Freedom Can Be Found Anywhere | Escaping the Chains x Eli Yoder

Eli Yoder was raised Old Order Amish in one of the most strict communities, where life was defined by rules, control, and tradition.

At 18, he walked away from everything he knew in search of freedom—but what he found instead was addiction, brokenness, and a life that quickly spiraled.

In this episode, Eli shares his journey through pain, identity, and ultimately surrender.

This is a powerful story about what happens when you try to find freedom on your own—and what it looks like when you finally encounter God in a real way.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, lost, or searching for something more, this conversation will resonate deeply.

Follow & Connect:

https://www.youtube.com/@eliyoder491

https://www.instagram.com/eliyoder2024

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Then I used to serve the devil, now I uh kind of make him nervous. Well I grew up old order Amish in Ohio, born and raised Amish. Grandfather was the main bishop, my mom's dad. I gotta change. That's the I'm gonna have to go out and just splatter my beers. You know, I don't want to, but I feel this urge I need to go. If you even get one vote no, let's say you have an enemy, which everybody does.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 0:20

My dad had quite a few, so if it's one enemy don't like you, if he votes no, that one vote no now delays your shunning period for another two weeks, because we only go to church services in our own homes every two weeks. Because how I was thinking at 18 when I left. So I was like, okay, if I'm gonna go to hell, then I'm gonna go have fun to live how I want to live until I go to hell.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Hey, beautiful people. Welcome to Escaping the Chains Podcast. I am your host, John Humphreys. Wait till you see what we have in store for you today. We are excited to have Eli Yoder with us today. Brother Eli, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_04 0:55

Doing fantastic. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Tell us a little bit about yourself for those of us that don't know um your background or follow you on social media.

SPEAKER_04 1:04

Well, I grew up old order Amish in Ohio, born and raised Amish. Grandfather was the main bishop, my mom's dad. So I was expected to walk a fine line, you know, a lot of rules, a lot of legalism. And uh at age 18 I left the Amish to uh try to find purpose, trying to find peace. I just had enough of the power and control, so my dad's struggling with it, so I left at age 18, became a severe alcoholic after that because uh, well, I just couldn't find peace and purpose. I just kept struggling, but I thought that, well, I'd find happiness somewhere, you know, joy and happiness. But I hung around the ones that did all the the drugs and alcohol, and well, that also had an end. And I that's why I say, you know, having me on here just to share testimony on a Friday and Saturday night, I enjoy it more now because then I used to serve the devil. Now I uh kind of make him nervous. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Now we try to fight him. So so uh Eli is going to be speaking at our Friday night service that we do on Fridays, and you'll hear us talk about that from time to time. It's a service that we do here in Marion, and um, I think it is cool that we do it on Friday night because Friday night used to be um you were getting ready, you know what I mean? Getting ready to do something not holy. At least I wasn't. Yeah. Um when you say old or old old order Amish, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_04 2:21

Well, there's different levels of Amish, just like you would have denominational churches out here in the non-Amish world where you have, you know, Pentecostal, you got Catholic, you got Methodist, Nazarene, you got all these different denominations. The Amish are all different the same way. Most people from the outside looking in to have no idea that every Amish community has their own church ordinance with the rules. Uh baptized members agree and make an oath at baptism, which is 17 and 18 years old when you do that. And you swear and make an oath between God and the Amish church that you're gonna follow those rules in that church ordinance that you were born and raised in for the rest of your life. And we were one of the more conservative groups where you couldn't have bicycles, you which that's the reason I mentioned that is because that's what disqualified me for uh baptism in the Amish is I rode a bicycle. Most Amish allow bicycles, even e-bikes, you know, especially in Indiana, Homes County, Ohio. Well, so that I use that to kind of show people how they're all different. Some don't allow any power tools, some allow power tools for business use only, but not for personal use. So every Amish community is different with their own rules. So I would say our group that I'm from, we're only about a 1% that are that strict.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Really? Yeah. So you were the they were the stri they were strict amongst the strict. Yes. In our world, you know what I mean? It that it all seems kind of strict to us. I had seen um I had seen a video where you said your brother, you have a twin brother. Yes. And he left and went to uh a more liberal Amish community. Is that is that what happened?

SPEAKER_04 3:50

Yeah, my twin brother and then my younger brother, that's a couple years younger than I am, both relocated to Tennessee tomorrow. Like we call them New Order Amish because they're allowed to have like solar power. They can have a phone shack at the end of the driveway, which in our group you couldn't have any phone at all. Yeah, you have to go to the English neighbors, we call everybody else English, yeah. That is not Amish. So we would go borrow their phone, but you couldn't own it or have it on your property. So down there, they felt like they were having experiencing a lot of freedom.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:17

Because, hey, we can have power tools for construction, we can have a phone shack with solar power, and they had running water in their house. And the first time I went to visit them, I'm like, wait a minute, why did I leave the Amish? I mean, this is pretty cool because we were so strict. Yeah, and then he takes me in and shows me that that they have an actual shower, actual bathtub, indoor toilet in our community. You had to go to an outhouse. I'm like, wow, this is a huge difference compared to my old order group. So they clearly were experiencing a lot more freedom there when they relocated down there.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Um so is he still there? Yes. Um, so what's the relationship like with him? With you not um would it be practicing Amish? Is that what you would call it? Like the culture or whatever, with you with you not being in that. Um, are you guys still close? Do you get a talk? Can you hang out? Everything like that. So you're you're are you welcome to go there and visit and stuff?

SPEAKER_04 5:08

For for his community, we can show up and we do every year, sometimes twice a year. I take my wife and my son down there, and we just kind of become Amish for the weekend and we eat their food and stay there, and and they're very welcoming. You know, they're not a strict, you know, back home in the old order Amish mom said, Hey, you have to have Amish clothes on in order to come out and visit me. Yeah, and you've got to park your car next door and walk over. So with my twin brother where he's at, they're not that strict. So I can drive in there, leave my car parked there all weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, help him. I even plowed his garden last year, yeah, eat their food at the same table, and it's pretty cool because they're not near as strict and not they're not as controlling out there.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Controlling. Yeah. So let's get let's get into it because I I I want to unpack and hear your hear your whole testimony. I've um Zach, O T G Z Co kind of introduced us in it. So I I did a little bit of research, you know what I mean, watching your TikToks and things like that. But so let's talk about how did you get to a place like b before you left? Like what was life like and what was it that um what were the challenges? What were the things that you kind of missed? I can tell like in your t there there's things you still practice that you learn there. A lot of things I think we all should probably, especially for health purposes and food purposes and things like that.

SPEAKER_04 6:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

Um, but so just kind of let's just let's just walk through your story as uh you know, from childhood to where you made the decision like I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna take off and experience life outside of here.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

Yeah, it was clearly a lifestyle that I still admire. I mean, I think the whole world can learn from the Amish lifestyle, just they don't depend on government resources from from anybody else. You know, they're they're dependent on their own resources, living off the land. They grow their own foods, you know, gardening, canning. Uh, we can all of our own meats. Uh the lifestyle is not why I left.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

When you say you can the meats, I do I want to touch on this. Okay. So I saw a video and you said like you didn't sit down and have like steak and hamburger. Like when they canned the meat, what was that like actually?

SPEAKER_04 7:08

So the pressure cookers we used was just like the vegetables. You put them all in there with your water and your salt, your ingredients, and then you s you turn the lid on and put it in a pressure cooker, and there's no electric. You know, you don't plug it in, it's just on a wood-burning stove. So when we butchered a cow and a hog and the chickens, we put that meat in chunks right in there the same way as the vegetables and can it. So we I never even heard of steak.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

That's wild.

SPEAKER_04 7:33

I never heard of a hamburger. So when mom had us kids go down the basement and bring that meat up, we took the lid off, dumped it in a pan, and warmed it up. It's the chunks of the chicken or hamburger, you know, it's never the kind of meat you would see out here.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

And and what's the so what's the shelf life on that too? Because that kind of five, six years. Five, six years. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. That is that's so wild to me.

SPEAKER_04 7:54

By the way, I still do that today.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

Yeah, I've seen I've seen some videos. He's pulling out corn from like, you know, I mean, 2020. You know. Um, so and we'll get back into the story, but like with that, so what was it like when like the first time somebody put a steak or a burger in front of you? What were you thinking?

SPEAKER_04 8:11

Yeah, I it was new to me, so I didn't even really know how to eat it. I mean, it was delicious, obviously, but it was just new. Yeah, it was delicious. I love going to, you know, restaurants when I first left and experiencing that kind of food, but it was all different than what I was used to. So it was definitely something that in the Amish, especially old order where I'm from, yeah, we had taxi drivers that would stop by restaurants or fast food. So I I had a little bit of outside food here and there, but not to the level of steak or you know, uh, some of the foods that you would have out here as far as the the restaurants like Applebee's and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Yeah. All right, let's continue on the story now. I'm gonna I'm gonna stop you from time to time. Some of that, some of it fascinates me. I think just the shelf life alone, it's like, what? Right. You know what I mean? Because I've always wondered, like, how do people live in the 1800s? Like they they had it figured out better than we've got it figured out now.

