Emanuel Schrock
Emanuel's News Items
Mission Ambition
From the time I was a young Amish boy, I thought that I wouldn't mind being a preacher. In my early teens, I memorized large portions of scripture in German, and practiced quoting them as I heard them in church, imitating my favorite preachers. As I grew older, the desire to do something for God grew stronger. I wanted to rise above the ordinary, dull life I seemed to be destined for.
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Emanuel's Articles
Living in a Snow Globe
Have you ever shaken a snow globe? One moment the world inside the globe is picture-perfect. The next, everything is a swirling mess of glitter and confusion until it all settles down again.
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My Story (Part 4)
Perhaps you are in the same condition that I was. Perhaps you, too, would like to be born again and have tried to persuade God to save you, but He seems to remain distant. Perhaps your conscience is pressing down on you with guilt. Maybe you are stuck like I was, and you feel that you have tried very hard to please God, but He doesn’t seem to care. You have tried your institution’s prescribed way of reaching God, but somehow you fell through the cracks, and the formula didn’t work for you as it seems to have worked for others. Maybe you are terrified at the thought of meeting God, as I was. And maybe, just maybe, you hate the sin that you are living in, like I did, but you keep going back to it. Maybe you, too, fall asleep on a tear-soaked pillow, praying that you will not die, because it is the only prayer you dare pray.
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My Story (Part 3)
One day, I was listening to a man preach from the book of Hebrews. I was at the point where I was desperate to know the truth. I had worn myself out trying to please God, and I still didn’t have peace. I listened to the words being preached, and I was ready to let the Bible say what it wanted to say to me. I was done with trying to figure out what I needed to do; I was ready to just listen. I had tried all that I knew, and all that I had to show for it was a history of failing and a bleak and miserable future of unending efforts that would only serve to ease my conscience while I waited in vain for the miracle of salvation.
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My Story (Part 2)
I longed for God, yet the desires of the flesh kept pulling me away from him. Every day I faced strong temptations in all areas of life, and, though I tried my best to fight them, I could not resist. I was Amish; everything I did and everywhere I went, I could not be anything else. My clothes were Amish, my house was Amish, my family was Amish, and most importantly, my church was Amish. But I did not know God. I heard about him, and read about Him. But I didn’t know who He was, much less love Him.
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My Story (Part 1)
The sound of the steady beat of Betty’s hooves on the pavement mingle with the soft, rumbling din of the family buggy wheels. It’s a sound that is so much a part of who I am that it is like music in the background of my life, constantly reminding me of who I am and what I belong to: I am Amish, not by choice, but by birth. I was born into a family of twelve, and since my parents and grandparents were Amish, fate had already decided that I was destined to be Amish as well – like it or not.
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