Faith Under Fire (eBook)

Dramatic Stories of Christian Courage

Matthew Archbold (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
176 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-335-6 (ISBN)

Faith Under Fire: Dramatic Stories of Christian Courage celebrates the lives of eighteen Christian men, women, and children who chose to do what they knew to be right, even if the rest of the world hated them for it. Read the fascinating behind-the-scenes true stories of Christians who made the headlines, including: Mother Antonia Brenner, Heather Mercer, Fr. Mychal Judge, Jill Stanek, Sister Laura Mainetti, Jack Phillips, Joe Kennedy, and George Isajiw. These behind-the-scenes stories of Christians who made courageous decisions in a moment of crisis, reveal the courage and inner strength of these individuals who chose life in Christ, even when it meant public ridicule, rejection, or death. This book is about decisions and consequences and the emotional journey in between and delivers a beautiful and much-needed message of hope. Each story concludes with questions that may be used for group discussion or personal reflection.

UNFORGETTABLE STORIES OF FORGIVENESS

CHAPTER ONE

Angels atop Schoolhouses

The West Nickel Mines Amish School

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

—John 15:13

In April of 2007, just days after a mass shooting had torn apart the lives of so many at Virginia Tech, a small group of Amish people from Nickle Mines, Pennsylvania, arrived carrying a wooden box containing a handmade comfort quilt to offer consolation to families, along with a framed history of the quilt and a painted picture of the West Nickle Mines schoolhouse. A letter accompanied the quilt, expressing that they had “felt the same emotions of disbelief, a sense of helplessness, anger, despair, and depression.”

The quilt itself contained phrases, such as “We are blessed” and “We are thankful,” to offer hope, understanding, and a reminder of God’s love.

Few could understand the pain of the families in the Virginia Tech community better than those who delivered the quilt. As they handed it to the administrators of the college, it was impossible not to think back to that day just months earlier when we first heard of Nickle Mines.

I can still remember hearing about the school shooting in Amish country in Pennsylvania in 2006. It happened not too far from my own home. I hugged my children a little tighter that night. I think many of us did. The country was shocked, but in the end, I think that what most of us remember about that dreadful incident is the amazing forgiveness from the families of the victims.

This isn’t a story about a terribly violent act but about an unbelievable act of sacrifice and an inspiring act of forgiveness. This isn’t a story that ends with a tragedy but with miracles. This is a story than ends with love and reaching out to others. This is a beautiful story that I wish never happened.

• • •

On a crisp clear autumn morning in October 2006, Charles Carl Roberts IV, a lean six-foot-two, thirty-two-year-old milk truck driver with buzzed brown hair, drove home from his early morning shift. He arrived early enough to walk his two children to the bus stop along with his wife. As his children climbed on the bus, he suddenly and desperately called them back off the bus. He knelt down, grabbed them, and held them tightly for a few moments. He whispered urgently to each of them, “Remember, Daddy loves you.”

Roberts returned home to an empty house and wrote confused and rambling suicide notes to his wife, who went to a meeting at their church. The notes detailed how he’d molested younger relatives many years before. He admitted to having urges to molest young girls now. He talked about losing faith and how he was angry at God for how his baby, Elise, died nine years before, just twenty minutes after being born prematurely. He apologized to his children for not being there to watch them grow up.

Roberts then climbed into the pickup truck he’d borrowed from his wife’s father and drove, occasionally passing the small horse-drawn buggies of the Amish who make their home on the green rolling hills dotted with Holstein cattle and weathered barns. He didn’t drive far on those thin country roads before passing the white pasture fence and then up about 150 feet to a small, cream-colored building.

It was the West Nickle Mines Amish School.

In the truck, Roberts had a 9 mm pistol (purchased three years before in a local gun shop), a shotgun, a rifle, a stun gun, two knives, smokeless powder, six hundred rounds of ammunition, and a five-gallon bucket filled with tools that included a hammer, a hacksaw, pliers, rolls of clear tape, eyebolts, lubricants, a hose, bullets, guns, binoculars, earplugs, flashlights, wood, candles, and a change of clothes. He’d planned well for an extended hell on earth for the little school.