SPEAKER_04 9:01

But yeah, I mean, as far as the the life lifestyle, you know, at a young age, clearly I thought obeying the church, you know, mom and dad got baptized. All of all of the elders, you know, my aunts, uncles, everybody at that age got baptized, and they followed the church rules. I saw them get shunned. Now, at a very young age, just because we were Amish doesn't mean we don't have the same issues. Like my dad, he would he abused us physically a lot. And so that sucked. And I always thought, I'm always wondered, are other kids being beaten? You know, I was told I was bad, you know, so I deserved it. So lots of times I couldn't sit for you know a week because I was beaten that bad. So sometimes I would wonder if other kids are also being disciplined that way. But I never viewed it as abuse. I saw mom get beat to a pulp a few times, but I just wanted to kind of bring that out as how from the outside looking in, people may view the Amish as, well, they got it all together, they're good Christians, they follow the Bible, but my dad had a lot of depression. He was an alcoholic, and I saw him not be able to follow the church rules a whole lot. So at a very young age, it was embarrassing to watch dad in church have to go sit separate because he was shunned. He couldn't eat with baptized members, and you're you're kind of So why was he was it because of the drinking or yeah okay. Yeah, he instead of helping him and say, Hey, how can we pray for you? you know, to help him through his depression and alcoholism, he got shunned for it. Which while looking back now, every time he got shunned, he it just added to his depression. He would just drink more. It didn't help him get delivered from it. So it spiraled out of control to where the Amish eventually would send him to a what call what's called an Amish counseling facility. But that's just Amish minded. You know, you gotta submit to the system, submit to the leaders, the bishop, and all of that. So they program you that way rather than true deliverance to help you from it. So when he came home from that, he was a bull, he was like a raging bull. It was even worse. So sometimes he would flip I would it sounds bad, it's my dad. If he came in the front door, I tried to go out the back door. Yeah. That's just the kind of mentality.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

So when you say shunned, I that's another thing I think sometimes on the outside, because I always thought shunned was like you were not allowed in, but so you could still operate in the community, you were just kind of pushed away. How does that work?

SPEAKER_04 11:15

He couldn't do any business during the shunning. So you can't take any money from a baptized member, you can't can't take any food from a baptized member, which means my mom. So when I was a little boy, I saw dad sitting in a corner, he had to prepare his own meal, he had to get his own silverware. Now, us kids could help him get giving that because we wasn't baptized yet. But he had to eat separately, and in church he had to eat separately. So he was always they they do this to make you feel shameful until you show remorse. If you show remorse, then they'll vote on your forgiveness, and then you're taken back as a church.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

So they vote on your forgiveness.

SPEAKER_04 11:51

If you even get one vote no, let's say you have an enemy, which everybody does.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:55

My dad had quite a few. So if it's one enemy that don't like you, if he votes no, that one vote no now delays your shunning period for another two weeks because we only go to church services in our own homes every two weeks, because the other district goes the in-between week. So now two more weeks is added just because one of your enemies said no, nope, I'm not voting yes, so he's gonna have to wait two more weeks. So my dad had go through all of that.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

So basically, you didn't have real any real interaction with somebody else that was baptized. Right.

SPEAKER_04 12:25

So there's no making money. So my you're you're kind of isolated because you're not you're you can't do anything, you can't do no business. Yeah, you can go out and plow your field, you can do your own work and it's done on the farm. You're free to do that. But you can't go to any of the community events, you can't participate in buying, selling, go into an auction. Uh, even a barn raising, you they can't touch the board you're gonna lift up to put a nail in it. So you can't even be part of the barn raising, and you just gotta stay home and you're just kind of isolated. So shunning is pretty brutal.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Yeah, it sounds like it would be mentally mentally tough, to be honest, you know. Because you can't leave, right? Like if you leave, then you got a whole other set of problems. So it's not like you could just take off and go hang out outside of the yeah, you know what I mean, the network.

SPEAKER_04 13:09

And then again, every community is different. Some of the new order Amish are not as strict on the shunning and how they practice shunning, but they all have a shunning phase that where they want you to feel shameful of what you've done if you broke any of the church rules. And drinking was clearly not okay in any Amish church. So they would always shun practice shunning if somebody was caught drinking alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

Yeah, I think that's something that we want to touch on too. Like, so we're talking about Eli's story, um, and we're talking about like the circumstances you were raised in. It's not a reflect not all of it's a reflection of a whole, you know, a whole entire people. It's just like with anything else. How how did how so so how did you get alcohol then? If if if if it wasn't really welcome in the community, how did they get how were they getting it?

SPEAKER_04 13:53

Did he make it himself or well mom couldn't make any more homemade wine for church, you know, communion reasons because my dad was an alcoholic. He used to get it that way.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

But so you have communion wine, I got you.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Yes. Now, every Amish family is known to do construction. So my dad did construction for non-Amish people, and that's how those are the ones that would hook him up with the alcohol. You know, go to the regular drive-thru, go to the gas station and get his uh Bud Light or Budweiser, whatever he liked, and he that's how he got his alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

Yeah, that makes sense. I was when I first got sober, I was house setting for my friend. I think I was staying in a motel and he uh Aaron Euler, my guy, and um he had me house sit for him. Well, while I was house setting, he had a pool and everything, but he had these huge um windows in a milksh uh maybe it's a milk barn, but the glass was so heavy he couldn't get a construction company to mess with it. So the Amish were working on it, and so the Amish were out there working on it while I'm house sitting. So, you know, I'm I'm off the streets maybe two months, you know what I mean? And our interactions were very interesting because two totally different worlds. I had no shame in anything, you know what I mean? And uh we had my so my friend Aaron was a sheriff's deputy, so he had a sheriff's deputy, uh he had a sheriff's car in the driveway. This family pulls up all crazy. So the Amish had the one guy that was driving them around and would use the phone and take care of stuff, and then they were working and they were their work ethics crazy. They were out there pulling something that construction companies didn't even want to mess with because that glass was so heavy and thick. So this family pulls up in the driveway, and the kid is fighting with the parents, and the kid is probably he was bigger than me, and he's in the back seat, he's swinging on everybody, and they pulled up in the driveway because they saw a uh deputy's, you know, a sheriff's deputy's car there, and the um, so everybody comes running out in the interaction. So a local cop pulls up, so you have me who's been sober for, you know what I mean, eight weeks at best. You've got the guy who is driving them around who's a totally different, you know what I mean? He's and then you've got them, and they're just like, you know what I mean, and then you've got the cop, and then you've got this family that's like, we can't do anything with this kid because he keeps swinging on us. And I was looking around and I called, I talked to Aaron later, and I was like, dude, you're never gonna believe like that you couldn't make this up for a Saturday night live skit, man. There was because there were, I mean, maybe there was five or six of them, and then you had the police officer. He had no idea, he rolled up and was probably like, What is going on here? Because I'm out there in sweats and my hat tilted, and then they got this kid swinging on people, and then you got the homage guys out there. But but what I like, what was interesting is they weren't like they weren't like afraid or anything. They were out there like, oh, what's going on? You know what I mean? Trying to get the story. So there's not really a point to that story, other than I always wondered what it was like for that that city cop to pull up to that scene and be like, dude, this isn't this can't be good. I don't know what's going on here. So, so um, so that so then uh so alcohol is something that can obviously be a problem in the Amish community, just like we have out here. Is there is is drugs or anything like that anything that's really heard of?

SPEAKER_04 17:08

Yeah, it happens in certain areas. We we heard the the stories of certain communities where they had those issues where you got some kind of outside influence to to even grow uh the marijuana plants. You know, there was a guy that got busted for that in our community, and uh so he had to, he obviously got shunned and he stopped doing it. But it happens, you know. We're we were humans just like any but any other culture we had issues.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

So yeah, this I think the shunning thing's interesting because I always wondered. I al I always, you know, you hear about that, and we have a way that we use it out here, like, oh, you know, you've been shunned, which is completely I guess I thought that Zach, I thought that's kind of what that was too, is like if you got shunned by the Amish community, you're out, but it's not really a lot of people thought that's a shunning word.

SPEAKER_04 17:44

Now Eli Yoder can never return. But shunning is just practice for baptized members that didn't obey all the rules.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

So if you were to return, if you're like one day you woke up and you're like, I'm gonna return, would they take you back?

SPEAKER_04 17:56

Depends on which community. For my community, it's an absolute no, because I've gotten tattoos and they believe that's an unforgivable sin. And another sin they believe is unforgivable is a divorce. So if anybody wanted to join the Amish in my group, you couldn't if you had any of those. But there's a lot of new order Amish where if I'd have left my sleeve down where they can't see my tattoos, then you can join them. So it just depends on which district.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Zach, we'd be screwed on the tattoos thing, Bob. So it can anybody jo what's if somebody was interested on the outside, would they be able to like join the Amish? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_04 18:27

Yeah, it it's really hard, obviously, but there was one individual that made it, and he he went over to uh southern Ohio and became a deacon, and he ended up with 17 children. He's the only one to this day that I remember successfully joining the Amish, had a large family, and even became a preacher and then a deacon later. So I've seen I'd say a dozen or more that tried it and then failed because the one was 44 years old, he joined the Old Order Amish in Maine, and as soon as he was baptized and they cut him off from having his English family visit, they they were gonna cut him off, and he said, Well, that's not love. You didn't tell me this before I joined you. So then he ended up leaving. He actually reached out on my TikTok and had me a line up a driver and picked him up and left.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Really? Yeah. Oh. Good stuff. So, so with your father, you're you're kind you kind of have this stuff going on. So I'm assuming in this community when it comes to like the the punishment, it's probably not something that do the kids get around and kind of talk about, like, hey, does your dad or is it something you just what's in your house stays in your house kind of thing?

SPEAKER_04 19:29

Yeah, they try to keep it that way. I mean, people do talk, I mean, everybody other kids saw my dad being shunned, so me and my siblings got bullied a lot in school. Uh oh, your dad's a drunk. And so that sucked. You know, you had bullies because of our dad being different. We didn't really know of any other Amish men that had such a drinking problem. At least they wouldn't being shunned for it. So dad was kind of the the black sheep in the community for that.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

Yeah. So as so as you're going through this, you get older, um like at what point were you kind of like, I don't know if this is the life this is the place that I want to be.

