One Man’s Story

(Sam’s Story)

I was born in the mid-fifties to Amish Mennonite parents living in central Kansas.  The harsh realities of making a living on the windswept plains gave my community a distinct survival mentality kind of flavor.  My ancestors  migrated to the region sixty or seventy years before I was born and so the community, while not large at that time, had established some fairly deep roots.  It was in my lifetime that years of diligence finally created the needed momentum and the community began to thrive economically. 

My mother and father were both products of the the depression  and knew how to make pennies squeak!!  Mom was off the charts creative with her hands and could make anything out of nothing and I claim bragging rights to inheriting that creativity.  My Father was also an out of the box kind of a person who loved learning enough to attend a year of college  as a young Amish man.  He was a hard working no nonsense businessman who developed a thriving trash collection agency that is still alive and well today. 

The Amish moved into Reno County before the turn of the century and a rather concentrated population developed in the rural Hutchinson-Partridge area.  The one room schools gradually turned into a consolidated grade school of over a hundred students with many of them being Amish or Mennonite.  The plain people  are generally quite careful to keep their children out of the public school system but the gradual change along with a high concentration of Amish and Mennonite students gave a false sense of security and thus delayed the bailout.  My classmates were of the first students to spend the entire eight years at Elreka Grade School.  I suppose it was a bit of an oversight that I graduated from both a public grade school and a public high school. 

I was born at an exciting time when the world was changing and revival was sweeping through the plain people.  World War II shoved many young Amish men into the big world and the shock waves were still bouncing along.  A traveling Mennonite evangelist  brought tent meetings to central Kansas and created quite a stir.  Tobacco, alcohol and their companions as a lifestyle were shoved out the door! It was an enlightened age where serious personal and corporate Bible study were encouraged.  I learned to read about the time that the church services became English and the German language was no longer taught.  I memorized lots of scripture and attended two weeks of vacation bible school every summer for many years.

There were over fifty youth in my age group during my teen years and we met with peers from other states at annual meetings.  Travel was easy and life was good in the seventies.  I developed lots of friendships within the 10,000 member / 100 church conference  my local church belonged to.  All that to say, I had no shortage of friends, relatives and church brothers during those years. 

At twenty one I spent eighteen months three or four hundred miles away at a church sponsored facility.  It was during this time that I met my wife Brenda who traveled over eleven hundred miles from her home in Lancaster County, PA to work at a retirement home for the elderly.  It wasn’t quite love at first sight but we did get to know each other well enough that it “took”.  We got married several years later at the ripe old age of twenty four and lived in Brenda’s community for several years where I worked first as a school teacher and then as a orchard worker.

We had one toddler when we arrived back in Kansas in the early eighties where I worked for my father as a trash truck driver.  During that time I became restless and we ended up serving our church as missionaries  in Central America.  Those four years in Belize were both stretching and eye openers.  Concern for our growing family helped us decide to move back to America where we were once again part of a big church for the next fifteen years.  We looked for answers for ourselves and those around us during that time and then with great effort moved two hundred miles to southeast Kansas.  Five other families from the home church completed the church plant. We found the rural area around Oswego  a wonderful place to raise and homeschool the last of our seven children.  I worked as a handyman carpenter in the building codeless farming country of LaBette County.  It was a lovely lifestyle and I fell in love with the slow paced life of the sleepy midwest and the people that lived there .   

There was still something missing and so late summer 2012 we once again packed our bags, this time heading west.  Several of our children got to California ahead of us and long story short, we didn’t arrive there till about a year later—just in time to attend BSSM 2013-14.  Our stay in Johnstown, CO  included quiet times of thoughtfulness, tears and reflection.  Those cold winter months and relative solitude allowed opportunity for online training and research in the area of inner healing.

Redding, California is off the beaten path but home to a thriving church  that attracts world wide visitors.  It is in this setting that we find ourselves.  The church here is quite off the charts for a Beachy Amish Mennonite  who used to watch the bigger Christian world with a good bit of skepticism.

So there you have it…..the story of a man on a life long search for answers.  They say God rewards the hungry, in fact the Bible talks about those kind of people.  I guess you might say I’ve pushed the envelope a bit to get here.    Yes, my wife and I willingly gave up so much to travel those difficult and lonely miles to north central California.  Undoubtedly, there is much more than physical miles separating us from our previous circumstances.  Why did I bet the farm on such an elusive thing as spiritual freedom and inner healing? 

