Rya Troyer Comes Home | October 2022

WHO WE ARE...

P U BL ISHE R

From 2007 to 2012 we, the Millers, adopted our first three children, a preschooler on the autism spectrum and two babies with Down syndrome. We published our first issue of Plain Values in 2012 to highlight biblical ministries, share the beauty of adoption, and to cultivate anchored community. In 2018 we welcomed our fourth child in a surprise adoption, this time a baby with Mosaic Down syndrome. We homeschool our family and enjoy working together to grow and raise food on our twelve acre homestead.

Marlin Miller SA L E S A DV ISO R - O HIO

Matt Yoder SA L E S A DV ISO R - M IC HIA N A + P ENNSY LVANI A

Aaron Stutzman E DITO R IA L M A N AG E R

Nic Stoltzfus Q UA L IT Y A SSU RA N C E

WHAT WE BELIEVE...

Sabrina Schlabach

Our values are plain values, steeped in the rich traditions of yesterday. We enjoy the simple things in life. Gathering eggs from the coop, getting our hands in the dirt to grow food, and cooking meals from scratch. Sometimes we sit around a fire and share life. We strive to walk humbly to strengthen authentic relationships with our families and neighbors. And, yes, we have taken a fresh pie to a front porch and surprised a friend… we didn’t even text them before! We just stopped by, walked up the steps, and knocked on the door! Just the way our grandparents used to do on a Sunday evening. They called it living in community.

We seek to serve our neighbors. Plain Values began with a prayer, hoping to play a small role in connecting a child with Down syndrome to his or her forever family. We have checked that box over a dozen times in the last ten years, and we will not stop until the orphanages are empty! We will rest in Heaven!

HOW YOU CAN HELP...

Join us as we pursue a more authentic life. By subscribing to Plain Values, a portion of each subscription goes directly to Room to Bloom, our non-profit that supports children with special needs.

P RO DU C T IO N M A N AG E R

Isaac Hershberger M U LT I- M E DIA P RO DU C T IO N

Seth Yoder O F F IC E M A N AG E R / C U STO MER S ERVI C E

Jan Schlabach N OV E M BE R A D C LO SE

October 5, 2022 WR IT E RS – SE RV IN G O U R N E I G H B O R

Nic Stoltzfus Sabrina Schlabach Stacey Gagnon WR IT E R – WHISP E RS O F HO P E

Darren Gagnon WR IT E R – RO OTS + WIN GS

Rory Feek

JOIN US FOR PORCH TIME! Every third Friday from 1:00pm – 4:00pm

Stop by, enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, sit on the porch, and visit for a while. We'd love to get to know you! We're located in the heart of Winesburg, Ohio—just down the street from the church.

WR IT E R – T HE HE A L IN G L A N D

Shawn & Beth Dougherty WR IT E R – CO N F E SSIO N S O F A ST EWAR D

Joel Salatin WR IT E R – T HE WIDOW ' S PAT H

Ferree Hardy WR IT E R – O U R HE R ITAG E

Elam Stoltzfus WR IT E R – A L L T HIN GS O U T DO O RS

Jim Zumbo

Plain Values is published monthly by Plain Target Marketing, LLC. Please contact us with any questions.

A DDR E SS

P.O. Box 201 / 2106 Main Street Winesburg, OH 44690 P HO N E

FA X

330-601-6106

330-601-4099

E M A IL

reachout@plainvalues.com WE BSIT E

www.plainvalues.com

This publication and its contents are © 2022, Plain Target Marketing, LLC. Individual copyrighted items, trademarks, etc. contained within are the property of their respective copyright holders. No part of this publication may be reproduced or redistributed by any means without authorization from the publisher. Publisher is not responsible for advertisers’ offers, products, or services, and publication neither expresses nor implies an endorsement.

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contents serving our neighbor 13

RYA TROYER COMES HOME WORDS BY: NIC STOLTZFUS

This month we are honored to share the adoption journey of Keith and Lori Troyer as they brought their daugher, Rya, home from Bulgaria earlier this year.

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THE SANDERS ADOPTION STORY WORDS BY: SABRINA SCHLABACH

Thirteen-year-old Elli and ten-year-old Levi are Jamie and Laura Sanders’ biological children, and eight-year-old Ana is their daughter, who was adopted from Bulgaria. I recently had the privilege of sitting down with the Sanders and hearing their story.

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ORPHANS DIE WORDS BY: STACEY GAGNON

We have been honored to share two adoption stories about two little girls, Rya Troyer and Ana Sanders, both adopted from Bulgaria. Unfortunately, not all children have a happy ending in this world. This story was written by a woman who has seen the hardest, darkest side of what some children endure.

simple living 37

THE HEALING LAND Anastasia Genuis COLUMN BY: SHAWN & BETH DOUGHERTY

Shawn and Beth share about the Genius family and their daughter Anastasia.

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CONFESSIONS OF A STEWARD Principles for Starting COLUMN BY: JOEL SALATIN

This month Joel shares valuable advice for folks who are just getting into farming.

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October 2022 // Issue 112

10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

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ONE MINUTE WITH MARLIN

ON THE COVER

PRAYERS FOR THE NATIONS

Thoughts and ramblings from Marlin Miller, publisher of Plain Values.

The Troyer family (left to right): Heather, Ava, Lori, Elena, Rya, Keith, and Josh.

This month we take a closer look at the country of Guyana in South America.

resources 10

WHISPERS OF HOPE Trauma Conference COLUMN BY: DARREN GAGNON

community 33

ROOTS + WINGS To the Woods COLUMN BY: RORY FEEK

"I’ve decided to take some time off… a year off, to be exact. Not a year off work, but off the internet."

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THE WIDOW'S PATH God Makes No Mistakes (p. 1) COLUMN BY: FERREE HARDY

This month Ferree shares the story of her good friend, Jane, and her son, Ben.

history 51

OUR HERITAGE Reflections on the Martyrs–Hans Meyli COLUMN BY: ELAM STOLTZFUS

Elam unpacks the first of the stories in the back of the Ausbund, Hans Meyli.

outdoors 55

ALL THINGS OUTDOORS Bowhunting COLUMN BY: JIM ZUMBO

"There’s a problem in hunting with archery equipment. Once you’ve taken your first animal, you’ll never be the same."

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One Minute with Marlin I WAS IN KNEE-HIGH SALTWATER with our three kids right behind me, having a blast jumping into waves. It was a beautiful day with trains of mullet running down south a few yards from us. Suddenly something bumped into my left ankle with a very distinctive feel­— leathery, sandpaper almost. I turned to my left and saw a four-to-five-foot shadow lazily making its way back into deeper water. A jolt of fear ran down my spine—it was a shark. In that split second, I realized a shark had bumped into my ankle, and a combination of intense fear and exhilaration collided. If it had wanted to bite me, it would have already done so. I instinctively got the kids out of the water, calmly so as not to scare them. And then I laughed—what a thrill!

Take a moment to think back on your life. Ask yourself these questions: What was your life like ten years ago? Think about where you lived, your family, your job. Think about what your plans and goals were for the future.

Now—what is your life like today? How many of those goals that you set for yourself all those years ago did you achieve?

And—what goals and plans do you have for the next decade?

Someone once said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” The same can be true for reflection. It’s easy to think back over the past year when a new year rolls around, but how often do we stop to think back over the past decade or more?

Ten years ago, in October 2012, we published and mailed our very first issue of Plain Values. At the time, I wasn’t thinking of what our work might turn into. I was solely and wholeheartedly focused on creating the highest-quality magazine I could. It wasn’t until years later that I realized

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Lisa and our children paid quite a price during that time.

I was zeroed in so deep those first couple of years that I failed to realize how little time and energy I gave at home. I have wished many times to go back and make it right, but I can’t. It’s impossible to repeat the past.

At the same time, I see the good in what happened: had the magazine not survived, so much would have been lost. We wouldn’t have been able to share good news of the folks doing biblical work around the world every month. Room to Bloom would never have been born. Little ones with Down syndrome and other special needs might not have been found and adopted into their forever families!

As simple as it can be to neglect reflecting on the past decade, it is equally as challenging to imagine what the next decade may hold for your family, business, or your community. But as it says in Jeremiah 29, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

A future and a hope… how wonderful that the Lord knows and we can rest in His peace­— even when we meet sharks!

As always, may you find joy in the simple things. //

MARLIN MILLER publisher, always looking for more (not shark) friends

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whispers of hope

SUPPORT FOR THOSE WHO FOSTER + ADOPT

COLUMN BY:

Darren Gagnon

LOST SPARROWS is very excited to have George Dennehy speaking at our Trauma Conference in 2022. George has an amazing story and is an inspirational young man. George loves to play his guitar or the piano with his feet, while singing his favorite songs and hymns.

George will be speaking on Friday night, October 14th at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center (610 Wooster Rd.) in Winona Lake, Indiana.

We will have many speakers discussing a variety of topics all day Friday, and George's keynote address will begin at 5:30pm. We hope you will join us for an encouraging weekend!

The conference will be held on the campus of Grace College, 200 Seminary Drive, Winona lake, IN. Breakfast and lunch on Friday and Saturday are included with your registration. For more information, and to purchase tickets, please visit our webiste: www.LSConference.org. We hope to see you there! //

October 14–15 Friday + Saturday

Grace College Campus Winona Lake, IN

$190 per Ticket

Breakfast + Lunch Included

LSConference.org Purchase Tickets Online

Darren Gagnon, along with his wife, Stacey, are the founders of Lost Sparrows. They can be reached at P.O. Box 751, Winona Lake, IN 46590.

Learn more about Lost Sparrows at www.lostsparrows.org.

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P LU S M

A FEW OF OUR EXCELLENT SPEAKERS:

ANY M

GEORGE DENNEHY is capturing attention all over the world with his unique talents. Born without arms, he plays music from his heart using his feet. George also has a powerful message to share. Because he has overcome so many challenges in his own life, he believes that every individual has a purpose and absolutely anything is possible. People are surprised by his life story, including his early struggle against death in a grim Romanian orphanage and the dire circumstances that led to an urgent plea for a family to quickly consider adopting him.