SPEAKER_04 20:02

I remember as early as 12 years old, I thought, I don't want to be here. I'd like to try the outside life, but a great fear grips your heart when you think that. Because since childhood, innocent young minded, you know, one and a half, two years old, you're taught that if you're not Amish, you can't get to heaven, you can't please God. So you have to be Amish. And so, therefore, when I had those thoughts of I want to change my lifestyle, this sucks. I want to leave. Oh, I can't do that because I can't, I'd go to hell.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:29

So that was my mindset at a very young age. And then even up into the teenage years when I was working with dad, where we started kind of having a better relationship, breaking rules with him, even drinking with him. Even then, I'm like, man, you know, he's living like that. Who cares if I left? I've heard of stories of other people leaving, so then my mind, my mindset kind of shifted to, well, others tried it. But then again, in church, some of the ones that tried it and maybe got killed in an accident, the preachers would use that as a sermon. And it was like fear gripping you, like God killed that person in a car accident because they left and broke away from the promise, the oath they made at baptism. So then that would really strike you with fear, like, oh man, I don't want to get killed in a car crash.

SPEAKER_02 21:11

On a smaller scale, like there's churches, you know, the westernized church, uh, there's some of them that will do like, oh, this person left our church, and you know, now they work at Burger King. Like they have these things that they do to where it's like, oh, if I leave, and it's probably not as intense because, like, you know, you can kind of come and go from church, you know, it wasn't raised, but um, I think it's a tactic that you see a lot of people that want control, even if it's unintentional, you know, but they want control, so it's like, oh, if you leave here, you're never gonna be as close to God. You know, you'll you'll never um your kids aren't safe if you leave here, you know, like your whole everything will just be a disaster in your life if you walk away from this.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

Yeah, it's a fear tactic that the enemy will use to try to control you. So, for example, this sounds bad. But this is how I was thinking at 18 when I left. So I was like, okay, if I'm gonna go to hell, then I'm gonna go have fun and live how I want to live until I go to hell. That was my mindset at age 18 when I finally left.

SPEAKER_02 22:12

Yeah. So now you're working with your dad? Is it construction? Yeah. Okay, because I had seen on the I had seen on one of your videos you said you did some farming too. Like, so is there do you do all do all of it, or is there teams of like construction? These guys do the construction, these guys do the do the farming, or is it all everybody does everything?

SPEAKER_04 22:30

Yeah, at the breakfast table in the mornings, we got our assignment for the day. I was usually the plowboy at a young age. But when I got up in the upper teenage years just before leaving the Amish, Dad always chose me to go work with him because I was the only one that wouldn't tell on dad. Most of my brothers had this guilty conscience of God's gonna do something bad to me if I don't tell mom that dad was drinking again or whatever the stuff dad was doing. But for example, I went with dad one time and it's it's lunchtime, and he's sitting all the way over by himself and he has this thing over his head, and I'm like, what is he doing? He gave me my lunchbox, so I'm eating and I'm curious, and I snug up behind him, and he has this cassette player, and he has these these earmuffs on, and then I look at this little album he has with this disc, he's jamming out the Dolly Parton. I'm like, okay, he's definitely going to hell because I was still younger, you know. I'm like, oh man, God can't be happy with him listening to Dolly Parton. But I saw dad starting to have fun, like he was listening to stuff like that, worldly music, and I'm like, man, I want to do that too. But then I didn't tell on dad, so dad started thinking, realizing, hey, every time I take Eli with me, he doesn't let the cat out of the bag, he keeps the secret. So then he that's why he sometimes said, Eli's not going to the fields today. He's gonna go help me today. Yeah, but he didn't have any other Amish crew helping him because of his drinking, he didn't want to get busted, so it was always just me and him doing little jobs like a deck or a porch, yeah, you know, roofing. We did a lot of roofing, you know, barn siding, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

The Amish are crazy on a roof. I've seen him up there in the snow on a on a straight slant. Just it's like, how are they doing that?

SPEAKER_04 24:07

You know what I mean? There's some of the I don't know any other culture that has a work ethic like they do.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Oh, it's wild. Icy snow and just walking around on, like, you know what I mean? Like I'm walking around on I'm it I'm in more danger walking on a sidewalk in the snow of falling than them up on a roof where you know I mean, if one slip and you're you're done. You're going for a ride first. So so so he was experimenting. Um, I guess that's what you call it. It seems like he had learned some things that he liked outside of the culture. And um, so it sounds like were you guys getting so were you getting closer to, or you know, was it like working with him and stuff? Like, did your bond get better?

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Yeah, there was good days and there's bad days. If he was having a bad day, you didn't want to be around him.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:50

But the good days, I try to hang on to those good memories because he would do some some wild stuff. For example, he told me one day, we we even had our lunch packed. He goes, The uh English people that we're working for are not home. Let's go watch television. So we went and watched television. And that's the day I realized my dad has a lot of experience flipping through channels. Like he had this thing figured out. He goes to a sports channel where they were doing the dirt bikes, you know, all the little hills, and then you get down and you turn and come back. And then he looks at me and says, When you were on the roof today, did you see that dirt bike down in there? I'm like, Well, yeah, but what are you getting at here? And then he says, We're gonna go try to do exactly what we're seeing on that TV. So he goes out there and it has dust on it, and he tries to fire this thing up. It wouldn't start for 20 minutes. I'm like, Oh, this is God saving them. You know, but then my dad gets it fired up, and oh my goodness, my daddy takes off with this thing, and there was no brake lights. He saw a dip in the field, and he was full blast going at this thing, and he went airborne, and then my dad separates from this dirt bike, his hat flew off, his beard sticking behind his neck, and he goes down below, and I'm running because I see dad separate from the dirt bike, I'm running full speed to him, and during that running to get to him to where I can see down below the hill, I'm thinking, how am I gonna explain this to the Amish church and my family? And then I clear the hill, and my dad is down below with his hands up, going, Yeah, that was awesome. And you know, he was drunk, obviously, he was drinking, and uh it didn't hurt him. And I say, Hey, how about the dirt bike? My dad goes, Ah, we'll work for free, we'll work that off. But that's just who he was. He he loved having fun, so I I just I I had some fun, happy moments with him. Even going to a uh, he called it a worldly restaurant in Mount Victory, Ohio. There was a restaurant, and he says, Hey, uh, today we're not gonna eat our lunch mom pack. We're gonna go ahead and just go to the worldly restaurant and I'm gonna introduce you to shrimp. I'm like, What is shrimp? And that's what he did. I got me a big old plate of shrimp, and everything's tasting really good. He's he's one bud light after another, and then these pilots, there's a little airstrip behind the restaurant. So these little Cessna's come flying in, the pilots come in, they're sitting next to us, and they were kind of you know eyeballing us, you know, Amish people sitting there. They thought that was pretty cool. My dad gets real talkative when he's drinking. So he strikes up a conversation. I'm still just enjoying my shrimp, and and all at once dad says, Hey, uh, us Amish people have never had an airplane ride. Like, oh no. Of course, what does the one pilot respond with? It would be an honor to take an Amish guy on an airplane ride. So here we go. I'm I'm like satisfied with this worldly shrimp, and all at once I feel like the shrimp's not about to come up. I was about to barf. I'm like, God's gonna strike us dead if I go on an airplane, right? And so here we go, and we go in the airplane, and I can't hear a thing dad is saying up there because these little sessions are really loud. Yeah, but then all at once, as the plane turns sideways, I'm leaning on the glass, terrified, thought I was gonna die. I notice something that looks really familiar. It's our Amish farm. Dad told the pilot to fly above the farm, and we're looking down, and out of nowhere, here comes my younger brother out of the barn between the house and the bar, and he's waving at us. He has no clue that his brother and his daddy are in that airplane. So some of those wild stories like that, I'll never forget. But look who my dad was. Like, I thought he'd go to hell for this stuff, and I knew that if the church found out, dad is in big trouble. But I still to this day, the church has no idea about the airplane because I never told anybody.

SPEAKER_02 28:34

And if they find out, it means they're breaking the rules because they're not supposed to be watching this anyway, right? That's right. So so you're starting, so you're getting good memories, though. You know what I mean? Like it's happening. So um, and so your mom, was she still pretty strict and just like, did he frustrate her? Like, what was that like?

SPEAKER_04 28:55

That was a lot of arguments because she knew he was doing things he shouldn't have been, and she questioned me in depth when I got home. Hey, what all was dad doing? And I'd just be tight-lipped. I'm like, no, nope, I ain't saying nothing. Never once did I see mom shunned. Not once. She see her daddy was the bishop, my grandfather. So she walked a fine line. She was obedient to the church, all the rules, but dad was the opposite. Like, they were so night and day difference. I often wondered, like, how how did they even get together? I mean, what made him the only thing I figure out is because my grandfather started this community in 1951, and he wanted to preserve what he started with those rules. So he he made a rule that you can't go to any other Amish community to date. So my dad had limited options, obviously. Yeah. So that's the only thing.

SPEAKER_02 29:39

How does that work in the old order? Does the does the young man decide who he wants to marry? Do is there a lot of family influence? Like, how does that work?

SPEAKER_04 29:46

Yeah, you gotta stay within your community. You can choose whoever you want, even first cousins in my group. You can marry your first cousin, second cousin, you just can't go to the new order Amish and get the worldly Amish that have more that allow more worldly things like power tools or battery tools. So the the women have tinier caps in some of the new order Amish. We were strictly forbidden to date any girl in the New Order Amish because of that.

