July 2019 MAP Update

In This Issue

Girod Family Update                                           Lovina Gingerich Testimony

Bible Club, Volunteers, and Dallas                               

Greetings of love from the Girod family.

I want to personally thank you for your support. Without you, our ministry work would be impossible.

Much has happened since our last update. Around the first week of May, I got a message on Facebook with a name I didn’t recognize, asking me to call a certain phone number. I called, and it was a first cousin of mine from Kentucky who had just left the Amish three hours before she called me. Her name is Susie. She is single and twenty-seven years old. We stayed in touch that week, and that Sunday at church she was heavy on my heart, as I wondered about her salvation. I asked her if I could have an hour of her time that evening, and I shared the gospel with her in our old language (Swiss) the best that I could. After two hours on the phone, she accepted Jesus Christ!

When she had left the Amish, she had nothing except the clothes on her back. She had planned on leaving later, but God had other plans. She had left her birth certificate and SSN at home, but within two weeks she had new ones, and she is now driving.

I put a post on Facebook asking for things she needed, and the response was overwhelming, including from a friend of ours who  donated like-new bedroom and living room suites to Susie. We are praising God for all who were a part of Susie’s life since she left, and most of all, we want to thank you for praying. Keep praying for Susie that she would grow in knowledge of the truth.

Please also pray for us as we are approaching July 20, which is the due date for our sixth child.

Until next time, God Bless.

Samuel and Polly Girod and family

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The Bible Club is our children’s Bible correspondence course. We mail more than 4,000 Bible lessons every two weeks. So far this year we have mailed out 41,690 Bible lessons and  have recorded one hundred and fourteen salvations. A tremendous amount of work goes into getting the Bible lessons ready to mail, and it could not be done without the help of our many faithful volunteers.

We try to have a special volunteer outing every year to thank them for their hard work, sacrifice, and dedication. This year we headed into Amish Country (one of their favorite places to go). We stopped along the way for a quick picnic-style meal in Mount Hope, Ohio, and then we went on to enjoy a show at the Comedy Theater in Berlin, Ohio. We thank the Lord for our precious, faithful volunteers. If you would like to volunteer with us at MAP, call me and we can discuss it. We are always glad to add volunteers to our group.

One man who used to come in and faithfully volunteer can no longer join us, but he continues to think of us, write to us, and pray for us. His name is Dallas. He recently wrote to us and asked how much it costs to send a missionary to another country. Then he told us how much good “stay-at-home” missionaries can do: May God really bless the hardworking crew I call the stay-at-home missionaries. Think about it. How much money and time does it take to put a missionary in the field? Our stay-at-home missionaries give $10 to MAP, and it starts producing when the first Bible lesson reaches the student with a message they clearly understand, and the stay-at-home missionaries are winning souls with that $10!  Hooray for the stay-at-home missionary!

Dallas says that he does not see very well anymore and he is slowing down, but he keeps praying for us and thinking of ideas for us.  On August 15, Dallas will be ninety-nine years old! If you would like to send him a birthday card, I’m sure he would love it. You can send it to:

Dallas Few
560 Twilight Trl
Chippewa Lake, OH 44215

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My name is Lovina Gingerich, and I was born and raised in a strict Swartzentruber Amish community. I lived in Ethridge, Tennessee, until I was nine years old, and then my parents moved to Spickard, Missouri, where I finished school. We later moved to Osceola, Missouri.

As far back as I can remember, I was taught about Jesus. I was told that in order to be a child of God, I had to obey all His rules, which were taught by my parents and the church. I never questioned anything until I became a teenager. Then I began to ask my parents why we lived the way we did and why it was wrong to drive a vehicle and have a phone. They always responded by telling me that we needed to keep the Amish traditions, and in order to live a righteous life and get to heaven, I had to stay Amish.

I continued to struggle and was often rebellious and broke the rules. At the age of seventeen, I started making plans to leave the Amish. The only thing that always kept me from leaving was that I was afraid I would go to hell if I did.

I had a job cleaning houses for the “English,” but had no idea about salvation at the time. One day as I was working, one of my clients told me that her husband, a pastor, gives a little Bible to anyone who gets saved at their church. At first I thought she was a little crazy, and I knew I shouldn’t have anything to do with people like her. She later came to me and gave me an English Bible. At the time, I didn’t even know that English Bibles existed. I started reading the Scriptures and searching for something about the Amish lifestyle, but I couldn’t really find anything on the topic. I prayed that God would help me to obey the wishes of my parents, and I continued with my Amish life.

A year later, I became a member of the Amish church. As time went on, I became more curious about being saved. Yes, I prayed and read the Bible, but did that mean I was truly saved? In my heart, I couldn’t think of a time when I felt the Holy Spirit wash over me, and I had heard of other people being able to name a day and an hour, even down to the minute. For that reason, I thought I was probably not saved.

Time passed, and I came across Romans 10:9–10: That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. After finding and reading this passage, I was finally at peace!

At the age of twenty-two, I met a man named Eli Gingerich, and we got married in fall of 2016. After living in the Amish culture for another two years, we left the Amish in the fall of 2018. We moved to Ohio, where we met Joe and Esther Keim and started going to their Bible studies. I am so thankful we got to meet these wonderful people, and I look forward to growing more in my faith in the days and years to come!

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