Roberts walked into the schoolhouse unannounced during the German and spelling lessons wearing a baseball cap and holding a piece of metal in his hand. He asked the teacher, twenty-year-old Emma Mae Zook, if she’d seen another one like it nearby.

It was his mannerisms that disturbed Emma Mae. He stood too close to her. He spoke quietly and wouldn’t meet her eyes, instead looking down. She promised the strange man that she and the children would look out for it, and she felt relieved as he walked outside to his pickup truck.

But moments later, he came back with a shotgun. Emma Mae quickly made eye contact with her mother, who was visiting the school that day, and they immediately both ran out the nearby side door. Roberts saw his plan unraveling fast. He ordered a boy out the door, telling him to chase down the women and bring them back, or he would start shooting. The boy ran out, but Emma Mae didn’t stop running until she reached a nearby farmhouse to call the authorities. The boy didn’t return either.

Roberts, in a panic, then quickly began pulling down all the shades over the windows, getting ready for an assault he knew would be coming soon. As one of the shades snapped back up, he fumbled with it. That was when Emma Fisher heard a voice. An urgent whisper. “Now would be a good time to run,” said the voice.

And so, she did. She fled to the door, and she didn’t stop. She still doesn’t know who whispered those words to her. To this day Emma wonders why she heard the voice telling her to leave. She wonders why she survived. Her mother told reporters that she and the boys who left the schoolhouse struggle with that even now.

Some have suggested that it might have been an angel who whispered those words to her. But whoever it was, her decision to run that day probably saved her life. Her two older sisters, Marian, thirteen, and Barbie, eleven, were still in the room. They had another, more important job to do.

Roberts may have known the Fisher girls because he picked up milk at their family farm. Marian Fisher worked hard on the farm. She worked hard on her studies. She loved Jesus the way her family had taught her. She didn’t watch television, so she probably didn’t know that there were two school shootings earlier that week in other parts of the country.

Roberts now focused his plans. Looking at the group in the schoolhouse, Roberts announced to the older women, “You ladies can leave; those with the children.” His focus was squarely on the young girls.

He was talking to Emma Mae’s sister-in-law, Sarah, twenty-three, who had remained behind in the classroom. She had her two-year-old daughter and newborn son with her. Her sister, Lydia Mae, twenty-one, who was eight months pregnant, and her sixteen-year-old sister, Ruth Ann, had also stayed.

They all stood to leave. She looked out at the ten girls huddled together in the classroom. She can still recall one of the girls, seven-year-old Naomi Rose, looking up at her with fear in her eyes. In response, Lydia Mae could only put her hands together in prayer.

Naomi Rose had cried to stay home from school that morning, but her brothers had talked her into going.

Lydia Mae stood there staring at the little girl until Roberts screamed at her again to leave. She wasn’t sure what to do, but despite the evil intentions this man had brought with him, she said she sensed the presence of God in that little classroom.

The women walked outside. They couldn’t bring themselves to go far, though, and waited in the playground. They said they looked back at the school and saw an angel hovering above the schoolhouse.

As they stood there, the door opened once again. Roberts sent all the boys out. They ran out and gathered in a nearby meadow. They were all asking each other questions and figuring out what to do when they heard it. At first they didn’t understand what they were hearing. They heard pounding—savage and hurried pounding. With everyone but the little girls gone, Roberts was nailing barricades across the doors and windows. He was now alone with the ten girls.

Roberts arranged the girls, including Marian Fisher, her sister, and three teacher’s aides, in front of the blackboard and tied them up tightly together.

Because a call had been placed to police from a nearby farm by escaped teacher Emma Mae Zook just nine minutes before, State troopers arrived at the schoolhouse at 10:45 AM and set up a perimeter. The police quickly spoke to the adults and children who had escaped and gathered outside. The police learned quickly what they were up against, and they strategized and talked about communication options while some of the troopers readied ballistic shields, as they feared that rushing the building was the only way this was going to end.

Just before 11:00 AM, Roberts’s wife returned home. She’d come home from a prayer meeting and discovered his rambling suicide note. She tried desperately and repeatedly to reach him on his cell phone. Nothing. When she’d finally given up, her phone rang. It was her husband. He told her calmly, “I am not coming...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	19.1.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-335-8 / 1635823358
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-335-6 / 9781635823356

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