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Oh, I see. So there was obviously then friction with that with the two different personalities. Um so so you've been working with him. At what point do you make the decision, like, okay, I'm leaving? And and was it like, and how long did it take you to like come actually whether I don't know if you packed your bags, but like if you packed, like how long did it take thinking about like really committing to it and then actually going?

SPEAKER_04 30:33

Yeah, it took a long time to plan that out because I wanted to leave when I was 16 and I thought I was going to, but the person that I approached and asked was working at the pallet shop next door to our farm, and he he broke the news to me, I can't help you while you're 16. You gotta be 18. But when you're 18, get back with me.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:51

So I had to hang in there until I was 18, but I knew that I had been through enough. I'm ready to escape all of it, I'm ready to start over fresh, start a new life. And so he he stayed to his word. As it approached closer to 18 years of age, I told him that I'm serious, I'm gonna leave because the baptism classes lasted eight weeks. So it's every other Sunday, so it's a total of 16, 16 weeks. And I could not keep the rules the way the way the rest of my age group did. You know, I got in trouble for just leaving the top button on my collar open. That was too worldly because it shows more of a lay-down collar.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:27

And I even had my cousin in another community make me a shirt with a three-inch cuff at the end of the shirt, and ours is only an inch and a half. So I'm breaking dress coat rules, and then the the final icing on the cake was me riding a bicycle. I grabbed it off the English neighbor's trash pile, and I was really wanting to know what it's like to ride a bicycle. I know of other Amish to have bikes, I want one too. And then when I questioned the church about the other Amish going to heaven with bikes, and but we can't, that was the greater sin to question the church. See what I mean? Yeah, you're not allowed to question your authority, the bishop and the elders. And so at that point they announced to me that I disqualified for baptism. And I was just turning 18, and that's when I said, that's it. So if I'm leaving now.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

You disqualifying, does that mean just for that class, or does that mean so so that means you would have had to wait longer to get They only do it in the fall. So I would have had to wait a whole year, which is humiliating to wait with the next group because I'm older than the Because you all grew up together too, so everybody obviously knows like you kind of got Amish held back, I guess, is what that is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:31

And the reason it was hum humiliating for me is because nobody had ever disqualified for Amish baptism in my community. So I'm the first guy disqualifying. And I'm like, yeah, I'm out now. I'm this is this is too embarrassing. I'm just gonna leave. So that's when I got a hold of my buddy. I said, hey, I'm definitely leaving now, and I proved to him, you know, I'm gonna be 18, so he picked me up.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

Did you talk to your parents about it? No. Before you left?

SPEAKER_04 32:51

No, my community, like I say, we're like a 1% with strict conservatism. And we don't have the roomspringer, like you see in television shows portraying the Amish as having a season of running around roomspringer, selling wild oats, experiencing the party life and driving a car. We didn't get that opportunity. So you have to plan your escape in secret. If they find out you're having thoughts of leaving, they'll ship you off to another state in another community where they call it like the Amish counseling facilities, and they'll break you down until you submit to the church. So I was fearful of that, so I kept it top secret. I didn't even tell my own twin brother.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:27

So I had to keep it all secret until I was ready to leave.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

So how'd you get out?

SPEAKER_04 33:31

The neighbor helps, but like what was the Well, I had to wait till Sunday morning because I was in a youth group. So the youth group leaves last. So mom and dad, the younger siblings, all went to church. Now it's just me and my twin brother. So now I don't have to worry about them. I just gotta worry about my twin brother, which is a lot easier. So I had my uh buddy lined up to meet me there at nine o'clock. So I looked at my twin brother and I said, Hey, I'm not feeling good. Well, you go to church no matter if you're sick. I don't care if you're throwing up. You there you just don't skip church. And he goes, Wait a minute. You're gonna leave the Amish, ain't you? See, twins got bond.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:04

They got a we had a great bond, and I said, Yep, you're right. What are you gonna do, stop me? I said, You should leave too. Come on. Well, he had a girlfriend. I knew he ain't gonna leave. He's got an oldest girlfriend, you know. So he he said, Well, I kind of suspect that you've been acting a little different. I'm like, Well, as long as you're not gonna stop me. So he went on to church, and my driver pulled up next door in a pallet shop and off.

SPEAKER_02 34:22

Did he never say anything about it?

SPEAKER_04 34:24

My my brother?

SPEAKER_02 34:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Well, he did, once he went to the new order, Amish, where he's at now.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

But at the time he didn't he didn't run off and tell them or anything.

unknown 34:31

Nope.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

Well, he clearly, they clearly discovered it when he came to church by himself. Eli ate with yeah. They knew then that something was up.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

So what was that like? So you just take off and you have this whole world and all these things you've been taught, and now you're surrounded, you know, you're surrounded by everything. What was that like?

SPEAKER_04 34:52

It was a culture shock. And actually, to be honest with you, it was enough of a culture shock that I thought I'd probably end up coming back because it was so anxiety just going into town. There's people everywhere, there's cars everywhere. I go into the store and there's you know, we might have gone to the store twice in the entire year just to get salt and ingredients and flour and mason jars to can. Other than that, we didn't, but when I went, when I left the Amish and now in the city with my buddy, I'm like, man, I don't know if I can do this.

SPEAKER_02 35:18

What town were you in?

SPEAKER_04 35:19

Kenton, Ohio.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Kenton, Ohio?

SPEAKER_04 35:21

Yeah. Small town, you know, barely 2,000 people, but it was overwhelming for me.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:27

But the the biggest shock was so I wanted a car. I want to know what it's like to drive. My buddy told me, he said, uh, you gotta wait. Just be patient. I know you use your cash, you saved, and you bought this car, but you're gonna have to wait until I help you learn how to drive, and then we gotta get tags, we gotta get insurance, you gotta get your license. Well, I couldn't even get my license because my group doesn't allow social security numbers. So now they're telling me I gotta go get a birth certificate and an ID in order to apply for a social security number. But then when I went to get a birth certificate, they said, Well, you've got to have an ID and a social security number. You've got to prove who you are. And I'm like, So this took nine months for me to get all this worked out. I ended up using my Amish school report card, which was issued by the state of Ohio. They report all that back to Ohio. And so I had to use that to prove that I was born and raised Amish before I could get the ball rolling. But in the meantime, I'm getting impatient. This is my car. And the Amish, if you own a buggy, you're gonna hop on it and you're gonna go. So that's what I did. My buddy was gone on a Saturday. I hop in the car, it's automatic. I'll just put it in drive, and I'm driving. Oh man, I thought I was cool. I turned that music up, I'm jamming out to Spice Girls. Tell me what you want, what you really, really want. And then I go around this buggy, and I realize it's my crush from school. Her name was Edna. And I'm like, she's gotta see who this is. I want her to see my freedom. So I made sure I was waving and I was so distracted, I drove that car right off the curve, rolled that car, totaled it. When it came to a stop, it was still the Spice Girls were still asking me in the song, tell me what you want, what you really, really want. I'm like, I don't want this now.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:11

So I learned the hard way. I realized that if I want to make it out here, I'm gonna have to listen to my buddy that you know wanted to help me out. I can't just because I don't have Amish rules, yeah, don't mean I don't have, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

We got a set of rules out here. The government for sure does. Did Edna see you?

SPEAKER_04 37:28

Oh, she saw me, but she also saw me once I rolled.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

So she was definitely staying. Yeah, I'm not staying in the first order.

SPEAKER_04 37:35

Well, I was convinced at that point Edna probably thought, well, God's punishing him. I'm not leaving the Amish.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Yeah, she's done, she was done for. She ain't never leaving, she won't even go to the store again after seeing that. Did you so what was communication like with your family after you left?

SPEAKER_04 37:48

I didn't go back for many years because I knew that they were heartbroken. I knew my mom, you know, she was bawling. My brother even told me she was bawling for days.

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:56

Because she believed that, you know, I just gave myself over to the devil.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

In her world, you basically just entered hell, like basically, right? Yeah. What was it like? So so you said years. What was it like? Who was the first person you got a hold of? Um who was the first family member that you got a hold of after you left?

SPEAKER_04 38:16

He actually got a hold of me and it was my dad. I got a job at the pallet shop right next door because my buddy worked there, and the boss told him to let me know that he'll give me a job. So I go in the next day. He took me, of course, to get a haircut, and I was a whole I that was uncomfortable because peeling that hair off, and now I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and I walk in to start working, and here comes my dad. I mean, my heart sunk because I had a diary where I wrote all of my pain. You know, you don't talk to nobody about that. Shows weakness of a man cry. So you don't talk about my pain I was going through, but I wrote it all in that diary, and I forgot the diary. My dad comes down and I see that diary in his hand, and I'm like, Oh, it broke my heart because I'm like, now he read everything I said about him. I mean, I cussed him out in there when the days when he was the worst and beat me physically. So he comes down, and I've never seen my dad cry. He looks at me and he has just a river of tears flowing down his chin, and through those choked-up tears, he says, Now I know why you left the Amish. And he held that diary up. And I snatched that diary out of his hand, turned around, and I threw it in the dumpster. I didn't want to see him hurt like that. But that showed me something. Oh my goodness. My dad loves me. And out of nowhere, when I threw it in the dumpster, my dad comes up there, gave me the biggest. I've never had dad hug. Amish don't show compassion, you know, like that. They're not affectionate people. And so he comes up and gave me the biggest, tightest hug, and he's bawling, he says, I love you, and that's where our relationship started. Secretly, we were starting to meet up, we even drank together after without the church and the family knowing that.