KRISTA YODER, BSN, RN, is the Coordinator for the Family Support Team with The SOURCE of Elkhart County. Krista is a mom of three boys and comes with lived experience as a foster and adoptive parent to vulnerable children in our community.

She is a Registered Nurse and has worked closely with children and families in the Pediatric Intensive Care setting. She is also a Practitioner for Trust-Based Relational Intervention® (TBRI®) and provides TBRI® training to youth-serving organizations within Elkhart County.

KEYNOTE TITLE: NOT ABANDONED

BREAKOUT SESSION TITLE: STRENGTHENING CONNECTION WITH CHILDREN AND YOUTH THROUGH TRUST-BASED RELATIONAL INTERVENTION®

George speaks about his own adoption story and how it saved his life both physically and spiritually. He also focuses on the miracle of adoption and our adoption into God's family through Jesus Christ. George shares many of the biggest personal milestones in his ever-evolving story, including his brush with death in Romania, learning to play the cello with his feet at the age of eight, being bullied as a youth, experiencing depression, then being adopted by God and shown his true purpose! Original songs and music act as a beautiful background to the story.

ORE!

Trust-Based Relational Intervention®, or TBRI®, is an attachmentbased, trauma-informed intervention that is designed to meet the complex needs of vulnerable children. In this session, we will discuss the three core principles of TBRI®—­­Connecting, Empowering and Correcting. We will discover how this caregiving strategy better equips us to positively engage the children in our lives, especially those who have experienced adversity.

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"Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son." EPHESIANS 1: 4-6 (NLT)

The Troyer family (left to right): Heather, Ava, Lori, Elena, Rya, Keith, and Josh 12

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WORDS BY

Nic Stoltzfus

Rya Troyer C omesHome

“I WANT OUR MAGAZINE TO ENCOURAGE FAMILIES TO CONSIDER ADOPTION AND TO SUPPORT THOSE WHO HAVE ADOPTED CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS.” When Marlin Miller and his wife Lisa founded Plain Values ten years ago, the magazine was built upon a foundation of three things: show Christian organizations doing good work worldwide, ascribe dignity to people with special needs, and promote the beauty of adoption. Two of those foundational stones interlocked — the Millers wanted to share stories of families who have adopted children with special needs.

Over the years, the magazine ran National Down Syndrome Adoption Network ads with photos of smiling children with Down syndrome and featured stories of special needs adoptions. Since the magazine's founding in 2012, Marlin & Lisa Miller, Plain Values, and its associated non-profit Room to Bloom have helped with 14 adoptions.

This is one of those stories.

Keith & Lori Troyer and their four children, Seth, Ava, Josh, and Heather, of Shipshewana, Indiana, read Plain Values cover-to-cover every month. Lori was drawn to the ads and stories featuring children with Down syndrome and would sometimes mention her desire to adopt to Keith. Keith wasn't sure how he felt about it, but he certainly wasn't chomping at the bit to adopt like Lori was. That all changed one evening when the family met C.J., an adorable little blond-haired boy with Down syndrome. At a social gathering of friends and family, C.J. quickly warmed up to Keith, effectively winning his heart. After that, the family often spoke of adding a child with Down syndrome to their family.

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Unfortunately, in 2016 Keith broke his back while working at the roofing business he co-owns. Because of Keith's surgery and long recovery, the Troyers temporarily set aside their dream of adopting.

At some point, the Troyers met Elliot, the son of Jay & Kristine Chupp, who also happens to have Down syndrome and was adopted. At the time, the two families knew each other, but not that well. Sometime later, the Troyers read the December 2019 Plain Values story featuring the Chupps' adoption of Elliot. In the article, one quote from Jay stood out to the family: "We have been asked whether we would encourage other folks to adopt a child with Down syndrome. Our reply is that we would never talk anyone into a decision to adopt, nor condemn anyone who chooses not to. The decision to adopt should be a unanimous one, made by a team of three: God, husband, and wife. But simply put, we sure are glad we did!"

Keith and Lori turned their hearts to God and began to pray. They felt God's call on their hearts to adopt a child with Down syndrome.

Lori connected with Lisa Miller, who began to send her information about adoption. They also started working on adoption paperwork and telling their friends of God's call to adopt a child with Down syndrome.

In the meantime, Lori reached out to the adoption agency—KidsFirst Adoption of Indianapolis, Indiana— and connected with the founder, Inna Pecar. Inna is an immigrant from Ukraine who founded KidsFirst in 1990 with her husband, Steve. Both Inna and Steve bring a unique skill set to the organization: Inna has a Master's degree in Education from Ukraine, as well as a Master's in Social Work from Indiana University (IU); Steve's degree from IU is in law, and he has over twenty years of experience in adoption law. Since the couple started KidsFirst over three decades ago, they have helped over 800 children find their forever homes.

"Most infants diagnosed with this rare genetic disorder don't last past a year old."

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Lori and Inna quickly hit it off. As they talked, the subject of a hosting program came up. Keith and Lori began looking into this and considered hosting orphans from overseas. In the meantime, one of Loris' friends saw a Facebook post about a newborn girl in need of adoption just a few hours south of Indianapolis. Knowing that the Troyers were looking to adopt, Lori's friend forwarded the information to her. It just so happened Inna was handling the little girl's adoption.

When Lori reached out to Inna about adopting the baby girl, she told Lori that the infant had many complications and was diagnosed with StüveWiedemman syndrome. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Stüve-Wiedemann syndrome is a severe condition characterized by bone abnormalities and dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary body processes such as the regulation of breathing rate and body temperature.”

Most infants diagnosed with this rare genetic disorder don't last past a year old. However, when the syndrome is diagnosed early enough, and infants are monitored closely, they have a better chance of living longer.

After reviewing the girl's medical records and talking with her family about it, Lori told Inna, "Call us if she doesn't get placed before Christmas."

"The decision to adopt should be a unanimous one, made by a team of three: God, husband, and wife. But simply put, we sure are glad we did!”

A Christmas Miracle The Monday after Thanksgiving, Lori got a call from Inna.

"I've reached out to sixty families, and I'm down to two couples: you and an elderly couple."

Inna explained to Lori that an infant with Stüve-Wiedemann requires intensive care, which could be overwhelming for an older couple. She thought the Troyers were the right fit for adopting the baby girl.

"Let me talk to my husband."

Lori was in Pittsburgh Christmas shopping with her family, and Keith was back home working. She gave him a call, and they talked about what to do next: as much as their heart went out to this infant girl with special needs, they felt called to adopt a child with Down syndrome. The Troyers decided not to adopt this time around.

But as soon as she got off the phone with her husband, Lori felt her phone buzz and saw a text from him: let's go get her.

Three days later, Lori made the three-hour drive south to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. Their nowclose friends Jay and Kristin Chupp went along for support. In the NICU room, Lori held the baby girl for the first time.

Her health was worse than she thought: every breath was a struggle, and she was covered in cords helping to keep her alive. Several weeks later, the Troyers brought her home on the Friday before Christmas.

The doctor told the Troyers that Elena's prognosis was dim. He didn't expect her to make it beyond New Year's.

Over Christmastime, the family kept a close watch on her. Her body struggled to regulate its temperature, and every breath was a battle. But Elena made it to the end of the year and continued to get better with each passing week.

Her recovery did not happen overnight, but she no longer requires pediatric hospice or supplemental oxygen today. When I visited the Troyers earlier this year, I watched as this radiant two-year-old laughed and rolled around on their trampoline as she played with her pet bunny Flopsy, her smile as bright and joyful as the sun above.

Elena playing with her bunny, Flopsy, on the trampoline in the Troyer's backyard

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A Dream Come True Even with adopting Elena, the Troyers still felt called to adopt a child with Down syndrome. Lori shared this with Lisa Miller, who then put her in touch with Darren Gagnon of Lost Sparrows. Darren knew of some children with Down syndrome in Bulgaria who were being placed for adoption. So, he connected Lori with an adoption organization he trusted: AdoptGlobal, located in Bel Air, Maryland. Like KidsFirst, AdoptGlobal is a Hague-accredited international adoption agency.

Its mission is to provide "pre-adoption support, education, and guidance in order to create, sustain, and preserve nurturing families." Since its founding nearly thirty years ago, AdoptGlobal has successfully coordinated over 450 adoptions.

Lori's contact person at AdoptGlobal was Shelley Bedford, who has ten children of her own—seven adopted from Eastern Europe—and has helped over 100 Bulgarian children find their forever homes in America. Together, Lori and Shelley worked to complete the many, many documents for adopting a child from another country.

The day the Troyers were approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to bring a child into the US, Shelley received a file from Bulgaria of a nine-year-old girl with Down syndrome.

Lori asked Shelley to put a hold on the girl's file to give the Troyers time as a family to consider adopting her. Shelley said she could give them a week. The Troyers discussed the adoption as a family and then didn't talk about it for three days. During that time,

"The Troyers discussed the adoption as a family and then didn’t talk about it for three days. During that time, each family member had time to think and pray about the adoption on their own."

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each family member had time to think and pray about the adoption on their own.

After the family reached a final decision at the end of the week, Lori called Shelley back.

"We think she's the one."

The Troyers began the process of adopting the girl from Bulgaria. First, they gave the girl a new name: Rya, which means "dream."

It had been Keith & Lori's longtime dream to adopt a child with Down syndrome, and now that time had finally arrived.

They were supposed to take two trips to Bulgaria: the first trip to meet the child and begin the paperwork process and the second trip to return and adopt the child. However, because they were working on the adoption during the pandemic, the first trip was canceled. Instead, the Troyers "met" Rya through a series of one-hour FaceTime calls over the course of several days.

The paperwork continued to move forward, but it was a long and drawn-out process. There were so

many more forms to fill out to adopt Rya from Bulgaria compared to Elena's domestic adoption.

Finally, the court date arrived in early 2022. Two weeks later, in mid-May, Lori and her thirteen-yearold son Josh flew to Bulgaria to bring Rya home.