I have always wanted to help people and don’t remember a time when it wasn’t so.  Even as a child I took an intense interest in the weak, young and needy.  Over the years I have consistently reached for ministry opportunities only to see them slipping from my grasp time after time.  Those close to me assured me that I was making a difference but my perception of isolation and rejection remained unchanged.

Looking back it seems like there has been a supernatural force opposing my ministry efforts and warping my thought processes.  It is my studied opinion that I was born with a gifting, a calling, an anointing and/or a destiny that frightened the enemy of my soul into isolating me with the expectation that I would self-destruct through bitterness.  My perception of isolation and inner sense of urgency  reached such epic proportions that I ended up doing the unthinkable — leaving the land and people of my nativity.

How did I ever get to the place of taking such a gamble?? What was happening inside me that made me desperate enough to leave the safety of a culture I had lived in for almost sixty years??  Maybe a quick look into our hearts would be a way of understanding what happened.  Here’s the picture I get:  Each believer has a sliver of The Father’s heart within.  It might seem strange to think of it in this way but the heart God has given us can be identified by noticing where our passions lie.  What really makes me come alive?  It is the area of service or need that we see highlighted as we look at the world around us.  For me, my heart beats wildly for relationship and is so very focused on bringing healthy relationships to my world.  The seven children God sent into my home were not seen as projects but as living beings to be mentored in relationships with God, others and themselves. 

The legendary “Fiddler on the Roof” musical depicts my plight rather graphically.  The father of a very traditional Jewish family is forced to choose between relationship with his daughters OR support of the culture he grew up in.  Does he break relationship with his child or not?  In many ways, I am the father in that story!  I too was forced to choose between culture and relationship.  Gradually relationships became my GPS rather than what everyone else is doing.  Believe me, this didn’t happen all at once but over a long period of time I became more willing to step out.  Relationships became my trump card rather than the expectations of my culture.

A final contributing factor to the desperate leap we took has to do with my lack of inner peace.  Even in my tormented state, I somehow knew there was something wrong, something missing and there had to be more.  In my search for answers I had read lots of inner healing books and searched the world around but something inside me was still whacky. 

So there you have it…..an attempt to explain why a hard core Amish Mennonite got desperate enough to do the unthinkable.  I know this is probably a subjective view point but let’s just say we were looking for answers.

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The Perfect Storm

Our perfect storm hit Summer 2012.  The fateful decision was made mid-July.  It took us six weeks to close the Kansas chapter of our lives.  (Think garage sale, farewells, packing, sorting, saying good bye to people and things……)  We found ourselves in route to California by early October but eventually ended up spending that winter in Colorado.  This side trip ended in August 2013 when we again attempted moving west.  This time we were successful and landed in Redding.

Brenda and I attended Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry that fall (2013-14) and found answers!  The road was hard but the scenery was awesome.  Graduation (May 2014) found us in a difficult place financially.  I worked as a self-employed carpenter / handyman and we managed to keep our heads above the water as we regrouped.

Friends introduced us to friends and about a year after graduating from BSSM1 we had the chance to serve in Africa.  Here’s how that turned out……..

Mozambique 2015

Brenda and I served in hospitality and maintenance on a base in Mozambique the last half of 2015.  This five and a half month exploratory missions trip turned out quite differently than we had expected.  We hoped / expected / dreamed / planned on being there for a number of years and so went in as learners aiming for the long haul.  Accordingly, we left many of our security blankets behind in hopes that we would be forced to adapt and connect.  Guess what!?  It was HARD! 

We were not expecting or prepared for the hostile spiritual atmosphere present in that setting.  Believe me, technology does NOT work like it does in America.  It’s a whole different ball game over there.  I’m fairly handy at improvising and making things work (in America) but it is not the same in that part of Africa. The secular Western culture in me took quite a beating.

Those months in a strange environment without our familiar routines, surroundings, toys and transportation weren’t easy.  People in their sixties have developed coping mechanisms to make up for lack of youthful adaptability.  Life gets pretty raw and real when cushioning factors are removed.  One of the saving graces during this time was the long early morning walks that Brenda and I took.  That dirt road through the woods somehow pushed the internal reset button and we were able to go on.  A second life giving resource was the family that lived next door on our compound.  Morning after morning these gracious people kindly listened to my verbal processing and provided helpful input—in fact, they even seemed to appreciate the intense discussions! Somehow those walks in nature and talks with our neighbors helped defuse some serious internal distress. 