SPEAKER_02 39:46

So you started to build a relationship with him after you left. Yeah. So what was that like? And I mean, obviously, he already he had to have thought before that he wanted to leave. Yeah. With with the lifestyle, you know, with the thing, the decisions it seems like he was making. Like it seemed I'm I'm sure the thought had crossed his mind. So I was so how did he respond to you actually getting out? Was it kind of like I'm happy you got out?

SPEAKER_04 40:10

Right. Yeah, he he realized I realized pretty quickly that dad was actually happy for me. So when he came to my house, which I had just met my wife, we were dating at that time, and he'd come to our house and he was just letting loose. He'd pour out his his heart, how he was feeling, he was cussing the bishop and all the stuff that's going on. I'm just so sick of it. And then he said, uh, I'm gonna leave the Amish. He said that before, and I didn't take him serious, you know.

SPEAKER_03 40:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 40:33

So I left in 98 when I turned 18. So I saw my dad here and there get a hold of me with the pallet shop phone number, and I'd go pick him up late in the evenings. That happened for the next five years from 98 to 2003. And then he said something one day. He had a back, he was uh in a barn raising and hurt his back, so he's home from church. I mean, he's hurt pretty bad. He said, Eli, I'm not just saying it. I'm gonna join you. Can I live with you? I said, Well, yeah, you can live with me, of course. And so he gave me a date and a time on a Sunday morning when everybody goes to church. Now I realize he's not just saying it, he set the date and time himself. And so it was uh it was on a Sunday morning, June 17, 2003. I remember the day very well because I was well well prepared. I was going to I was going to uh have my dad and have a relationship with him. I'm excited, right? But on Saturday, we're planning all of this, and me and my wife are talking about it. We're like, we're we need a bigger vehicle. We could just we don't just have enough room with this little car. Let's go ahead and go to the dealership and see if we can get a bigger SUV so we can pick up dad's stuff. And we're there, the deal ain't made yet, and we're still trying to get a loan, my first loan, and I get a phone call from my Amish twin brother Levi Yoder in Tennessee where he lived, because he got a phone check. He said, You ain't gonna believe this. And I said, What? He said, Dad just committed suicide. That hit me like you wouldn't believe. I blamed myself for many years because did I not gain his trust? Did I not say something right? What made see my brother when he told me this bad news, nobody knew that I was about to pick my dad and leave the Amish. Now I know he loved all of my other siblings. There's ten of us, there's two sets of twins in my family. I'm the only one that's left the Amish. Why would he just choose me? But I I was struggling with why. So now that is that is the moment when I went into really deep alcoholism. It I just about destroyed my life. I had DUI, I had I ended up in jail. I mean, I was a mess. And I I was literally really, really, really close to uh joining him at one point. I was that depressed for why he did what he did. I used to lean on his tombstone in the Amish cemetery and just I'd drink a case and dump another case down into the ground and just drink with him, talk with him. So that's that was my lowest point in my life is when he did that.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

How did your were you talking with your mom at all at that time?

SPEAKER_04 43:06

Not much. I it was hurt, it was too painful. I didn't want to talk about it, so I stayed away for a while.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

Yeah. So how did how does the Amish community handle that?

SPEAKER_04 43:14

So because he was the first one to die that way in our community, which my grandfather, the bishop, obviously made all the you know, my mom had to obey that. So they buried him, they were gonna bury him outside in a field, no marking. He said that's what we must do. Because they're God's church. So they view themselves as God's church, so they're gonna do the judging for God, right? So since they didn't have time to vote to forgive him, then they condemn him. And they read an excommunication letter over his grave and buried him separately in a corner. Now I like that my oldest brother and my mom fought back a little bit. They disagreed to put him outside the cemetery, but then they came back and said, Well, we need we'll can bury him him inside the Amish cemetery, but in the opposite corner and put a fence around him. So they agreed to that. One thing they forgot. I don't fear the church. You can't shun me. That fence they put around him, I had a little party in the Amherst Cemetery, and I destroyed that fence. Then they put another one in with metal posts even deeper, and I had another party and destroyed that fence. So I was fighting the church for a long time there, but he's still by himself. Uh no fence around him, but he's in the opposite corner there. And now they bought, I was out recently and they bought a couple more acres so that they can go out the other side because the cemetery is filling up and coming towards my dad, so they're gonna stop and they're gonna go to the other side, the new section to bury because they don't want to get near him. They they condemned him.

SPEAKER_02 44:41

How long did it take before you did talk to your mom?

SPEAKER_04 44:45

After the after that five years after the whole thing happened, I went out, put my Amish clothes on, parked my car next door, and I showed up and I I just talking, didn't want to bring it up. I was watching to see if she'll bring it up, but then she finally did, and I was shocked what she told me. Now I wasn't saved yet at that time. I didn't I was not a believer. I ran from God, I didn't care about Christianity. But one thing that meant a lot to me later on when I got saved, but I was happy to hear it at the time though. She said this when we heard the gunshot behind the barn, we didn't know where it came from. It's not unusual for one of my brothers to be out there hunting, you know, target practice or whatever. So they didn't really pay much attention because my dad was out there for a while by himself, over an hour. When my youngest brother found him, he was on his knees praying, and I'm not going to go into details what all he looked like, but one thing that stands out to me, my mom said, then he came screaming to the house, mom follows him out there. They see dad on his knees down there with the injury, and he is praying the Lord's Prayer in German, and he's asking God for forgiveness for all the sins that he had done, including the one he had just committed with his self-injury. That I needed to hear. Because I realized he was confessing that sin to the Lord, and it didn't matter. Once I got saved and understand the plan of salvation, I realized just like the thief on the cross was saved the last minute, that's what God did the last minute with my dad. So what the church done means nothing now to me. Because God saved my daddy Henry Yoder at the last minute. Because he was still alive. God gave that, and what he showed me later as I was praying into it, I believe the Lord showed me that that was a testimony. God allowed it to play out that way. It was a testimony to the Amish church, and it went right over their head.

SPEAKER_02 46:42

Yeah. Because there was so there gosh. It's both things, kinda. It's both and you know what I mean? Like they they put judgment on him, but at the same time, what they the there are good things that they had taught him for him to be in a position with when you've got a couple moments left, that's where you go. I mean, that kind of shows his heart, too, even with all of the mess and the mistakes and all of the rebellion and everything like that, for him to that's where you go to. You know what I mean? Is it is kind of a testimony to a lot of the things he was taught.

SPEAKER_04 47:17

Yeah, and then later, of course, you know, I was I was out at the funeral, had my Amish clothes on.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

So you were allowed to go to the funeral?

SPEAKER_04 47:24

Only if I wear Amish clothes. Okay. And then I I was even allowed, since I dressed up in my Amish clothes, I was allowed to stay on the buggy and even hold one of my brothers on the way to the graveyard. So that was special. But I I left early and did not witness. Later on, I found out that they did, in fact, read off an excommunication letter over his grave and gave him over to the devil. They did a little ceremony where if they don't, if the Amish Church didn't have the chance to forgive that individual, they will do a letter where they pray and give you to the devil.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

That just seems a bit over the top, doesn't it? Like, I mean, you're sitting around thinking about what the rules are gonna be, and you're like, well, hey, let's not forget that if you do X, Y, or Z, like that's that's very gosh, and I so I feel like if you were a kid watching that, or anybody watching that, like that's pretty intense. Yeah. Like, you know, I mean, that that would strike a lot of fear into your heart, like to like these people have the authority to hand me over to the devil is and there was another Amish man that ended up doing the same thing a few years later, and they did bury him in the middle of the field, no marking the horses, the goats, the cows are running over all of they don't you can even see where he's buried. And that's a big deal to them, right? Like like for me when I passed away, I don't care what my girls do, you know what I mean. But for them and the the tradition and everything to just be thrown out in a field kind of um is pretty a disrespectful way to go, I would say. Right. Oh so so your mom told you kind of how that all went down, and you have you do have a relationship with her now.

SPEAKER_04 48:58

Yes. I didn't for a long time because I I was angry, my resentment turned into bitterness, bitterness turned to anger, anger turned into hatred, and I felt like I needed to be a voice for my dad. And I fought back and I put I knew it's against our religion, but I put fake flowers, real flowers. I started doing videos when I first started my social media platform. A lot of my followers would even stop by there. All at once, in the corner where dad is by himself, is loaded with flowers and decorations, and it don't even look like an Amish cemetery. You're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to do that. So my mom cuts me off and said, Don't you ever come back to visit since you're doing all of this? Because she has customers buying eggs and candies and bread and pies. They talk. She she learned everything I was doing, and she said, And do you not even come to my funeral when I die? She was angry. So last year, 2025 in March, I was praying, and I was praying for my mom, asking God to soften her heart. But what he what he in fact did is put some conviction on my heart too, I can't bring my dad back. Just go out there and reconcile with your mom. And I did, I went out and asked her, I said, what can I do to make it right? And she said, Go remove everything from dad's grave. And I did right then and there. I went straight out and removed it all, came back. We actually cried together, got my first mama hug, and now I can go out and visit as much as I want. And it and I know I won't regret that when my dad when my mom dies, because making me.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

I mean, for her, like so on the outside looking in, it could be like, What's the big deal? But for her, that's her life, like that's her life and her belief is like, you know, I mean, doing that is a form of disrespect. Whatever it is, you know what I mean? That's a big deal to her, so that's awesome. So what I so when you left, you're out, you know what I mean, you're out partying, and then this this happens with your father, and you get into a dark place where you're almost thinking about taking the same path. How do we go from there? And drinking, and were you experimenting with pills and everything like that? Did were you driving a truck then? No. Okay, good. Because if you were driving a truck and you were in that but um, so like how do you go from um how do we get from that that dark place? What pulled you out of it?