They changed planes in Vienna, Austria, and took a connecting flight to Sophia, Bulgaria. They spent one night in the capital city, then flew out the next morning to Varna, Bulgaria, where the orphanage was located. Bulgaria's third-largest city, Varna is a seaside resort town beside the expansive Black Sea. It's also rich with history—Varna has Roman bath ruins from the 2nd century, a marker for the last battle of the Crusades in 1444, and one of the largest Greek Orthodox cathedrals in Bulgaria, finished in 1886.

Their contact took Lori and Josh around Varna to see some of these sites, and they enjoyed lunch in a restaurant overlooking the Black Sea.

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The next morning, the trio went to meet Rya for the first time. It was a small orphanage, more like a group home, with fourteen beds. Twelve children were there when Lori and Josh arrived to pick up Rya. The orphanage was designated for children with severe developmental delays: none were potty trained, only one child could talk, and only three could walk.

While Lori and Josh were in Bulgaria, they took Rya out daily to a nearby park. She was happy to be outside and would sit on the swing with a smile as she watched the other kids play.

The Troyers are confident that God has been with them every step through the highs and lows of adoption.

God's presence was especially evident while Lori and Josh were on foreign soil and away from family and friends. One especially touching moment came when Lori opened a card from eight-year-old Arianna Lehman.

Arianna's parents and siblings had all helped each other compile enough envelopes for Lori and Josh to open one each day they were gone. The envelopes contained colorful cards, poems, words of encouragement, and Bible verses.

Before traveling, Lori had budgeted and prepared her US currency for each particular transaction needed to complete the adoption. Careful not to take any extra cash, Lori chose to use her credit card while there instead. The final appointment needing cash was to be

"The Troyers are confident that God has been with them every step through the highs and lows of adoption." at the US embassy, and Lori knew she needed exactly $325 in US currency. That morning—day twelve—Lori was disappointed to find she had only $323 left. She was two dollars short!

After searching through all their belongings, she couldn't find a spare two dollars anywhere. Lori had to make other arrangements to get those last two dollars quickly, so she planned to leave earlier to find a currency exchange booth.

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But before heading out, she wanted something to cheer her up—she decided to open that day's envelope from the Lehman family. When she opened Arianna's colorful card, out spilled two dollars in cash! Lori offered up a prayer: thank you Arianna, you are the hands and feet of God today!

Coming Home At home, Rya has settled right in with her new family. The Troyers are teaching her sign language, she has started school, and she is receiving the therapies she needs to help her thrive.

"SPLASH!" is her word for pool time, where she lays on the largest pool float and splashes the water with her hands while humming.

"JOSH!" is her word for the first sibling she met, and "DADA!" is the word for her father, Keith. Lori says that Rya has a strong bond with Josh and Keith because there weren't any male caregivers in her orphanage.

And she loves her family. Lori said, "Any family time she can get, she will take it for all it's worth. She loves it."

Rya has quickly formed her very own fan club in her new community. She unabashedly doles out hugs and kisses to anyone she meets and has a ready smile for those she recognizes as her own. Sporting her trendy new glasses, she lets her feisty humor show as she teases and gets teased by friends and family.

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I had the opportunity to meet Rya this July when I traveled out to Indiana. After greeting Keith at their home and following him to the back porch of their house, I saw Rya seated on a white porch swing. The toy beside her chimed out with the song "The Farmer in the Dell."

I walked up the steps and introduced myself.

"Hi Rya—my name is Nic. I am here to take some pictures of you for an article I'm working on."

Rya looked me over for a moment, then I watched as her almond eyes squinted tight, and her mouth turned upward in a gentle half-moon smile. She eased herself off the swing, hobbled over, wrapped her arms around my legs, and gave me a hug. My heart melted at how trusting this little girl was, considering everything she had been through. Lori's face was beaming—her little girl was not afraid. She was safe and loved.

Rya was home. //

The Troyers have asked readers to pray for Rya and their family.

To support other adoptions like Rya's, consider donating to Room to Bloom by using the back of the Plain Values subscription card. Every donation is one step closer to bringing a little girl like Rya home.

Nic Stoltzfus is the editorial manager at Plain Values magazine. He and his wife Jen live in Reading, Pennsylvania, with their three crazy cats and rescue dog, Paul. They hope to have children soon! Nic loves volunteering in his community—he is teaching Sunday school next spring, is involved with the Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority’s plan to bring back passenger rail to Berks County, and he serves as secretary of the Nicholas Stoltzfus Homestead Preservation Committee. He is currently working on a novel about the immigrant Stoltzfus family.

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The Sanders family (left to right): Ana, Jamie, Laura, Elli, Laura's mom, and Levi 22

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WORDS BY

Sabrina Schlabach

the sanders adopti o n story THE SANDERS are like one of those happy families from a Norman Rockwell painting—an old-fashioned family with big hearts living in small-town America. There’s Dad coming home from work; Mom, tidying up the house and in the kitchen fixing dinner; and three kids sitting together, enjoying some entertainment. But a closer look reveals an American family that Norman Rockwell never painted–a father and mother with three children, all with Down syndrome. Thirteen-yearold Elli and ten-year-old Levi are Jamie and Laura Sanders’ biological children, and eight-year-old Ana is their daughter, who was adopted from Bulgaria.

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with the Sanders and hearing their story.

In March of 2018, Jamie and Laura suffered a devastating loss. They wanted another child, but after a difficult miscarriage it seemed that God had something else in store for them. Laura was following some friends’ journeys of adopting children with special needs, which prompted Laura to ask, “Okay, God. What about adoption?” She began researching international adoption and talked to her husband Jamie about the possibility of adopting a child.

Originally Jamie leaned more towards foster care. He had experience working with kids through Royal Family Kids Camp, a camp for children who had experienced trauma and were in the foster system. But as Jamie and Laura discussed

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this option further, they realized that this wasn’t the path they wanted to go down. With fostering, the Sanders would have less control over who came into their home.

Because they wanted to protect the vulnerability of their two biological children Elli and Levi, they decided not to become foster parents. Instead, they decided to adopt a child younger than their two children, and to adopt a child with Down syndrome.

People always say, “You’ll know your kid when you see them,” said Laura. She began praying, “God, show me our child.” Two months later, Laura was in the hospital with Elli due to complications from a previous surgery.

As she waited, she was on her phone, scrolling through adoption photos on Rainbowkids.com, a website that helps connect families with waiting children all over the world. Up popped a little girl’s face. Laura’s immediate thought was, “She’s so pretty!” On the girl’s profile, Laura saw that she loved stuffed animals and listening to music.

She mused, “She’d be a good fit with our family. When I inquired further about where in Eastern Europe she was located, I found out it was Bulgaria.”

Her heart began stirring and felt a connection with the girl on the screen. At that moment, Laura knew God had shown her their child.

Thus began the process of adoption, a long process that took eighteen months. The Sanders shared that “It was meant to be from the very beginning. Every step of the way everything worked out. God kept opening doors.” Finances were a concern. At the beginning of the adoption process, Jamie and Laura took out a loan.

When the fee schedule for the loan arrived, Laura thought maybe she needed to get a job for a year to help pay for

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the adoption. The very next day in the church bulletin, Laura saw an announcement that a teacher was needed.

For preschoolers. Part-time. It was the perfect job for Laura and perfectly God’s timing.

Later, the Sanders were able to get another loan through American Christian Credit Union, and they were blessed with a grant from Room to Bloom. Another testament to God’s faithfulness in providing came from their local CrossFit 1808. The owners have a niece with Down syndrome and every year they host Caroline’s Classic, an event that raises funds for various projects that give advantages to children with special needs. In 2019 they donated the entirety of funds raised towards the Sanders' adoption.

In late May 2019, Jamie and Laura flew to Bulgaria to meet their little girl. When they met the foster family, they found out their little girl’s name was Iliyana, a name that Laura had heard years earlier and thought was so beautiful. The nickname they gave her was Ana. Another piece settled in Laura’s heart that God was indeed working everything out. They spent a week getting to know Ana, who was four at the time. At first, it was a challenge for Jamie and Laura since they spoke English and Ana only understood Bulgarian, but love was the language that they all spoke, and this reaffirmed that she was their little girl.

Over the course of the next six months, Jamie and Laura video-chatted with Ana. They felt that it was important for her to continue to see their faces and hear their voices. Ana didn’t say much, and the videos were spent saying hi, waving, and playing peek-a-boo. By October the adoption was finalized. In early December

2019, the Sanders were back in Bulgaria to bring Ana home.

They spent another week in Bulgaria with Ana, filling out paperwork at several agencies and conducting their exit interview, before heading to the US. The first several months in the US were difficult for Ana. She was in a strange place with people she barely knew and couldn’t understand. Her new siblings Elli and Levi were excited to have her home, but they had some things to learn too. “Levi is a lovey little guy, but if he got too close to Ana’s space, she would scratch him,” shared Laura. Finally, after about seven months, a switch seemed to flip for Ana. She finally seemed able to process what they were saying.

There have also been challenges for the Sanders in taking care of Ana medically. Laura noticed that when they tried to brush Ana’s teeth she was in extreme pain, so they took her to the dentist. The dentist told Laura that Ana had at least five cavities and they needed to schedule a surgery to fix them. In February, Ana had dental surgery, and it was worse than they expected. Sixteen of her twenty teeth were rotten!

Another doctor discovered that Ana was misdiagnosed with cerebral palsy. In reality, her kneecaps were dislocated. Another surgery was performed on both kneecaps to put in hardware that would help the knees to stay in place. After dealing with some complications from the hardware backing out, I’m happy to report that today Ana can walk!

Jamie and Laura enjoy spending time outdoors and so do the kids. They enjoy taking walks together, playing at the Splash Pad, and swimming. Elli likes her iPad, reading, and dancing. Levi loves people and enjoys wrestling. Ana

is sensory-oriented and loves touch, lights, and music.

She especially likes to swing.

