lying south of the equator, was greater than the distance between the equator and Honduras.

  Other than his letters being lost, he said there had been no problems really.

  Dora, smiling sweetly beside him, didn’t look all that convinced.

  It sounded like a grand adventure to me, and one I would have liked to have been part of.

  Uncle Joe now had one last thing he wished to accomplish before retreating to Aylmer: a trip to Europe to research Anabaptist history in Zurich, Switzerland, the town that was the birthplace of the faith.

  Traveling by airplane is the preferred modern method, as passenger ships no longer sail there that I’m aware of. And Uncle Joe needed to go before his airplane access was removed, which it likely would be. Enraged by the tales coming out of Honduras, the activist Amish community in Aylmer had already taken steps to seal off the gangrene. Their members, present and future, were now forbidden to use airplane travel for any purpose. Never again would that community play any part in an Amish mission outreach—especially a foreign one.

  Uncle Joe’s window of airplane travel was closing fast, so he asked Dad to go along for the trip. Dad gladly accepted.

  The two flew into Zurich and contacted some Mennonite fellow Uncle Joe knew. The Mennonite drove them around town to see historical sites related to the beginning of the Anabaptist movement. They got to see the river in the old city where Felix Manz was put to death by drowning for his belief in adult baptism. They visited the church where Ulrich Zwingli, a priest who operated separately from Martin Luther, thundered forth his sermons. But Zwingli also believed the Anabaptists went too far regarding adult baptism, so he persecuted them. Then Uncle Joe and Dad wandered down the side streets to visit Zwingli’s parsonage. But most important to them, they also saw the house where the first Anabaptist converts had been baptized.

  Uncle Joe spent considerable time researching old Anabaptist documents in Zurich and Berne. Dad had no interest in such research.

  One evening at the supper table of their Mennonite host, a visitor arrived to meet the travelers from the States. Their host bounced up to welcome his friend, introducing Uncle Joe as the scholar who hat zwei Bücher geschrieben.

  Dad was mortified, he claimed, because he was introduced simply by his name. There was no written book authored by him, let alone two as the host had just mentioned. But Dad didn’t seem permanently wounded by the experience as he related the tale back at the church in Honduras with quite good humor.

  Another highlight of their trip was a visit to a cave in the countryside. The place had once been used as a hiding place by Anabaptists in the sixteenth century. Here they could hold their meetings without being discovered by the authorities. The site is now preserved by the state and known as Tauferhohle. It is also the cave popularized by Christmas Carol Kauffman in her fictional work Not Regina. Uncle Joe and Dad took off their hats and sang the first stanza of that staple of Amish Sunday-morning church services Da Lob Lied when they were there.

  On Sunday they visited the only remaining Mennonite church in the area, now so liberal it has joined the state church again, primarily to escape taxation. No doubt the church members were worn down from centuries of abuse. Dad spoke of the disconcerting experience of hearing a sermon in a liberal church, all of it spoken in real German—the holy tongue stateside—delivered by a minister in a suit and tie.

  After they were finished in Switzerland, Uncle Joe, being the scholarly and sensitive type, wanted to see the tulips of Holland. Dad didn’t think flowers worth the train trip, so they parted ways in Zurich. Dad flew straight home while Uncle Joe left by train. He would fly out of Holland for his return trip.

  Chapter 41

  At home in the Honduras community, things were winding down and yet going on at the same time. Some things even started anew. In the spring of 1977, I joined the instruction class with plans to be baptized in the summer. We met every other Sunday morning, walking out single file with the ministers after the church service began. This mirrored the format used by all Amish baptismal classes stateside. On the top of the hillside, benches were set up with the ministers on one side and applicants on the other. With the gentle morning wind blowing across our faces, we listened to Bishop Monroe read the eighteen articles of Amish faith.

  After the assigned lesson had been read, there was time for additional comments by any of the ministers, either on the lesson or any instruction they wished to give. Bishop Monroe took these opportunities to quiz all of us on whether we’d actually been born again. He repeatedly asked if our conversion had been real or if we were we simply attending the class because it was the thing to do.

  All of us kept insisting we had been born again.

  Eventually Bishop Monroe offered some explanation as to why he was drilling us so intensely—something about past applicants who had slipped through and been baptized, only to discover later they hadn’t experienced a true conversion. It even sounded as if he might be referring to classes he’d personally taught, but no names were mentioned.

  I didn’t doubt the sincerity of his motives, as I decidedly liked the man by then. But his questioning did produce considerable anxiety for me. Was I or wasn’t I converted? And what did conversion consist of? Was it a specific action? Was it something tangible? Did someone have to vouch for me? It was quite a dilemma for me, even as I kept insisting Sunday mornings that I was converted. I still wondered, although I wasn’t exactly doubting. I knew my experience had been real, but I was scared. What if I was wrong? What if my experience had been something other than being born again?

  Enter Danny Stoltzfus, who invited me down to his place to share my testimony.

  Now I was really scared. No one had ever asked me for my testimony before. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what to say, it was more along the lines of how to say it. And to have to say it to Danny, of all people. He was last person I wante
d to be humiliated in front of.

  But this ritual—that of inviting members of the community to quiz all applicants prior to their baptism—was one of Bishop Monroe’s well-known traditions. So I made my way up to the children’s home. Danny invited me in. We didn’t sit down that I can remember, and he didn’t smile much of a welcome. He just repeated his desire to hear my testimony per Bishop Monroe’s invitation.

  We stood there in the living room, and I went through the stammering rendition of what I had to say. What I actually said, I haven’t the slightest recollection. Danny waited until I was done. Still not smiling, he nodded and said, “Jerry, yours is one of the clearest conversions I’ve ever witnessed.”

  Just like that. Without preamble or introduction, he gave me my answer when I was least expecting it. And he was someone I knew had no reason to fudge the truth. I was stunned—and I still am. That God would go to the trouble of answering what I hadn’t even asked because it was important that I know. And beyond that, God answered because He cares for me.

  And I had nothing to give Him in return. Literally nothing. I couldn’t even talk. That fact had been well-demonstrated moments before. But with the assurance God gave me through Danny, I would have gone anywhere and done anything God asked of me.

  I made my vows of service to His cause. If there would have been papers to sign, I would have gladly signed. I determined I would be His servant. He had loved me when I was the most unlovable, and I loved Him in return.

  On the Sunday before my baptism, Joseph Peachey invited me to accompany him on a trek on foot to San Marcos. There would be six of us in the party, he said, his brother Daniel and sister Rhoda, and my brother John and sister Susanna. We’d make a quick morning hike of it, and arrive in time for Sunday morning services that were being held at Minister Richard’s place.