SPEAKER_04 51:20

Well, I clearly only knew to do what my dad, what I saw my dad do, and that was drink to numb the pain. So I did until I was some people I was working with at the time got me introduced to some coke. So I'm doing harder drugs now to numb the pain. And I knew that my wife was going to put her foot down because she got to where she said, Look, we got a newborn son here in 2006. By 2004, I had a DUI. By 2006, it was such a level to where she said, It's either me or the alcohol. You got a choice to make. And I just couldn't do it. And she left for a little bit, and you know, there was a couple evenings where she stayed away, and I was wrestling with this. How do I overcome this? And then one night, I'm just completely trash drunk. She had to help me get in bed. Two hours later, I'm completely alert, looking at the ceiling. And I'm like, why am I wide awake? Normally it'd take me hours and hours to do this, you know, to get to wake up out of a uh mess like that. She had to help me in bed. I'm sloppy drunk. So then I get up out of bed and I'm like, I gotta change. That's it. I'm gonna have to go out and just splatter my beers. You know, I don't want to, but I feel this urge, I need to go do it. So I walk out in my garage refrigerator, and I just start splattering my beers. And the door opens up, and my wife's standing there, bawling. She goes, What are you doing? I said, I don't know. I I like my beer. I don't I guess I'm done. And then she says this. This is where my faith started. She said, I laid there and I told God, I'm gonna have to divorce that man if you don't change his heart, and I'm not gonna go to sleep until you answer. And she laid there praying all night long until she saw me get out of bed and do that.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

And so you wake up and you're just thought, you know what I mean? Yeah. And you don't even know why, because you're like, I like my beer, but here I am.

SPEAKER_04 53:04

I knew it. See, I knew God was real. I was taught about God, I almost teach you about God.

SPEAKER_01 53:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:08

But at that moment, I knew that if God can hear my wife's prayer, He can hear me if I pour my heart out with my dad's situation, all the prep pain. That's where everything turned. So when you ask the question, what how did I get myself out of that dark hole? That evening when that happened, that was the turning point.

SPEAKER_02 53:27

So it was Jesus Christ and your wife, your wife praying.

SPEAKER_04 53:30

Yeah, God used my wife to get me to that point where I can then start seeking. And that's when I started actually seeking the Lord. I started getting a Bible and actually reading it and start, you know.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

How was that? What was the transition? So do like the Amish operate out of the same Bible we do?

SPEAKER_04 53:44

No, we had to have the 1522 version, Martin Luther translation. It had to be German we were taught. Uh, but we the here's the here's the downfall for the Amish in my group. Not all of them are the same, some have English Bibles, but we were taught you cannot interpret salvation. That is the English worldly people saying they're saved through faith, and then they live of the world and have electricity and cars. So we were warned that if anybody says you're saved, that's the devil deceiving them. So we could read, you know, we we had scriptures to back up why we have to be separate from the world, different from the world, all of that. But we were not allowed to interpret salvation. That was the danger zone.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

So you start reading the Bible, and so do you feel like that night was your encounter, like your encounter moment? Or well, let's hear it.

SPEAKER_04 54:34

2017. I had read the Bible here and there, even returned back to some alcohol when my wife wasn't watching, even got addicted to porn. I mean, I'm talking just some of the same stuff I was already trying to lay down because I want to I love my wife. I love my son. I wanted to keep my wife, I didn't want her to leave me. So I decided that I'm gonna go ahead and go back Amish. After everything I had been through, I'm like, I'm gonna have to please God. I know he's really hurt my wife's prayer, so how do I please this God? See, the first mentality us humans think is, okay, I fall short of the glory of God. Now I gotta do something. Rather than seeing it with Jesus already did it, I couldn't see that because I viewed God as an angry being on a throne in heaven and he's angry at me. So I didn't see a gracious, loving God. So I thought I got to fix myself. So when I prepared to go back Amish, my cousin that left the Amish shortly after me got furious with me. And he slammed his fist down and he said, Eli, make me a promise before you go back. I said, Yeah, what is it? He goes, make me a promise. You're gonna read an English version of the Bible before you return back to the Amish. I said, Fine, and when I find the verse that justifies me going back to the Amish, I'll show you. He goes, Fine. And I sat there in my semi-truck that week and I was praying and I was reading my Bible. Now I had done this before and I laid it down a couple of verses, hoping God's pleased with me by reading a couple verses, you know, and go back to porn and we I was watching more bad stuff than I was reading the word. But this day something was different. And I was in John 14. And I stopped. I had just read six, verse six. You know, he's the he said, I'm the only way, the truth, and the life. Now I get down into the verse, the 20 verses, and I stopped and I got angry and I screamed at God. I said, God, if you're real, I need to hear from you. You need to show yourself from me. I'm planning on going Amish. Right now, I'm in a semi-truck, planning on going Amish, but there's no Amish between me and you. There's no religion between me and you. It's me, and if this is your word, speak to me. And I looked back down and read 26, where Jesus was getting ready to ascend, and he said, I leave the comfort of the teacher, the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you and remind you all that I said to you. And at that moment, the word manifested. I felt what I call the glory of God come over me, like the peace. It filled me with peace, like a burning. You know, the Emmaus walk when they were walking with Jesus and then he just disappeared. They said, When he was walking with us, did our hearts not burn within ourselves? My heart burned. I I felt, I mean, I was like on fire. Then the next verse, verse 27, Jesus said, My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled. And that is when I and I just bawled. I felt the glory of God and I bawled. And that is when I knew he wanted to have a relationship with me. And I called my cousin and I said, Hey, I'm not going back on. And she goes, Why? I said, I'm saved.

SPEAKER_02 57:23

Oh, praise God.

SPEAKER_04 57:25

That's when I believed God for the first time and realized I don't have to go do something he wants in here in my heart.

SPEAKER_02 57:32

I'm saved. What a powerful statement. Such if you're listening, like you have got to read the Bible for yourself. And we need guided. You do need to be discipled. Like, don't get in there because you we have self-show, you know, you've got to be the you've got to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He's got to guide you through it. But if you're listening, a lot of times the answer's in the Bible. And don't let you need to be discipled and taught. Yes. But don't let people tell you what the Bible's saying without checking into it yourself and doing your own background research, because more so than all the demonic stuff we see in the world today, and all of this stuff, the most dangerous thing you can do is be misled by somebody that you trust spiritually. Or be misled and think that you understand the Bible because you heard somebody else preach a sermon on it. You get into it on your own, and you do need even me, and you know, after my years of being saved, I have people that help guide me through the Bible, but the good ones are always like, read it for yourself. Always. Or we're reading it together, and there's so much power. I can't, we've gotten to a place where you have so much access. And this is what I was telling somebody, you know, talking to somebody about the other day. I ordered a Bible on Amazon. I was really excited about my pastor. I was like, you gotta check it out. It's like the lamb skin. Pastor Knight, love you. But he, you know, you gotta do it. This is for like, you know, when you're speaking, you know, when you're gonna preach, it's so light and mobile, like this Bible. And it comes up in a box in Amazon, and I open it, and for a split second, you know, I just sit it down and I felt convicted. I was like, I can order a Bible to my house, and there's people in China right now holding on to one page of that thing, and they might bump into somebody else that has a page that if you don't know what I'm talking about, like literally what they go through to just learn, and they know that page. And that may be the only, like the only Bible they ever get is a page that they got because they can't, they don't a lot of them can't, you can't keep a whole Bible. It is such, but but we're so like for me, I'm so spoiled. We have Bibles all so we do the service, and this is the building that we do the service in, and we ask people for Bibles to hand them out, and we got hundreds. You know, we have these things laying around everywhere, but there's places where that is bigger and greater than gold. And there's so there's a reason for that. There's a reason why it's that book. There's a reason why the world, if it's not with us, it hates that book. There's a reason people have to hide that book because there's so much, all of your answers are in it. The keys to understanding your father, the best that we're going to, are in it. And so if you're listening, don't bypass how important it is. It's cool to do devotions and stuff, but to dig into that thing and be like, who was who, you know, if you're reading something, who were they writing this to? Who's writing this? What was the point of writing this? And you start to understand like this beautiful book that's full of encouragement but truth as well. Like, you know, if if some somebody can misteach you, we go from glory to glory. That doesn't mean from Cadillac to Cadillac, that doesn't mean from trailer to mansion. Because if you look what like Paul's life, we've talked about this. Glory to glory in Paul's life doesn't look like what I would consider glory. Going from one town to the next, getting beat, thrown in prison, and threatened death, that's not glory to glory to me. You know what I mean? But the glory to glory is like knowing him, and we're always one step closer to eternal life with our Father, you know. So that's beautiful. He found it in the Bible, people. Imagine that.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:12

And I praise God for allowing me to get saved while reading his word, because now that's what I use, the truth. John 8 32, it says, if you know the truth, the truth shall set you free. And since he used that truth to set me free, I want to use that truth and tell people how I discovered the truth and read your Bible. If somebody gets saved reading the Bible, then the Holy Spirit is in your heart. Don't overthink it. It's he you're no different than Paul was. We receive him through faith. And then he leads us together at that church. He leads us and guides us and teaches us just because what the way the word says. He doesn't lie. You seek, you shall find. But I think we're in the mentality of, well, if I just go to church this Sunday, maybe God will be happy, because that was my mindset before I got saved. I'm like, well, I gotta go Amish to please God. See, that's how we think. We think, well, we've got to do something rather than viewing it through the lens of Jesus. He loves us, he forgave us, and he wants to live in our hearts.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:03