Attending church is something everyone in the family enjoys. The kids get to dance during worship, and Jamie and Laura receive love and support from friends and family. “Jamie’s mom, my parents, friends and family, and the Down Syndrome Association are a big part of our lives,” said Laura. “Jamie is such a support, and we don’t know what all God has in store for us down the road, but He has been good, and we keep trusting Him.” Throughout my time with the Sanders family, it was clear to see the love they have for each other. Jamie and Laura are devoted to giving their very best to Elli, Levi, and Ana. While Levi spent some quality time with his grandmother (who lives in an adjoining apartment), Elli snuggled up next to me on the couch and we read her favorite book, The Napping House. I slid to the floor as I observed Ana quietly playing with her dolls, then asked if she had any favorites. Jamie helped her show me an American Girl doll that looked a lot like her. Later, Jamie played "The Wheels on the Bus" as Laura and I sang and clapped along, while Elli and Ana danced. Oh how those sweet girls’ smiles lit up the entire room! //

Never doubt that your generosity has an impact; your giving has directly blessed the Sanders family with the ability to adopt Ana. We would love to bless more families like the Sanders family.

If you'd like to help more children come home: please make a donation to Room to Bloom by using the back of the Plain Values subscription card.

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orphans die.

WORDS BY

Stacey Gagnon

We have been honored to share two adoption stories about two little girls, Rya Troyer and Ana Sanders, both adopted from Bulgaria. Their stories touch our hearts and help us to see the joy and compassion in the world.

Unfortunately, not all children have a happy ending in this world. The following story was written by a woman who has seen the hardest, darkest side of what some children endure.

I have been asked everyday about my trip. Wellintended, “How was your trip?” questions. And honestly, I find I lie. I lie and say, “It was hard, but we did a lot of good.” And the lie tastes bitter on my tongue. It was more than hard, and there was not a lot of good.

When I disembarked from the plane in Bulgaria, I stepped into this ocean of a problem and got knocked on my back by a tidal wave of crisis and emotions. And I’m sitting here choking on the water, trying to figure out where that wave came from. I was prepared for this trip; I was ready. I had packed, unpacked, and repacked several times.

I had gathered supplies, letters, and created PowerPoint teaching slides and videos. But the truth is I never will be prepared, nor do I want to be prepared to see, hear, and touch what I saw in the orphanages because I should never be ready to look at an innocent child who is starving and flinches at my touch. I never want to sit holding the skin and bones of a seven-year-old-child-who-looks-like-an-infant

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and feel prepared. So, I have been crushed by the wave, and I’m trying to process it all.

I think back to a training I attended on disaster preparedness. A portion of the training was how to triage and tag victims of a mass casualty incident. Triage tagging is a way to effectively and efficiently distribute limited resources and immediate care until more help arrives.

Each victim is assigned a color before the first responder moves to the next victim.

As we moved across Eastern Europe through several orphanages and facilities, I found myself “tagging” the victims and thinking how very little I was doing and how very many victims there were.

IMMEDIATE (red tag) | Life-threatening There were many children I saw, and I prayed for death.

At the end of each day, I wondered—who was this person I had become? I have never prayed for a child to die, yet I found my soul weeping and begging for God’s reprieve.

And the part I struggle with is that the reprieve would have been mine. I would have been able to unload the burden of a fourteen-year-old twisted like a pretzel with a hole cut in his mattress to hold his contorted frame. I would have been able to forget about the pressure wounds glistening with bone and ligaments and how they contrasted with his soft, brown eyes framed by thick, black eyelashes. If death had offered a reprieve, I would never have seen the fiveyear-old infant who lay contracted like a strung bow with nostrils flaring, gasping for air. I would not have noticed her

ragged breaths were the only sound in the room, nor the fact that the rest of the infant-sized children lay “sleeping” in a drug-fogged haze as drool slipped down their cheeks and pooled on their stained sheets. Had death visited, I would never have carried home an image of a shrunken, yellowing body of a five-year-old. Eyes too large for his tiny frame, lips frothing as he labored to exist. I would not be sitting here now weeping as I type, weeping over the children I left dying in an orphanage. I could have rested in their reprieve from this life, instead of wondering if they were still in pain.

Yes, I begged for their death because the weight of it all buckled me to my knees.

DELAYED (yellow tag) Serious, Non-life-threatening There were so many children who were physically healthier. I looked at them and searched for hope. They were the quiet witnesses; seeming like shadows. A shadow who was a four-year-old; a boy dressed in a purple sleeper taking a nap at 10 a.m. and still napping five hours later. And this same boy has not met the outside world, but lives suspended in time. He marks the days with the passing of metal cups and mealtimes and has never seen the beautiful garden right outside his window. He cannot smell the roses blooming on the vines, or feel the sun on his face. He has never learned about numbers and letters.

His mind sits stagnant with the lack of stimulus.

She is the seven-year-old who does not know what it feels like to have a mother’s kiss or a daddy’s tickles. She sits

rocking day after day on the sagging crib mattress, waiting to fill an empty space inside her heart. Her knuckles are raw and scabbed from where she bites them out of numb boredom. She regurgitates her food to have the sensation of swallowing. Her teeth are corroded, her hair is patchy, and her skin is sallow. She is a job to a caregiver and a burden to a system. Yet she has feelings and hurts; love and fear. Inside her is contained potential locked away by a disease called “Indifference.”

I looked at these children and saw my own son, Israel.

I realized he, too, had sat suspended in time, waiting for a future. His only hope was adoption. Their only hope is adoption. If they are not adopted, most will die within institutions. Every child has a basic human right to be loved by a family, regardless of country. Children are not supposed to be raised and die in institutions.

MINOR (green tag) | Walking Wounded When I first went to the orphanages, I wanted to place blame on families who gave their children up for adoption. I wanted to point a finger at a mother who would just leave her baby at the hospital and walk away.

As I opened my eyes and my ears, I learned about the extreme pressure placed on parents who give birth to a child with special needs. Stories of families who were told that their child would die soon or die if they took them home. Moms who were told that they could not raise their child, and that it would be a burden to their family. And I began to see how the orphanages filled with children.

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We met some amazing families who chose to take their child home. These families are the ones who said, “No, I will raise my child at home,” when physicians told them it was impossible. They stood up to the pressure and criticism of family and friends when they brought home a less-thanperfect infant. They have weathered years without services, therapies, equipment, and social support. They have been creative in raising their children, from constructing their own medical equipment to driving great distances for help.

Many were lonely and struggling while navigating the life of a child with special needs with no support. When I shared my son Israel’s video, they wept. And when I looked at the tears in their eyes, I saw a bridge known only to parents who have children with special needs, and I couldn’t have been prouder of their brave love.

MORGUE (black tag) | Pulseless Orphans die. Mostly we never know. They are buried without tears or fanfare. They do not leave out the front, but are bundled up and carried out the back.

Before I left for Bulgaria, I watched as God moved mountains to help one orphan named Valentina. She was in liver failure, and her conditions were dire. I tentatively began to reach out for support. It soon became obvious

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I might be able to help her while I was on my trip. I began to make more phone calls and the responses were amazing. One of the best pediatric liver transplant teams coordinated her ongoing care with me, and I watched in awe as people across the world donated everything necessary for her survival.

The weeks before I left, I received her specialty formula, feeding pump and tubing, money for ongoing nurse care, and prayer. The only thing we were missing was the most important part: the adoptive family. We needed a family to adopt her, and they needed to be at a specific point in the adoption process because it needed to happen quickly. And so, we prayed. The world prayed.

And one morning, I woke up to a message from a friend.

God had answered our prayers, and I was soon put in contact with her new family. In a flurry of excitement, I was able to secure final letters, dietitian instructions, physician orders, and every piece of equipment was ready in record time. I was going to be able to help save her!

The day before I reached her orphanage, we received a phone call from the orphanage director. Valentina had died…the girl whose eyes captured my heart had died that very night, and I sat in my room and sobbed great big ugly

Welcoming You Into the Story

Valentina

tears. I felt as if I had completely failed, and I couldn’t help but think she died alone. Little Valentina “was motionless for an instant; she did not cry out. She fell as gently as a young tree falls.” These words from The Little Prince were on my heart as I thought of her tragic death. I felt so defeated and tired and numb. I questioned why I had come, why I had chosen to see all these hard things, and what a fool I was to think I could make a difference.

I was sitting in the ashes of my pride and planning, and then a truly beautiful thing began to happen. I began to see how I cannot walk among these children on my own strength and ability. And so, I prayed that God would give me the strength to get up out of that dark place and do what I was meant to do. I walked up the steps of Valentina’s orphanage that day, and I loved on the living. I touched the hurting, the marginalized, the silent, and broken. I called them by name and promised them I would tell the world about them. I told them that I would be their voice. And now that I’m home, I realize the triage tagging system only works when help follows.

Triage is only labeling. It’s when reinforcements come in that change happens and healing begins.

And now you know, too. You cannot say that you never knew there were places where infant-sized children were hidden away to die. You cannot say that you didn’t know six-year-olds could be transferred to adult asylums.

Now you know orphans die, and you also know I will never remain silent because we are the only voice they have. //

Every child made in the image and likeness of God deserves the opportunity to stretch and grow. Every child needs the warmth of sunshine on his face. Each one longs for the embrace of a father’s arms, the soft touch of a mother’s kiss, a place to call home. Above all, every child deserves to know the grace and mercy of the Savior by experiencing God’s love within a family.

By creating Room to Bloom, Marlin and Lisa have answered God’s call to action from Isaiah 1:17, “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” Through their non-profit, Marlin and Lisa seek to bring comfort to children affected by disabilities, help foster orphans into families, give a voice to the helpless, and provide hope and healing to the vulnerable. These actions provide children with the means to grow and flourish. So now, the invitation is extended to you and me. We now have the opportunity to give precious children around the world room to bloom.

Here’s How You Can Help: Donate to the Room to Bloom Foundation If you would like to contribute financially, please make a donation to Room to Bloom by using the back of the Plain Values subscription card. All the information you need can be found there.

Pray for Us Please pray for us that we will continue to seek God’s will, that our board members will provide us with wisdom and ethical guidance, that Room to Bloom will be a ministry that makes a positive impact in the world and the lives of children, and that we will find people who are willing to help us support our mission.

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column by:

to the woods October 2022

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

– Henry David Thoreau

rory feek

NOW THAT WE'VE RETURNED home from being out West and are back at the farm here in Tennessee, I’ve decided to take some time off… a year off, to be exact. Not a year off work, but off the internet.