The needs in Mozambique are great and the task force small and so we had our hearts set on returning in the Spring.  However, those over us had serious reservations / misgivings about a long term commitment for us.  New cross cultural involvement for someone our age?  People in our stage of life in that harsh setting didn’t seem like a wise use of resources.  It was difficult to accept “No” for an answer.  In fact, it took us most of a year to get our feet back on the ground and our heads on straight.  I’m sure there were factors beside our Mozambique experience included in the emotions that surfaced during that era.

Friends let us live in their basement while we put ourselves back together again.  A number of months later we were able to rent a house and create a home base of our own.  It was also during this time that my father passed away and we said goodbye to the last of that generation.  So perhaps you will understand that it is with mixed feelings that we have made Northern California our long term home.

---Sam Nisly          Redding, California          July 17, 2017

Did you hear the forlorn tone in that final sentence?  We got back to California in time for Christmas 2015.  The section you just read is dated July 2017.  (It took me eighteen months to collect my wits enough to have words and language to describe what had just happened.)

September 2017

Four months later this happened……..  A small group of believers met semi-regularly at our home to discuss a Bible story.  These events usually concluded with everyone choosing a measureable step of action in response to the scripture passage.  That evening I had no choice but to “get off the bench”.  I declared that I would begin fund raising for a ministry trip to Mozambique.  My wife nearly fell off the couch!

The following document (written about four months after I got off the bench) illustrates the change in attitude--

“Getting off the Bench” (January 2018)

Here’s the deal:  Brenda and I are living here in Redding which seems to be a focal point for believers from all over the world.  We had hoped/expected to personally “go to all the world” but it hasn’t worked out that way.  Apparently we are to be leveraging /multiplying our efforts by mobilizing others?

It has taken me (especially) quite a while to come to peace with the concept of sending others rather than going ourselves.  We are still open to the idea of personally going but have decided to make the most of the situation we are in.

What does a Mobilizer look like?  I’ve looked around me and can’t find anyone that fits the shoes I’m trying to put on!  The hardest part has been the concept of empowerment—-I’ve been reaching for an organization to stand behind me and send me but it hasn’t happened.

I’ve been beating my head on the wall for the last year or two only to discover that He (God) has already empowered me and I don’t need the backing of an organization.  This has been my biggest breakthrough:  The realization that my words are powerful and I am anointed and I carry hope for everyone I meet!

Brenda and I have come to see small groups of believers meeting as “church”.  Accordingly, we have celebrated communion together on many occasions that we would not have done otherwise.  Another way this empowerment by Him has worked out for me—-I’ve felt much more free to declare “you are being sent out” in these small meetings.  (And those declarations carry a serious punch.)    Somehow it feels like believers networking informally is the wave of the future.  I suspect that followers of Jesus will be far more contagious when we began to model this mindset.

What I’ve just described (Empowerment is from Him, not an organization) is the basis, the foundation for the step Brenda and I are taking.  We have chosen to step out in faith as free lance mobilizers.

Probably the biggest hurdle in becoming free lance mobilizers has been “Identity”.  (Who are you and why should I be supporting you?)  After much pain, agony, blood, sweat and tears we’ve concluded that the best we can do is be ourselves! 

Branding—the process of creating a trademark that makes us unique—has been quite something to work through.  Early on I made an honest attempt to fly below the radar (Incognito on social media.) but have given that up for a bad idea.  Thank God, our conclusion is to “be authentically Sam and Brenda”. 

We’ve chosen Purveyors of Hope as a name to represent who we are on a core level.  This title / identity is something that the secular world and also the religious world abroad can appreciate and approve and swallow.  (Who doesn’t need more hope?)

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The main thing that happened internally last September is staring the tiger in the eye.  We have chosen to abandon the “vicitim mentality”.  Instead of waiting for someone to choose and empower us, we are moving in the empowerment that HE gives.

—Sam Nisly November 2018 Redding, California

Epilogue

Was that a rough and sudden landing? Did I crash the plane?

Maybe you’d like a look at the answers I found?

Have a peek here…… The Answers I Found….

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