I know there was a time when I've made a fair share of mistakes, and I felt, you know, I had to step back from everything, and I was sitting at the table, and um, you know, I was kind of just I still loved God, but I was kind of doing my own thing again, you know, and I remember sitting there, you know, because I loved like it like I loved telling people about Jesus. I don't care about the microphones and stuff. I, you know, this is cool, but I like I will tell you at the gas station. You get what I'm saying? I don't need, I don't like that like that's how we got to this place. A lot of people is people will tell me sometimes, like, hey, how do I get to do what you do? And it's like, what I do is like in its most purest, beautiful form is if somebody needs prayer, I pray for them. If somebody needs to hear about Jesus, I tell them. That's the most important thing that I do. I love helping get stories out, and you know, I love giving my testimony and everything like that. But what's truly important is you know, those inner interactions that you might have with somebody at stake and shake when you're busy and you don't want to stop and talk, but you know, you should. Um, and I think that's a that's an another interesting thing. Um, something had just crossed my mind and it um and it left me, but you had said, uh what did you say? Well, just keep talking and we'll get back to it. It'll pop back in there. Um so you found you found it in the Bible. Um, oh you were talking, we were talking about Paul and glory to glory. I that and I was telling that story. So so I'm sitting at the table and I'm I'm talking to God, and I had missed it, you know what I mean? Because I stepped down from everything. I was showing up to celebrate recovery and stuff, but I missed like the interaction I had with people, you know, and because I was sitting to myself and I was sitting there and I was eating pizza because I had let myself just completely go. I wasn't getting my hair cut, nothing, and I was like, God, what do I have to do to get back into your good graces? And I don't know if you've ever felt like Holy Spirit kind of laugh at you, but that that's what it felt like. And then I heard, like, what do you think you did to begin with to get there? And I was like, oh. And then I started to reflect, it was like I thought speaking and telling 80 people about Jesus, like, you know, I mean, I'm collecting something in the spiritual bank, and I'm starting to look at other people and be like, Well, what are you doing? You know what I mean? Like, I witnessed, and I had got to such that fall was actually God's grace, so he could reel me back in and be like, your ego got your ego went someplace where that's gonna be a really interesting conversation to have to Jesus one day. Like, hey man, I'm glad I earned myself in your good graces. And he's like, Hold on, Bub. You know, I mean, I found you when you had nothing. You know what I mean? All of that, all of that stuff you think you're doing, that was what I gave you that. That's a door that I opened. It's not there without me. And I realized, like, man, we have got to be very careful thinking that I'm out here earning some special, you know, some special place, or I've earned my, you know, I mean, and and that was my thought. That's what was distancing me from God, was saying, what do I have to do to get back into your good graces? Which there's nothing biblical about that. Right. You know what I mean? And and it's actually the opposite of that. It was like I thought I was starting to have a lot of faith in myself.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:17

Right. You know, it's easy to get distracted, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:22

It really is. Because you are like you, you're doing it for the right reasons at first, and then something, something happens. And I'm grateful for that. There was humiliation in that. I fell on my face, like that whole process. You know what I mean? What a year I sat, like it wasn't my favorite time, but then just that voice. And I almost cried again because it's like, I hear God. Like, you know what I mean? Like he's still there. I would have gave up on me, you know. Like, I would have gave up on me. Like, this dude's too hard headed, you know. I mean, and look at him down there taking glory. I had to be to be in that situation. I was taking glory and credit that should have been God's at some point there, and then to have some negotiation. With God? Like, what do I got to do? Tell me the 10 things I can do to, you know, to glorify you, to get you to, you know, love me back.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:07

Right.

unknown 1:06:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:08

All at once became like a good works kind of mentality. Oh, yeah. But praise God for his grace.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:16

Yeah. It humbled me. You know, I stood up from that table and like I catch myself now, and it's like, I don't go up there, you know, we'll have this service and stuff. I'm not pointing at people and preaching at people anymore. You know what I mean? I'm coming from a humbly broken place and very transparent. Like, you know what I mean? I am still learning, and I probably I'm never gonna stop. You know, I'm never gonna stop. So that's that's powerful. And now you kind of you you've written a book and you kind of you get to witness to people on a regular basis. Like, how awesome is that?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:49

Yeah, it's just amazing what God did after that. That whole thing, that's where my ministry started. Just I was already doing videos, uh, just kind of doing some some QA Amish, you know, teaching people about the Amish culture. And now I started sharing my faith and and just the testimony. I mean, I didn't even have to preach, I just shared my testimony, how I found the truth, and people just started flocking to my page and it started growing because I realized pretty quickly many people were church hurt. Many people couldn't measure up the requirements, you know, keep the requirements of of where they come from. It wasn't just m my people, the Amish that had rules and legalism. I was discovering that there was many denominations out here. Now, a lot once I started doing like in 2017 and into 18, I started doing like testimony interviews and just interviewing people that came out of the Amish, and it just blew up because a lot of people could relate to the testimony.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:36

I think it's it's very interesting because like watching some of your stuff, I have no knowledge of the Amish whatsoever. You know, like I've seen them out and about when we go up in what's in northern Indiana, like Shipshawana and stuff, and they have little there's restaurants that are Amish restaurants and stuff, but I've no no understanding whatsoever. But there was some stuff that I saw you talking about, and like that hit home, and it's like it's it's crazy because it's all parallel. Yeah, you know what I mean? If we are, if it is like you know, we're not really fighting flesh and blood, it's all parallel and um controlling spirits and stuff like that. And and you have to give some of the people grace because like they're doing it out of what they see as love, but but seeing a lot of your um some some of your content, it hits home for me or anybody else that may have had some wounds. So I'm assuming it's not just Amish people that get a hold of you, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:26

Oh, yeah, there's been so many different Jehovah's Witness Mormon Catholics. The other day I had a Catholic testimony. They were going to church, they thought they were pleasing God by just following what they were taught. Their mom and dad, you know, they raised them in in the Catholic Church, and she got across my testimony, and it shook her to her core. She went and opened her Bible, started praying and seeking. I mean, on her knees, and before you knew it, she felt she she felt the Holy Spirit and it changed her entire life. And now she says, I'm not Catholic anymore, I'm I'm saved, I'm a born-again Christian. Now I know. But one thing that stood out to me. So she was going to church, she said, Catholic, devoted, obeying the parents. But she always doubted her salvation. Now she doesn't have to doubt her salvation. She's had once we're connected with God, we have peace. He fulfills that void that is in our hearts, that we're seeking. We have to have a connection with him, have a relationship with him. When a person has that, you can see it. You have the peace, like Paul said, to live is Christ, to die is gained. You know where you're going now, and you can see that shift.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:27

And just the denomination and all of that stuff doesn't really matter. You can have that within any of them. You know, you know what I mean? I have seen people walking in the light that may claim different things like that. It's it's so, you know, even some of that, some of this, you know, it's specific individual entities and and places. It's not so much like the title on it, because you get you can get a building of people together, yeah, no matter what their title is. And if they get on fire for Jesus, they're on fire for Jesus. And you know what I mean? It doesn't matter what we call them.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:58

Even this lady said, I'm still going to the Catholic Church. My family still goes there, I still go there, but I know I'm saved now. I have a relationship with him, but I had to get into the word. My testimony of getting saved through the word encourages people to get into the word and start seeking the word for themselves.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:14

And then you become more like the word. You have that relationship, that connection with God.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:18

Relationship is so important. That's one of the things we talked about because I don't think we got back into it, but we have a Friday service that we do here in Marion, and Eli's going to be speaking at it here in just a little bit. And we were talking about like how important interaction is with people. So um, you just went on a cruise and stuff. Do you like do you have people kind of come up to you just like talking to you and like introducing themselves and telling their stories? Like it that probably happens to you quite a bit, huh?

SPEAKER_04 1:10:44

I didn't think it would on a cruise being all the way down below, you know, the Caribbean islands, down on the Virgin Islands, way down there. And on that cruise ship for seven days, I had 62 people that recognized me and came up and talked to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:54

So, did you have a chance to kind of witness to them and hear their stories? And what a beautiful life, huh? Even though it may seem exhausting to some people, it's like what an honor it is to for people to see you as somebody that, like, hey, I want to, I want you to hear my Jesus story, or I want you, I want to share my pain with you. Yeah. So important.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:11

It's a blessing just to be able to, you know, we are the church. As believers, we are the church, and wherever we go, we can we can be an encouragement to people and share our faith with people and and fellowship together. I mean, we were sitting at the the smoke deck where people are smoking, I'm just observing and listening. Before I know it, we're talking about Jesus. And somebody pops up and goes, I want to know if I'm saved, and I'm praying over people. And then more hear it, and then we have an hour of just praying, and you know, it was beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:36

My my grandpa before he passed away, uh, he was a he was a funny man, but even after he quit smoking when restaurants had the smoking sections, he was still sitting in the smoking section, and everybody like, why'd you do that? He was like, better company. You know, he never left the smoking sections.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:57

So I think that um, yeah, we've covered a lot. I really appreciate you coming on. Um, I was excited about it. It's been really cool actually to get to know you. 550? 530. Nathan, you're gonna have to cut that part. So we got a few minutes. What are you thinking, Zach? You got any questions? So we'll just we'll just pick back up and do something so you can see that. Zico, you got any questions for Eli? Well that's not very helpful. What do you think what's the most outside of like the faith thing, what's the most what's the question you get asked the most? What do you feel like you get the most of?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:43