It may seem strange to write a column about taking a year off the web for a magazine where most of its readers are Amish who don't often use the internet anyway. The desire to unplug—or, more honestly, to understand why it could be important to do so—is already there for Plain people. But for me and the journey I’m on, these are new things that I’m still discovering.

I’ve been thinking about disconnecting for a good while now, thinking seriously for the last year or so. If you’ve read some of my earlier columns, you know that I’ve been slowly ‘dumbing-down’ my phone and simplifying our vehicles and lives to be more present in my life and community. Last summer, I took a hiatus from the web for a month and, since then, felt called to go deeper. Up until now, I hadn’t found the right time to make the choice and commit to it.

And so, as Indy and I were pulling away from the lodge in Montana, I took one last look at Google maps on my laptop, wrote down directions for the 1,750-mile drive home, disabled wi-fi, and off we went "to the woods."

My hope is that by disconnecting from the web, I can connect on a deeper level here at home with our farm, land, and community— with my family and friends, with God, and with the things that truly matter in life. I’m 57 years old, and who knows how much time I, or any of us, have. I want to live deliberately.

Rory Feek is a world-class storyteller, songwriter, filmmaker, and New York Times best-selling author. As a musical artist, Rory is one-half of the Grammy-award-winning duo, Joey+Rory. He and his wife Joey toured the world and sold nearly a million records before her untimely passing in March 2016.

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"I just want to unplug from the great big world and plug into the little one I’m part of."

Packing the van for the ride back home to Tennessee

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I love the Thoreau quote about his time at Walden Pond and his desire "to front the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." For me, here at our farm a half-century later, my journey "to the woods" is less about the actual woods and more about going to a place we don’t know, where most other people aren’t, to see what I can learn there.

To see what it has to teach me about life so that I don’t look back and say "I wish I had…" or wonder "what if."

Most of my family and friends think I might be a little crazy. They mostly love their smartphones and iPads and all the things the web brings to their lives.

For them, the ease of having access to everyone and everything all the time is wonderful. They love that they can push a button and Amazon will deliver whatever their hearts desire to their doorstep the next day.

For me, it’s more complicated than that. I’m not sure I want those things all the time. As a matter of fact, I’m sure I don’t want them all the time. I want something more than just more stuff. Or more information.

Honestly, I want less of most of these things.

After you’ve had GPS on your smartphone or vehicle for the last ten years or so, it can be a bit of a shock to your system to hold a Rand-McNally map in your lap again and try to make your way through downtown St. Louis, looking for the sign that will get you onto I-64 South. But after a day or two of doing it, and a few missed exits, I began to actually enjoy not

knowing what was ahead of me. It’s a bit of a lost art; driving with a map, or even more so, remembering directions in your head and reading road signs. Like everything else, we utilize these devices so that we can be freed up to do more important things when we drive like… well, I’m not sure what’s more important than that, but still most everyone chooses their destination and lets their phone or car tell them how to get where they’re going these days.

My smartphone or car doesn’t know how to get where I’m wanting to go. I’m headed to a place back in time, to a decade or two ago when these things didn’t exist. To a time when we still had our problems, but they weren’t digitally compounded in the way that they are today. I just want to unplug from the great big world and plug into the little one I’m part of.

After three days of driving, we got home here to Tennessee safe and sound. After unpacking, the first thing I did was unplug the internet router at the farmhouse. And just to be sure it was off, I climbed up onto the roof of the back porch and cut the United Internet cable that was running to the house.

There was something liberating about cutting that cord. Something that made it feel like I was doing much more than just turning one cable into two with wire-cutters. I was embarking on a new journey. And although the decision was mine, I wasn’t going on this adventure alone. In cutting that cable, I knew I was taking Indy with me on this journey too. Gone for the next year are the Disney movies she loves to watch, the endless music we could listen to on Spotify, and the ability to FaceTime far-away family and friends on the computer. These things will be replaced by a silence that is already taking a bit of getting used to, but I know in time it is going to be so good for us.

I also knew, in another way, we were taking our family and coworkers on this journey with us as well.

They all know that things are changing and that to come over to dinner, we’ve asked them to make sure their TVs are off. And since most of my work for the last ten years or so has been connected to the internet in one way or another, that too is going to be a big challenge for them, for all of us.

And although I’m not really sure how it’s all going to work out yet, I believe that it’s going to somehow turn out to be the best thing for us. The closing of

that door for the next year will open another one that wasn’t available before.

Last night, when dinner was through and bathtime was over, it was just Indiana and me here at the farmhouse. And it felt so good. It’s been just us for the last six years, but strangely, when a house, even this old farmhouse, is hooked to the internet, it doesn’t really feel like you’re alone. It still feels like you’re connected to everyone and everything.

As I held her in my arms and she read to me before bed, I realized how thankful I am for this time. Thankful that I can take this time to go "to the woods," to be truly, truly with her. Now. When she’s eight years old and not look back someday and wish that I had. //

rory

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THE

HEALING LAND COLUMN BY

Shawn and Beth Dougherty

ANASTASIA GENUIS LOVE CALLS US to many unexpected places. For world-class pianist and composer Eric Genuis and his wife Leslie, love called them to become pig farmers.

Part-time pig farmers, that is! These Canadian transplants now raise pigs, steers, and poultry and travel worldwide with Eric's music ministry. But with their city background, any farming at all was a completely new adventure.

Actually, Eric and Leslie had always been interested in providing only the very best food for their children. This went beyond just buying organic food: twenty years ago, when our rural neighborhood formed a pig club to raise and butcher hogs for a few local families, the Genuises were the first to sign up.

Handsome and well-dressed, Eric and Leslie looked like the most unlikely candidates for mucking out the pig pen or hauling hay and feed, but they dove right in. At butchering time, they helped with every step of the operation. Although we were all nervous about Eric's hands—those talented fingers!—so near the sharp knives, saws, and grinders, he was determined to learn. As a result, each year that passed, the Genuises got a little bit better at pig raising and butchering and a little more convinced that our farm-raised pork was way better than the store-bought stuff.

Then, when their fourth child was born with Down syndrome, the couple's commitment to home-grown food became a passion.

Only the Best Baby Anastasia, like so many people with Down syndrome, had many health issues. She had heart problems, and her immune system was not strong. Whatever virus was going around, Anastasia got it.

Minor colds became hospitalization events. Even when she wasn't

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"For Anastasia, who has received so much love, it is only natural to give back." really "sick," she often suffered from a constant small cough, runny nose, and bleary eyes. Her muscles and joints were chronically achy, and doctor visits were frequent. Eric and Leslie determined that she should have only the best food— locally grown and chemicalfree—and a safe place to get outside and exercise.

If they could find it.

As Eric's music career had expanded to include a ministry to the imprisoned, the Genuises had moved to a new state. Now even their access to organic, home-raised pork was lost. In their new housing development, they weren't allowed to keep farm animals—not even chickens. Store-bought organic food didn't seem to make any difference. And in the urban environment, their little girl couldn't get outside and run. Anastasia's health began to deteriorate.

An Old 'New Normal' The Genuises decided something had to change.

"City life just isn't humane," Eric says. "It isn't normal."

The couple began to ask themselves what a 'normal' life should be like. Time out of doors, meaningful chores, and simple privacy seemed like good places to start.

So, with no training for the job, they bought a house on 19 acres in southern Kentucky — "Nineteen Acres of Nutrition," Eric calls them— and the family set out to

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grow as much of their food as they could. Pigs were a natural first animal since they had already helped to raise and butcher so many. Chickens and turkeys soon followed. The family developed extensive raised-bed gardens for growing vegetables year-round. Despite a lack of experience with construction, they built sheds, barns, and fences. They established two pastures.

Soon, a couple of steers joined the pigs.

As an artist, Eric is sure that good work requires close personal attention, and food provision is no exception. "The second food production becomes primarily a money-maker, people prioritize efficiency over nutrition. But animals that fatten fast aren't normal, and if growing conditions aren't normal, the food will be abnormal." They use no chemicals in their garden. Eric's careful animal care routines and on-farm slaughter are designed to minimize stress for his livestock because only the best food is good enough for his family. The results are beyond all their expectations.

Natural Healing Today, Anastasia is a beautiful, thriving young woman of twenty. "Her health is phenomenal," says Leslie. No longer is she prone to catch every bug that goes around. "We never have to go to the doctor," Leslie says. "No more constant problems."

Instead, Anastasia works with her parents on their little farm: tending livestock, picking vegetables, and playing with her beloved dogs and cats. She even drives the tractor when Eric is hauling firewood, a job she loves. "It's an unusual level of independence for a person with Down syndrome," says Leslie— and a gift that's only possible because of their rural setting.

Cooking is a favorite occupation. Anastasia loves combing through cookbooks for recipes to try out with her mother. "She's not always good on followthrough," laughs Leslie, "but she loves good food."

She helps in preparing pickles, salads, and stuffed bell peppers, "...with our own beef and peppers!" adds Leslie. And Anastasia loves making bread, her mom helping her to measure out the right amount of flour and other ingredients.

Giving It Back Undoubtedly, Anastasia is a fortunate girl, especially blessed in her family's affection and commitment. Their example of selfless love has not been lost on her; service is in this family's genes.

When Leslie began leading a catechism program for the community, The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, Anastasia was right there with her. Also known as 'Atrium,' this program uses Montessori methods— hands-on, learner-led, skills-based— to share Bible and saint stories. Lessons reinforce the virtues of patience, humility, and faithfulness while teaching basic skills like floor-sweeping, dishwashing, and table wiping. The program was made to order for Anastasia. Once she mastered the skills, Anastasia began helping teach very small children, with whom she has a special rapport.

Eric's ministry to prisoners has not been without help from Anastasia. She loves to sing and has traveled with her parents to some of the highest security prisons in the U.S. "There is no judgment with Anastasia," says Eric. "She just wants to sing for them." The hymn Ave Verum Corpus (Hail, True Body of Christ), set to a melody composed by her father, is a favorite. Prisoners who will receive no other visitors in a year's time are moved by the girl's gentle goodwill.

