Good Afternoon!
Just thought I would share a little about how GOD has worked in my life and how I am where I am today!
I was born in Washington Indiana on June 28 1971. I have 6 brothers and 3 sisters. My family is Amish.
When I was 1 year old we moved from Indiana to Milton, Iowa where I spent the next 19 years. My earliest memories are riding in a buggy in the cold with hot bricks at our feet to keep from freezing! I went to Amish Private School starting in 1st grade at 6 years old. My friend Mary Ann and I were the only ones in our grade. One of my earliest memories was our teacher Allan in 1st grade. I remember we got play a lot and color a lot of pictures! It was hard for me learn to read and I was ashamed to admit that I couldn't tell time, I don't remember what age I finally knew how to look at the clock and know what time it was!
We were in class with all 8 grades in a one room school house with a wood stove in the corner with our cheese sandwiches wrapped in foil on the stove top warming up to have something hot for lunch! We had shelves as we came in the school house where we'd drop off our lunch boxes, we got a new lunch box each year! We'd hang our coats on hooks in this same room along with black rubber boots we'd wear over our black school shoes.
One day we were in class and our teacher Allan went to answer a knock on the door, in the coat room. We heard scuffling and huffing, then in a little while teacher Allan came in, with scrapes on his nose and head, & a black eye; he told us we could all go home. So our older brothers hitched up the horse and buggy in the school barn and off we went!
I have fond memories of school, books weren't much fun for me but I loved my friends!
In Iowa it snows a lot and very cold in the wintertime. We always had a pair of ice skates, and being from a family of 10, each year as we grew we got to wear our older brothers and sisters skates! I remember one year it stayed cold so long and ice on the road ways we skated to school!
My dad had an ice house and the men would get together when it had been cold for several weeks and the pond was solid frozen. They'd have a push lawn mower type of machine powered by a gas motor with a blade that was attached horizontally on the machine. The men would take it to the pond and cut blocks of ice and put them in a sled drawn by horses and carry the to the ice house, a little shack they would layer ice, sawdust and brown paper feed sacks. This ice would be preserved for several months and the Amish families would use this to make yummy home made ice cream!
When I was 12 we moved to a new community I must have been depressed because I remember sleeping a lot & always tired! We caught a hamster like creature that year and kept it in the house for a long time, but it got away and that was the end of our pet!
We would do our laundry in a wringer washer, then hang it out on lines strung on posts close to the wash house. In the wintertime the laundry would freeze in the basket before we ever got it hung up!The small pieces of wash we'd hang up on a wooden dowel clothes rack in the house.
In the summers Mom would have a huge garden and we helped hoe the garden, gather the veggies and did a lot of canning. We would mow the grass with a push mower I guess this is one way you keep 10 kids busy!
We always had 100-200 new chickens each year and we dressed all our own meat so from a young age I knew how to cut up a chicken for frying, and how to cut up pork and beef. My family are hunters so we all learned how to shoot a gun and all of us would go deer hunting. I remember one year I was in a deer stand close to my dad and he shot a big buck. As the deer fell his antlers split in hundreds of little pieces! The deer meat was a treat for all of us!
When I was 17 we spent the winter in FLA for my dads health. This was a teenagers dream! Florida offered a lot of sin and being young and full of energy I fell in with bad company! My sister and I worked as waitresses in a restaurant and this gave us money for our wanderings!
Thankfully we only stayed there 6 months, then returned to our Amish community in Iowa. The Amish had church every other week, the in between Sunday was game day at my house. My older brothers and sister were married by this time, so I loved my little nieces and nephews coming over! We'd eat brunch around 10am then play games and eat snacks the rest of the day finishing out the day with popcorn in the evening!
When I was 20 we moved from Iowa to TN to a place where there was no Amish church. The neighbors invited us to go to Bible School at a missionary Baptist with them. At this time Franklin and I started dating & we were married in February 1992. Franklin had Joel who was 8 years old at the time and Sara who was 5. This was a big undertaking for a youngster of 20, GOD is able! We went to Glennville Baptist church and that same year Franklin rented a movie called A Thief in the Night. When I watched this movie I realized I would not go to Heaven if I died, so Franklin prayed with me to give my life to JESUS CHRIST. Joel also prayed that night to begin his walk with JESUS! This was life-changing for me. GOD is so good!
We served in our church where I taught Sunday School and helped with Bible School. Franklin was Sunday School director and we also helped out with the youth program. Our couples group started a Bible study led by dear friends Wanda and Bob Leslie. We really started being hungry for more of GOD and to follow after GOD and this Bible study helped us to learn how to read the Bible.
Mary Emma was born in Feb 1995 and James in Sept1998.
In 1998 when James was a small baby a missionary came to our church to share about missions in Africa. Franklin went to the altar to receive the mission call. We immediately started to seek ways to get involved short term as volunteers. We kept coming to a dead end and thought surely we had heard GOD wrong!
It wasn't until 1999 at the county fair in Calhoun, KY that Franklin met up with Danny a friend who he hadn't seen since high school. Danny invited Franklin to go on a mission trip of a lifetime to Haiti in January 2000. There Franklin met David and Judy Heady, who were from Owensboro KY, 15 miles from our home! This is how we learned about Global Outreach. We were accepted as missionaries with Global Outreach in May 2000 and January 2001 we came to the mission field for the very first time as a family to learn Spanish.
We moved to Belize for 3 years after language school, then in 2004 we were able to come back to Costa Rica full time with Global Outreach. We are in the process of developing Taller del Maestro Global Outreach Camp and Bible Training Center.
Thank you for your prayers and support of our ministry here in Costa Rica!
GOD is moving and we are excited about what this new year 2016 holds for this place!
JESUS BLESS YOU!
Franklin Evelyn Mary & James