Well, a lot of people are always thinking the the uh Amish culture where I'm from, they got it all together, that they are Christians, and so they're shocked. That's number one. I thought they're Christians. Are they not Christians? I'm like, well, just like any other denomination, they claim to be Christian, they say they're Christians, they'll answer you that way. But they don't know the church system and how it works. So that that's been the biggest shock to people as I do QA's. Yeah. Like, wait a minute, I thought they have it all together. I thought they're Christians, you know. So that's probably the number one question I get.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:11

Yeah. And again, I mean, some of them, you know what I mean? There's there's there's true Christians in all of the different things, you know what I mean? And and we hear a lot of the stories about um control, you know what I mean? And I think even that, like when you break some of it down, like I feel like some people control out almost out of like the finding Nemo thing of like I don't want anybody to get hurt, right? And then a couple generations go by and you have yourself a system that is actually hurting people, you just can't see it because it's like um you know, it's like that frantic control thing. Um what uh so so so like with your book, what is it about? I haven't had a chance to read it yet.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:49

Yeah, it's called Undeceived because I clearly, when I found the truth, I didn't realize how deceived I was. So I I called it, I named it Undeceived, but it's got my whole story, you know, of growing up Amish, my experienced childhood, you know, the trauma, the abuse, all the way through disqualifying for baptism, and then after I left, all the struggles that came with after I left, trying to get adapted to the to the non-Amish lifestyle. And then, of course, my testimony all the way until 2017 when I got saved, which that's 19 years of alcoholism and drugs.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:19

And uh drugs was very short-lived because I realized it was so good that it was going, oh man, I because I was already addicted to alcohol. I'm like, yeah, this is way worse. I mean, I liked it so much, I was up all night long tripping. I didn't even have to go to sleep. I'm like, man, this really took care of the pain. Yeah, but it scared me at the same time. I'm like, I know that I have to cut this off now. So that was short-lived, but I always went back to alcohol, but that was 19 years before I actually got saved and got into the word.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:46

What an interesting pursuit, what an interesting world vision to be, you know, I mean, to spend that many years in the Amish community, then that many years in basically alcoholism and everything, then get saved, and now you're spending the years like this. That's yeah, you've kind of you've lived a that's kind of a fascinating life, really.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:06

Yeah. And I put that all in in my book just because the uh now sharing the testimony is is important, yeah, but in the book, I never thought that people would respond back to my website with thousands of testimonies how they got saved after reading my book. It's like the Bible. They they see what I did, and God uses that. See, Revelation 12, 11 is happening. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and love not even their lives on to death. I love that because when we share our testimonies, God uses it to help other people. He draws them to him by by just sharing how you got saved, what Jesus means to you, and that's that's been a blessing to be on a platform. I use six different platforms and just share that testimony and then the book that that has my.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:53

Where can people get the book from?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:54

Just my name, Eliyoder.com.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:56

So you just go to Eliyoder.com.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:57

It's available in all the online bookstores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all that stuff too.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:01

So um, Eli, can they also so is there links to your social media on your webpage? It's in every one of them. So I mean I recommend if you're on TikTok, check it out. Is it like his TikTok's great, and he's got this backdrop, and somebody was telling him he needed to iron the backdrop.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:17

What was your response? Oh man, I get I get some wild reasons. You know, and that's not everybody's gonna be nice, obviously, if you have a platform like I have, but it was bothering them to where they said they couldn't listen to the gospel. Them creases have gotten to go. I'm like, okay, now I'm really gonna leave it there.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:33

I think that's one of the things I like love about your page is it's not you haven't set there and polished everything up. You know what I mean? You didn't bring in like a wreck and roo and be like, I gotta have it's like it just you know what I mean. And if somebody has something to say about that, instead of like, you know what I mean, some of us may be like, oh yeah, maybe I do need to change that. He's like, no, it's still there. You know what I'm saying? Love it. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:55

I mean, I have a humorous site, and my dad was a humorous, so lots of times I respond back to some of the negative people with humor and and it silences them. They're like, whoa, I thought he was gonna let that one go.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:07

You're supposed to be a mad, angry Christian, right? Like supposed to argue with everybody all the time. Oh, Eli. So yeah, go check him out, check his platforms out. It's really actually, to be honest with you, it's really uplifting, and there's a lot of um stuff, Zach, that like like I get informed because now what's going on in the world is like like beef tallow uh stuff like that that our grandparents used to use for stuff. We're going back to that, like, oh yeah, it actually worked. I remember one time my grandpa looked at me because I was using like dove soap, and he was like, that's face soap. And I was like, oh, you ignorant old man, you know, but he was right. You know what I'm saying? Like all these years later, it's like you find out he's right. So there's so many things that actually from that Amish culture that are healthy and people are like reintroducing is like, oh, there is like all of these health benefits to living this, you know, this way, and canning and you know, the what the way with the meat and everything, and also in case of like you know, a catastrophe, like they've got that part figured out. But that's something I've over the last year, peptides and all this stuff are starting to get popular, and it's like this is just basically a breakdown of what my grandma and grandpa tried to tell me were the way to do things baking soda for everything, you know what I mean? It's like they used it for every you know, they used uh beef tallow. You can cook with it, they use it as soap, all this stuff, and it's like you serious? Yeah, my tattoo guy, he sent me home with some, and I was like tallow, and I started to Google it, and I was like, it's just basically beef creeps, you know what I mean? Oh, so yeah, I've um go check out the website. We're excited because he's actually going to be um sharing with us tonight. Do you know what you're gonna talk about?

SPEAKER_04 1:18:43

Yeah, the rejection part. I went into kind of a little bit. You know, one of the biggest things that that I realized later on after I got saved is all the things that triggered me to go to alcohol and things, all the reasons I left the Amish. The number one reason would be rejection. I didn't feel like I could measure up. So my main topic tonight will be rejection and what that resulted in my life, what that leads to.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

That's gonna be good. We're excited. You got anything, Zach?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:11

I'm interested in how like your medicine stuff like that because my remote makes their own medicine like a little bit cold, so that's the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:24

Yeah. So Zach was saying like the the the stuff that they that you do for like flus and colds and stuff. That's is that strong? I feel like the garlic and stuff would be Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:35

Yeah, it like this morning when I took a s a spoonful of the uh what I call antibiotics, home remedy that I mixed together. Uh I got the ingredients for it that I did the video on. It's got a spoon of cayenne pepper and black pepper in that. And when you mix it all together, when you swallow that, it it it has a sting to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:52

It's opening you up.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:54

But it's the it's the natural ingredients that you need for, and I have never ever gotten the flu or got bronchitis or pneumonia, none of that nasal drainage ever since I've been taking that stuff. It works. I mean, it worked for us when I was growing up, it still works today.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:06

That's cool. Do the Amish use ivermectum? Like, I for the animals, yes. So they actually use it. Do they deworm? Oh, yeah. Like as humans. How do they do that?

SPEAKER_04 1:20:14

Well, they take ibervectum. So they just we had animal uh stuff that we took for even the hogs and the cattle. We took stuff like that. My uh grandfather, he was actually uh very educated in home remedies and stuff that he mixed together that would work. He was considered like the Amish doctor. Yeah. So he would come to homes and check out people what their problem was, and he would put some concoction together, and before you know it, you're getting better.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:37

You know, if I got a deep cut, you know, they would come over and they would put that the aloe vera plant and take a leaf off and wrap it around there and put wrap it up. I mean, that's what we did with home remedies.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:46

You use honey a lot? You have the hives and everything. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's what I I I worked with my friend Devin, he's probably upstairs, Devin case, and uh just one spring, and it was fascinating when I started to research. It's like you can use that for anything. They use that on cuts and stuff too. Just yeah. Uh it's wild. So that's cool to know that they use that because the um the deworming thing I saw some this has nothing to do with the podcast really, but I saw that in other countries they do that at least like once a year, but you know, some of them on a regular basis. And then here we don't. But we used to. From what I understand, is back when we were on farms and stuff, it was something you know what I mean? Because like you collect the obviously, like you're gonna collect that stuff through the years. I'm gonna have to look into that. Awesome. All right, well, I think it's about time to head upstairs. I really appreciate you coming on, Eli. That was a good conversation. We'll have to have you back. I'm I'm assuming that we'll, you know, um over, you know, in the future we'll be having you back here. And uh I'm I'm excited for that. But that was great. I was I was looking forward to having you on, and I wasn't sure how the conversation was go, but I it really flowed from the minute you got here, even when we were talking before. So if you guys haven't, go check Eli out on Eliyoder.com. You can get his book there, get onto all of his social medias. Um, highly recommend it. It's a lot of good content. Some of it's really funny, some of it's informative, and then it's a lot of a lot of stuff about Jesus, and we praise God for that. So go check him out. Um, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, we are on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcast. Um, go check us out, subscribe, um, give us a review if you can, and share an episode, share this episode with a friend. We love you guys. Eli, do you have anything else to say to the people before you close out?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:36

Well, what comes to mind right away is just be you. God loves you. You're right where you're at. You don't have to change anything. Today's a day of salvation. I mean, he wants into your heart, doesn't matter what you were taught. Most people will deviate and they want you to fit in and change who you are so that you can be accepted. Most people will change to be accepted, but be who you are, accept who you are right now, and just call out the way I did in my testimony. Just call out because he wants into your heart and he'll add on to you everything he has for you.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:06

He's got a plan for you.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:07

Yes. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:08

Praise God. Thank you so much, Eli. Thank you, Zico and Nathan. We appreciate y'all. You guys check us out next week. We love you. Go follow us on all the platforms and go go check out Eliyoder.com, get the book and check out the TikToks and everything else. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode today. Make sure you subscribe to our channels and follow us and give us reviews on all of the platforms. If you really liked what you heard today, share it with somebody that you care about. Thank you. We love you.