But her real passion was revealed on a mission trip to Haiti and Jamaica when Anastasia had the opportunity to minister to disabled children. "It was beautiful," says Leslie. "There were all these orphan

children with missing limbs, deformities... Anastasia just loved them all. She held them, talked to them— she can't wait to go back." Blessed with a loving family herself, she is happiest with her arms around disabled children, motherless babies, the sick, and the injured.

Special Gifts A heart for service doesn't just happen. Small things lead to greater: from the little girl feeding poultry and collecting eggs, to the child teaching toddlers to sweep floors, to the young woman of today, making bread and holding babies, there is consistent self-giving and service. For Anastasia, who has received so much love, it is only natural to give back.

"We are very blessed," says Leslie. "God has given us so much." //

Shawn and Beth Dougherty live in eastern Ohio, where their home farm is 17 acres designated by the state as ‘not suitable for agriculture’. Using grass as the primary source of energy, they raise dairy and beef cows, sheep, farm-fed hogs, and a variety of poultry, producing most of their food, and feed, on the farm.

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Confessions of a Steward COLUMN BY:

JOEL SALATIN

Principles for Starting WITH THE AVERAGE AGE of American farmers now at 60 years old, an unprecedented amount of farmland is becoming available, either for lease or purchase. Land grant universities that study the data universally agree that within the next 15 years, roughly half of all American farmland, buildings, and equipment will change hands.

Some will be sold in estate auctions. Much will be inherited by children who aren’t farmers. These children, many of them in their 50s, don’t want to sell but also don’t have a desire or skill level to keep it as a farm. Interestingly, this successional upheaval in agriculture appears to be intersecting with a period of extremely high interest rates and supply chain disruptions.

What all this volatility will do to land prices is anybody’s guess.

The homestead tsunami is in full swing, with a lot of interest in rural properties as urban folks flee the city for the hills. This creates a heavy demand for rural property. Will interest rates outcompete the buyer’s pool, or will the difficulty of procuring loans make rural land prices drop? Who knows?

Meanwhile, people ask me, “How do I get started?” I can’t change the interest rates. Nothing is going to change the aging-

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out of these elderly farmers. Their children aren’t going to all of a sudden decide they want the farm.

Energy costs and supply chain disruptions are an unknown. For people who want to get started farming now in this complex tangle of issues, here are things to think about.

Don’t Buy Land If you’re going to buy, buy only the most minimal you think you need to grow your own food and establish a hub of operations. In most places, five acres is plenty. That’s enough for a corral, a training shed to get cows and pigs acclimated to electric fencing, a paddock or two for animals requiring extra care (sick or calving problems) and a place to have a retail store. That requires some parking, but not a lot.

Land ownership and land management are two completely different businesses. By deferring ownership, you hold onto your capital. The ideal is to buy your hub with cash so you can get into things debt-free. That may mean you need to live in an RV for a couple of years. You may need to keep working your off-farm job to accumulate some cash. A grub stake to establish the farm business

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without debt means you don’t have to earn as much income from the farm.

Jumping on the income earning treadmill causes you to make terrible decisions. Living on the edge of economic calamity puts undue pressure and stress on your thinking. A little wiggle room gives you time to contemplate; you can give your ideas incubation time. But when creditors hound you and bankruptcy stares you in the face, your decisionmaking capacity plummets.

An extremely small acreage enables you to develop mastery with small trials. A larger acreage tempts you to scale up faster than your skill level.

The world is full of outfits that expanded beyond their mastery and collapsed as a result. My dad used to call this “overrunning your headlights.”

A well-run micro-farm is the launch pad for something bigger. Having the capital to install water lines, build fencing and equipment sheds to create a smooth-running hub is far more essential than having a big acreage spread.

Once you’re comfortable at a small scale, then you can look around for additional acreage. Many people acquire land at no cost. Landowners often

want someone to farm it simply to keep it in agricultural land use taxation. Leases reflect real time agricultural value rather than speculative market price value. If you double the income per acre, you can certainly beat other conventional farmers when you bid for land.

Your hub micro-farm offers any would-be landlord access to see what you have in mind. Some landlords pay good farmers to manage their property.

With farmland in such a limbo context right now, don’t become land rich and cash poor. Cash enables you to develop the farm quickly in strategic areas. If your cash is all tied up in the land, when you decide to do something, you might be stymied due to lack of cash.

"With farmland in such a limbo context right now, don’t become land rich and cash poor. Cash enables you to develop the farm quickly in strategic areas."

Produce Something With a Quick Turnaround One of the reasons farmers (and bankers) love annual crops is they have a half-year turnaround cycle.

From planting to harvest is only a few months. Trees are at the other end of the scale. The important thing to remember is that you may do things initially that you discontinue later on when your farm business is better established.

For example, cows have a slow turnaround. You may want to start with pastured broilers, which have an 8-week turnaround. Since the chickens like short grass, you may find it better to mow in front of them rather than invest in cattle. You can probably borrow a mower easier than you can borrow a cow. To be sure, I love cows and think every farm should have some, but when you’re starting out, you need your investment turnaround as rapidly as possible.

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want to grow a commodity crop, think about how you can get a guaranteed retail value. Don’t sell corn. Sell cornbread. With some capital, perhaps an inspected kitchen is the best way to create specialty artisanal products with high margins.

A small farmer can never compete in the commodity game because the margins only work at scale. You have

"Think of collaboration as simply the business word for community. As new farmers, we need to get over the independence cult and embrace the collaboration option."

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to wear the marketing, distribution, and processing hats in addition to the production hat. While you’re working on the fast turnaround and value-added components, you can do the longer-term investments like fruit trees, bramble fruits, or cows, as cash is available.

Part of this is cash flow. That’s why milk and eggs offer great possibilities. But milk only if you can sell it raw.

Direct to the consumer. Legally. Some opportunities come clothed in massive logistical hurdles. And no, you can’t always do what you want to do. Lots of times our wants need to be tweaked into what’s most possible. At least in the beginning.

Create Collaborations Few things leverage whatever we’re doing like partnering with symbiotic folks. Can you sell through an existing outfit, like a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)? They already have a customer base; can you add something to their product mix that taps into their clientele? If it’s a produce CSA, how about adding eggs, chicken, or any meat component? If it’s

a livestock farm, how about offering honey, egg noodles, or produce?

Some of the most successful farm start-ups partnered with a compatible operation nearby to leverage the market base. The hardest element in small-scale profitable farming is often not the production end, but the marketing end. Getting customers takes time, perseverance, excellent messaging, and a tough skin.

A geographically proximate cluster of farms can approximate the diversity found in any supermarket, which is the key to developing a loyal clientele. The one-stop shop answers the need for multi-tasking in today’s fast-paced society. To be sure, your farm group may not offer oil changes and diapers, but you can certainly offer a wide array of unprocessed and processed foods. Whether you cultivate a regional brick and mortar façade, a delivery service, or ship through a national service, the customer interface is far more attractive if more items can be put in a shopping cart.

If you know a direct-sale orchard, see if you can offer chickens on-site through a freezer. Or if you know a pastured poultry farm, offer them a produce component for their portfolio. The point is to collaborate and piggy-back on existing branded markets to keep from re-inventing the marketing wheel for your own products.

Many times, the real opportunity is adding value to something that already exists in a raw state.

Making pickles out of cucumbers and apple pies out of apples can complement a neighbor’s struggling enterprise and give you a branded item at the same time. Sometimes the best path to your farm is through a processed product first.

For some reason, farmers tend to eschew collaborations as competitive or too relationally difficult. Think of collaboration as simply the business word for community. As new farmers, we need to get over the independence cult and embrace the collaboration option. Teams accomplish far more than individuals working in

isolation. Your team is not just the people on your payroll; they include your feed mill, the UPS driver who picks up your packages, and the neighbor with the skid steer for hire. Cultivating a collaborative mentality is probably the best crop you can plant.

Things have changed a lot in the last century.

Stories like Little House on the Prairie are wonderful, nostalgic, and obsolete. Written before America had an Internal Revenue Service, Tyson chickens, and two world wars, yearning for those days will not bring them back. We must adapt to our new context, but fortunately, new opportunities ensure that today the path to enter farming is as available as it was a century ago. Let’s turn our yearning for a bygone era into creativity as we steward the millions of acres of rural America becoming available in the next few years. //

Joel's Upcoming Speaking Events October 7–8

Front Royal, VA (Homesteaders of America)

October 9

Beaverdam, VA (Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association)

October 15–16

Greenville, SC (Farm Where You Live)

October 18–19

Jackson, MS (Stockman Grass Farmer Business School with Steve Kenyon)

October 20–21

Jackson, MS (Stockman Grass Farmer Marketing School with Sheri Salatin)

November 3–13

South Africa (Masterclass)

November 15

Ann Arbor, MI (Hillsdale College Lecture Series)

December 10

Lewisberg, TN (Rogue Food Conference) 2023

January 26

Paradise, PA (A Day with Joel Salatin)

February 4

Oxfordsire, UK (Oxford Real Farming Conference)

February 5

Birmingham, UK (Growing Sovereign)

March 7

Warwick, RI (Rhode Island Women in Agriculture)

March 17

Middlefield, OH (A Day with Joel Salatin)

June 2–3

Columbia, TN (The Homestead Festival)

June 30–July 1

Kootenai County, ID (Pacific Northwest Homesteaders Conference)

August 25–26

Marshfield, MO (Ozarks Homesteading Expo)

Joel co-owns, with his family, Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. When he’s not on the road speaking, he’s at home on the farm, keeping the callouses on his hands and dirt under his fingernails, mentoring young people, inspiring visitors, and promoting local, regenerative food and farming systems.

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T H E W I D O W ' S P AT H

god makes no mistakes part one

COLUMN BY:

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Ferree Hardy

MY PHONE BLINKED, reminding me that someone had left a message on a sunny Sunday afternoon, April 2016. My heart sank when I listened. “This is Jane,” my friend stated. “Call me when you get this.” Normally gracious and happy, she sounded flat and strained.

I immediately knew what had happened. Only two weeks earlier, I’d spent the weekend with Jane and her husband, Tom. I presented a seminar on widowhood at their church in North Carolina where Tom served on the pastoral staff. This wasn’t supposed to happen!

Not to Jane; not now.

I braced myself, called, and wept with her over the phone. They’d gone out for their usual exercise run at

6 o’clock that morning before church started. During the run, Tom collapsed. He died before Jane could call 911, start CPR, or say goodbye.

Ironically, when Tom had seen his cardiologist weeks earlier, the doctor had told him, “You’re easily ten years physically younger than your biological age.

Just keep doing what you’re doing.” But the autopsy showed 100% blockage in the major artery—some call it “the widow-maker.”

With over four decades in ministry, Tom and Jane Zempel had walked through many crises with other families. They’d seen their own, too: Tom had major heart surgery in 2000, and Jane was diagnosed with breast PLAIN VALUES OCTOBER 2022

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cancer in 2003. In 1974, their son Ben was born with Down syndrome. October is National Down Syndrome Awareness Month, so I asked Jane about her experience with widowhood and Down syndrome together.

The Shock Fifty years ago, childbirth was quite different.

Parents did not know their baby’s gender or possible health concerns beforehand. Ultrasounds and prenatal tests were not routine. A father attending the birth was a new thing. So, Tom felt privileged to hold their first son, Jonathan, immediately at birth and to share the joyous moment with Jane. The same happened when daughter Amy, their youngest, was born. But when Ben was born, Tom was whisked out of the delivery room. Two nurses attended to Ben with concerned looks, whispers, and

Jane with Ben, Christmas 2021 (above) Ben wearing one of his favorite shirts (below)

nods between them. The doctor quickly exited. And Jane, herself a medical technician who’d seen many newborns, read what was going on. Frightened, she sat up and asked, “What’s wrong?” The nurses hesitated and then rolled Benjamin’s Isolette® closer to her. She recognized that Ben’s features, especially his eyes, indicated Down syndrome. They’d have to wait several excruciating hours for the official diagnosis.

“I’ve got to talk to Tom,” she blurted out. She was cautioned not to upset him. At the news, Tom’s face registered shock and heartbreak. “We took turns handling it really well—or crashing. We cried together, prayed, and reminded each other of Romans 8:28.” …All things work together for good to those who love God…

The Struggle Although they took turns supporting each other through the initial adjustments, Jane credits Tom with the steadier understanding that God would help them.

He often reassured her with his faith that God was in control. But Jane felt herself pull back. “Dreams died and questions crashed in,” she told me. An admitted perfectionist and impatient person, she wondered if God had made a mistake. “God, I thought You knew me better than this!” was her honest cry. “You know I don’t have any patience. Why would you give me this child?”

But now, she can say with deep gratitude, “I needed Ben in my life.”

A Turning Point A turning point came when Ben was several months old. Jane realized that she needed to be 48

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thankful for how God had made her baby—not in spite of the disability, but because of it. Struggling with that, upstairs in her bedroom, her heart broke. “I don’t feel like saying this,” she prayed, “but thank You for making Ben just the way You did.”

When she got up from her knees, something had changed in her. “Not that it was settled forever, but when I exercised faith that God does all things well, the thankful feelings followed. If I had waited until I felt like being thankful, I don’t know when, or if, it would have happened.”

Jane explained that in Exodus 4:11, God asked Moses, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord?” She said, “Those words came alive off the

At his first adult doctor appointment (being too old to go to his pediatrician anymore), the doctor spoke to him directly, even though Tom was there and might have answered for him. As the doctor looked at Ben’s medical records, he noted, “I see you have Down syndrome. How do you feel about that?”

“Oh, it’s been a real blessing,” Ben sincerely replied.

When Ben found out about this article, he said, “I praise the Lord for how He made me to glorify Him.” When visiting overnight in Jane’s home, I overheard Ben singing hymns early in the morning. He reads his Bible and prays every morning, too, like clockwork. Jane once asked him about this daily habit, curious to know if he was trying to work his way to heaven. “Do you think you have to do that so God will love you and accept you?”

page and into my heart. Like a salve—and such a relief!

God actually took credit for making Ben just the way He did!”

With a surprised look on his face, he assured her, “God loves me just the way I am.” For Ben, if God said it, it’s true.

Why would anyone not love God back in return?

Living With Disabilities

Grieving With Hope

Tom and Jane were able to choose to keep Ben at home, humbly realizing that not all parents have a choice for their child. In the various places they lived, they were able to enroll him in infant stimulation programs and other special needs education. And with hours of practice and persistence many years ago, Jonathan taught his younger brother how to ride a two-wheel bike; Ben used his bicycle for a newspaper route, his first job. Ben now flourishes working at the local Costco. He rides a bus to and from the store and has worked there for sixteen years.

“We need to remember that people with disabilities are still made in the image of God,” Jane said. “It’s a broken image, but it’s still an image, and the fact is this: WE ARE ALL BROKEN. We bear the image of God by virtue of God’s grace, not because of our good works or abilities. Our worth, because we’re made in God’s image, is inestimable.”

Ben became aware of his inestimable worth when he was ten years old. His Sunday School teacher told him how much Jesus loved him. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” so Ben believed!

He loves to share his faith and his perspective on Down syndrome.

A father’s death brings sadness at any age, and Ben was not immune to grief. Jane didn’t know, but he told people at Tom’s funeral, “I’m going to take care of Mom.” She gently relieved him of that responsibility as soon as she found out, but he delayed his grief so he could be strong for her. He even sang at the funeral.

Months later, though, the grief hit, and he admitted, “I wish Dad was still here.”

Two years ago, he told me the same. “I miss my dad,” he said. When recently asked about the loss, he said, “It’s painful. I do miss him. But I know he’s with our Father, and I look forward to seeing him again.”

Ben once sang for the funeral of another man with Down syndrome. The song was “God Makes No Mistakes,” (version by Kim Moore) and as you can imagine, there was not a dry eye in the crowd. Jane still tears up when she recalls it. But she agrees—God makes no mistakes.

“If we’d known on April 2, 1974, what we know now, my first response—instead of shock and fear—would have been, “Oh, thank you God; You gave us Ben!” // Next month we'll continue with more of her story...

ferree l

To learn more about widowhood, order a copy of Postcards from the Widows’ Path—Gleaning Hope and Purpose from the Book of Ruth. It’s a gentle, biblical guide for widows that has many saying, “This is the best I’ve ever read!” Mail a check for $14.99/copy (paperback, 248 pgs.), along with your address to: Ferree Hardy, 76 Grace Ave., Ticonderoga, NY 12883. Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery. Free shipping for all Plain Values readers!

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Hans' story in the back of an old Ausbund 50 PLAIN VALUES OCTOBER 2022

OUR HERITAGE

Reflections on the Martyrs HANS MEYLI

AFTER A BRIEF INTRODUCTION last month to “A True Report of the Brothers in Switzerland” (Wahrafftiger Bericht von den Brüdern in Schweitzerland), we begin with a story about the Meyli (Meylin) family in Switzerland.

In 1633, Anabaptist minister Hans Meyli and his wife Elsbeth lived in the town of Stallikon. In 1613, Meyli testified that he had been an Anabaptist for about four years.

Later, he was imprisoned at least four times, being accused of performing marriages and baptisms. According to the census list, his property was confiscated in 1640. In 1650, he was hiding in the Zurich highlands. Two years later, Hans Meyli died.

Hans’ son Martin Meyli collected stories for martyr theology covering thirty years.

These stories were first published in 1658. Martin’s stories helped Thieleman Van Braght compile the Martyrs Mirror.

COLUMN BY:

Elam Stoltzfus

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In Martin’s collection of stories, this contained many of his own family’s stories, along with the sufferings of Zurich Anabaptists in 1635 to 1645. In 1742, Meyli’s collection of stories became part of the first American edition of the Ausbund printed in Germantown by Christian Sauer. “A True Report of the Brothers in Switzerland” has appeared in every Ausbund edition since the first 1742 printing.

Here is the first story found on page 844 in the back section of the Ausbund: What the congregation in the jurisdiction of Knonau encountered and what took place and occurred there is as follows, first:

Hans Meyli HOW THEY DEALT WITH THIS MAN AND WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN In 1637, this elderly man was imprisoned and kept in bonds in the Council Hall [and] in the Oetenbach, in a deep prison cell for forty-three weeks. After this, he was freed without harm with others of his fellow brothers; nevertheless they have searched rigorously for him often since then, and he still has no secure place where he can stay. After this, the authorities sent out [officers], and began to persecute, to destroy, and to steal. Several times they have surrounded and searched through houses. Once they came with nearly thirty constables.

They surrounded our houses, searched through them, and secured them with guards and with weapons for

Detail from Jos Murer's woodcut (Zuric, 1576) depicting the Oetenbach cloister, which lay just inside the city walls.

By the 1630s, the city council had converted the complex into an orphanage, workhouse, and prison and used it to incarcerate scores of Anabaptist women and men who lived in the surrounding countryside.

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several days and nights. They searched through the houses with bared swords and weapons, hacked and butted through the doors, as soldiers and constables do, with frenzied ravings and malicious eating and drinking of our stores, yes, with gluttony, excessive drinking, wanton cursing, and blaspheming of God, with oaths, raving and storming, insolence and threats. They acted more wickedly and worse than the unreasoning animals, which are created to hunt and to kill.

In this uproar they captured elderly Hans Meyli's daughter-in-law (this woman had a child fourteen weeks old) and they bound her tightly and took her to Zurich. Here she lay captive for almost two years, in the Oetenbach cloister, and they treated her harshly in regard to food and drink. Afterwards, in 1641, on Friday before Easter, she was freed with others of her fellow believers with an uninjured conscience. Also imprisoned on May 3, 1639, in this same uproar were the before-named Hans Meyli's two sons, namely, Hans and Marty Meyli. Their imprisonment lasted for one year. They treated them very severely and crudely by what they gave them to eat and drink in their bonds and by threats and insolence. They stripped them twice and took their money while in prison, and [mistreated] them in many other ways. Twice they put them in irons, and this continued for twenty weeks, they also oppressed them harshly [by the compulsory work of] spinning and combing of silk, in order to make them give up. And yet they and others got out by the help and grace of God and with a clear conscience.

Additional Points of Interest...

Mennonites who were imprisoned in the horrible dungeons of Oetenbach; namely; Conrad Strickler, Jacob Gachnauer, Jacob Baumgarter, Peter Brubach (Brubaker), Hans Huber (Hoover), Felix Landis, (son of Hans Landis who was beheaded in 1614 due to his Mennonite religion), Hans Meyli, Ulrich Miller of Kiburg, Hans Rudolph Bauman (Bowman), and others, all well-known family names of pioneer settlers in Lancaster County, Pa., were all chained and stripped of their garments and dressed in long gray coats for mockery and reproach.

In 1710 after arriving in Pennsylvania, Hans Herr, John R. Bundely, Martin Meylin (Meyli), Martin Kendig, Jacob Miller, Hans Funk, Hans Graff, Martin Oberholtzer, Wendel Bowman, and others bought 10,000 acres of land on the south side of Pequea Creek. A warrant was issued for the land on October 10, 1710, and it was surveyed October 23, 1710.

In 1641 they imprisoned the above-named, elderly Hans Meyli's two daughters-in-law, and took them to Zurich to the Oetenbach. They were kept in custody with others of their fellow believers for a time, and afterwards were freed with many other brothers and sisters and came out with an uninjured conscience.

Barbara Meyli

1641

She was captured, placed into the Oetenbach at Zurich, and was imprisoned there for a time. Afterwards this sister again was freed from her bonds and with a good conscience got loose by the help and grace of God.

They took further action against us concerning our goods and possessions, namely, house and home, together with the farm, selling both land and chattels, and from this was realized 14,200 guilders. They took all of this into their own hands and also placed children and grandchildren among strangers and scattered them as poor and displaced orphans. They showed no mercy to those who were already going to the state church, and [certainly] not to those who surrendered themselves to the cross. After all this, when they had taken from us our houses and homes, we with our wives and children set out to find work away from our homes so that we would not be burdensome to anyone. Then we were betrayed by envious people [in the area] where we stayed, and the authorities harshly punished those who had housed and lodged us.

Afterwards the above-named Martin Meyli's wife was captured (though she was advanced in expecting a child) and was taken to the Council Hall in Zurich, and from the Council Hall to the Oetenbach. From the Oetenbach she was taken to the hospital, where she was chained, until she came into labor pains, and from there, through the help of God, she was freed with a peaceful conscience.

A sister was captured, afterwards taken to Zurich, and placed into the Oetenbach. She was kept prisoner there for a long time, but likewise was freed from her bonds with a good conscience.

Elizabeth Meyli

Next month will include several stories about the persecutions of the Müller family. //

C I TAT I O N S Ohio Amish Library, Songs of the Ausbund V.1 ed. Edward Kline. Sugarcreek OH: Carlisle Printing.

Ohio Amish Library, Documents of Brotherly Love - Dutch Mennonite Aid to Swiss Anabaptists Volume I. Willow Street Mennonite historical account.

Anabaptist Families from Canton Zurich to Lancaster County, 1633 to 1729,

by Jane Evans Best.

Ausbund das ist: etliche schöne Christliche Lieder, Verlag von den Amischen Gemeinden in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. www.wikipedia.org

Elam Stoltzfus currently serves as caretaker of the Nicholas Stoltzfus Homestead in (Berks County) Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. In 2018, he traveled to Germany to document the history of the Stoltzfus family— this research is documented in German Lutherans to Pennsylvania Amish: The Stoltzfus Family Story. To order a copy of this book, you can mail a $30 check to Elam Stoltzfus, 1700 Tulpehocken Road, Wyomissing, PA 19610.

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Bowhunting OF ALL THE WAYS TO HUNT, bowhunting embraces the true nature of the hunt. When you think about it, the hunter must get extremely close to the quarry to take a shot. The average bowhunter imposes a personal limit of 35 to 40 yards, though a few experts can shoot accurately twice that far. You can quickly see that in order to get that close, you must be able to sneak within range of an animal and have the skills to hit it with an arrow or have the patience to sit in a treestand or blind until an animal shows up. That says a lot.

Every bowhunter will tell you that practice means everything. That doesn’t suggest you shoot a few arrows in your yard or farm field every few days before the season opens. Instead, it means shooting as many arrows as you can every day. I know some archers who shoot at least 50 arrows daily after work, starting several weeks before the hunt.

The need for accuracy is obvious. Unlike a bullet, which can dispatch an animal when the projectile strikes within the vital area at long ranges, an arrow must be placed with much more precision. Most bowhunters aren’t satisfied until they can consistently hit a softball-sized target at 30 yards. The preferred target is always behind the front shoulder, allowing the arrow to pass through both lungs, which allows for a humane outcome.

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Then you have the actual “animal” factor. The quarry must present itself in such a manner that the arrow can strike the intended target. That means the animal must offer a broadside target with absolutely no brush, twigs, or branches of any kind between the hunter and hunted. If the arrow strikes even the smallest obstacle, it will most likely be deflected and veer off course, either missing the animal or worse—wounding it. This requires a great deal of patience. Not only must you have patience, but you must remain absolutely still while waiting for the animal to take just one more step into a spot where it’s clear sailing for the arrow.

That might mean holding your bowstring back at full draw with the arrow in its nocked position. Unless you’re using a compound or crossbow (more on that later), that might be a physical ordeal. Even if you have excellent upper body strength, holding that string back can be a mighty challenge. I’ve seen deer and elk stand quietly in a patch of brush for several minutes.

You also must have the self-control to pass on an iffy shot. A shot at an animal in a quartering position,

looking straight at you head-on, standing straight away from you, running, or lying in its bed is never recommended. If you don’t have the self-discipline to ignore a “maybe” shot, you might be sorry afterward.

Because of all the handicaps with bowhunting, especially in making that accurate shot, there’s been a great evolution in the world of archery. At first, we had homemade bows and arrows. These were the first serious weapons ever. You can make the case that rock-throwing, spears, and slingshots came first, but the bow and arrow was the early answer for dispatching animals. Today, many hunters indeed make their own bows and arrows. Technically they’re called longbows.

Then came new technology, largely due to legendary Fred Bear, who is commonly called the Father of Bowhunting. He was responsible for the recurve bow, made from mostly synthetic materials, which offered a new hunting opportunity for those not skilled enough to make their own bow and arrows. To use these early bows, you had to shoot “instinctively,”

"Because of all the handicaps with bowhunting, especially in making that accurate shot, there’s been a great evolution in the world of archery."

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which means you aimed by looking at the quarry and the arrow lying on your bow rest, determining yardage and arrow drop, and letting the arrow fly at a precise moment. This is where practice is so important.

Not long after the recurve bow came on the scene, another bow hit the market. It’s the compound bow that totally changed the world of archery. The device has pulleys and strings, which offers several advantages over the old system. Very importantly, it has a “let-off” feature that allows you to draw the bowstring back, and once it reaches a certain point, almost all the pressure is off.

Unlike the recurve, where you must grit your teeth and withstand aching muscles on a long wait for an animal to offer a shot, the compound can be held nicely at full draw for long periods of time. In addition, the compound bow has sights where you judge the yardage to the target, look through the appropriate pin on the sight, and let the arrow go. This is a huge advantage over instinctive shooting. Because an arrow offers a terrible trajectory in flight as compared to a bullet, you MUST know the range. If, for example, you judge the animal to be 24 yards away and it’s really 32 yards away, you might easily miss it. To solve that problem, new compound bows have rangefinders which eliminate the need to guess.

Many other bells and whistles are invented every year in a highly competitive market. One feature I like is the lighted nock which allows you to see the arrow in flight

as well as seeing the impact on the quarry. This allows you to determine that you indeed hit your target and to plan a recovery of the deceased animal according to the location of the hit. An arrow will often strike the animal, and you might not be positive of the hit. The lighted nock usually solves that problem.

Then there’s the crossbow which has been on the scene for a long time. It was used for centuries by warring countries just as the longbow was. The crossbow looks like a bow lying on a rifle stock. Like compound bows, the crossbow is also undergoing technological changes each year. They have an advantage over regular bows because they’re fired with the gun stock against your shoulder. As a result, accuracy is more easily achieved.

A big advantage to hunting with archery equipment is the ability to hunt when firearm seasons are not open. In other words, bowhunters have the woods to themselves. Less competition means quality hunting. But there are other advantages. Some bow seasons are held during periods when it’s easier to get close to animals. In the West, for example, archery elk

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seasons are typically held in September when elk are breeding and are vulnerable to calls, allowing you to draw one closer to your position. There are exceptions, but firearm seasons are rarely open during the elk rut.

There are also special bowhunting seasons open for deer. Every state is different.

State laws vary on the use of different types of bows. In some states, crossbows are forbidden during archery season and must be used only during firearm seasons. This is because of a perceived unfairness since crossbows are far easier to master. Many hunters believe crossbows are not in the same league as other bows. Some states allow crossbow hunters to be afield only if they have a disability where they cannot draw back a regular bow. Be sure to check state regulations before you head afield with any bow.

If you aren’t familiar with archery equipment and want to learn, the best way is to be mentored by a family member or friend. You’ll learn much by just listening, watching, and practice shooting. If you have no one to teach you, many communities have archery clubs as well as indoor and outdoor ranges.

In addition, sporting goods stores often have ranges inside the store.

There’s a problem in hunting with archery equipment. Once you’ve taken your first animal, you’ll never be the same. It’s an outstanding accomplishment to do so. Tying your tag to that animal means you’ve overcome many challenges. Technology has vastly improved the equipment, but you must still get close to the quarry. That’s the essence of bowhunting and why millions of Americans love pursuing animals with archery equipment. //

Jim has hunted all fifty states for deer, has fished in most states, has hunted elk in all the major western elk states, and has hunted on four continents. He worked for fifteen years as a forester, game warden, and wildlife biologist. Jim draws on these experiences for his monthly column “All Things Outdoors.” For more information, visit www.jimzumbo.com.

PHOTOS FROM OUR READERS We'd love to feature hunting, fishing, and other outdoor photos from our readers in Jim's column. If you'd like to contribute photos, please email them to: reachout@plainvalues.com

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