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156 pages

English

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In the second book of bestselling author Jerry S. Eicher's new Land of Promise series, Miriam Yoder is looking forward to her wedding day with Wayne Yutzy. But when beautiful Esther Swartz arrives to care for her ailing grandmother, Miriam is wary of Wayne's past relationship with her.When storms rip through the small Amish community in Oklahoma, Miriam's daett arrives to help in the rebuilding efforts. Under pressure from Miriam's daett the relationship with Wayne is upended, leaving Miriam to wonder if she must now build her new life as a single Amish woman.Book two in the Land of Promise series

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Publié par	Harvest House Publishers
Date de parution	01 juin 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9780736958820
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Cover by Garborg Design Works, Savage, Minnesota
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A BLESSING FOR MIRIAM
Copyright 2015 Jerry S. Eicher
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eicher, Jerry S.
A blessing for Miriam / Jerry S. Eicher.
pages cm. - (Land of promise ; book 2)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5881-3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-5882-0 (eBook)
1. Amish-Fiction. I. Title.
PS3605.I34B57 2015
813 .6-dc23
2014021856
All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other-without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author s and publisher s rights is strictly prohibited.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Discussion Questions
About the Author
A Checklist of Jerry Eicher s Harvest House Books
Ready to Discover More?
About the Publisher
Chapter One

T he flickering flames from the kerosene lamp danced on the bedroom wall as Miriam Yoder opened the letter from her mamm. She carefully pressed the fold creases out on the bed quilt. A letter from Possum Valley was an anticipated and blessed event, so Miriam had waited until they d finished the supper dishes in Aunt Fannie s kitchen before she allowed herself this luxury. She focused on Mamm s handwriting.
My dearest Miriam,
Greetings from home. We do so miss you, and think often of your life on the plains of Oklahoma. I hope all is going well with your school-teaching job and, of course, your relationship with young Wayne Yutzy. You ll have to bring him home sometime soon. We all look forward to meeting him, although from your description and Shirley s report when she arrived back in Possum Valley, there s no doubt in our minds that we will fully approve of the young man. Your life is such a blessing to us and those around you, and also to the Lord, I m sure.
We re all doing well health-wise, and for this we re thankful. Beyond that, I wish I had only light and cheerful news to share, but I don t. Our hearts ache for Shirley. I fear she s taken a turn for the worse. After baby Anna was born and Shirley came back to Possum Valley, we so hoped she d be different. For a time it was so. Shirley seemed to have learned and grown from her time in Oklahoma. Why she decided to come back, I never could understand. The lessons in humility and virtuous living were exactly what she needed, but the gut lessons didn t last long.
Now it s early spring here, when life is all fresh and blooming outside, but my heart is anything but glad. I tremble to tell you this, Miriam, but Shirley went out with Jonas Beachy two nights last week, and that wasn t even on the weekend. You know how we feel about Jonas. A Mennonite boy would be bad enough, but Jonas is worse than either the Mennonites or the Englisha because his family left our community years ago. That church his dad runs now is awful strange-if one can believe the rumors. I tell myself that the children of others in the community have done worse in their rumspringa time than Shirley. I also comfort myself that she s only eighteen. Maybe she ll grow out of this phase. Maybe my hopes were too high after you and the two oldest boys turned out so well. I know one cannot expect the same thing from all of one s children.
Miriam laid the letter aside and sat up on the bed. The letter still had another page, but she needed to catch her breath. The news of Shirley s fresh disobedience wasn t too much of a shock. There had been hints in Mamm s letters since late last fall. What disturbed Miriam the most was the line that she herself had turned out so well.
Mamm and Daett still didn t know about her secret. Miriam had never told them the whole truth about what Mr. Bland had left her in his will. They knew that the Englisha man she used to work for had given her his farm at his passing, but that was all. They didn t know about the money the two million dollars.
Why had she kept the money hidden? She d always been the gut girl at home. Even her rumspringa time had been a mild experiment in a few gatherings among the Possum Valley Amish youth. Why had she kept this secret from Mamm and Daett ? Was she afraid Daett wouldn t bless her because of how he felt about money, let alone large sums of it?
Miriam pushed the dark-blue drapes aside from the bedroom window and looked over the spread of Uncle William s commercial greenhouse. In the daylight hours the place bustled with business. Wayne Yutzy, the handsome young man she was promised to, worked there. It had been back in September when he d asked her to marry him and she d accepted. When she then told him of her inheritance from Mr. Bland, he d taken it in stride, much to her relief. She hadn t been able to bear carrying the secret alone any longer.
Miriam let the drapes flutter from her hand. What was the real reason she d never told Mamm and Daett about the two million dollars? The answer to that wasn t too difficult: Daett s strong feelings about the unrighteousness of money and what the possession of it did to people. The heart must never be set on riches, Daett said often. The Lord gives no grace to those who love money.
But the money hadn t tainted Miriam like Daett claimed money always did. She hadn t spent it on material goods. That must mean something, didn t it? The money was sitting in the bank in Sugarcreek, Ohio, far away from Oklahoma. And the Lord had showered grace upon her life-much more than she deserved. Look how she d been accepted in the Oklahoma community. She d even been asked to teach school for this term, and the students parents were singing her praises at school gatherings.
Miriam had so much she was thankful for-the Lord, first of all, and Wayne after that. Wayne had loved her before he knew about the millions, and he still loved her afterward. Wayne wasn t like Ivan Mast back in Possum Valley. There Daett had been right about what money did to a person. Ivan had been sweet on her in their teenage years, and she d anticipated he would ask her home from a hymn singing someday.
Ivan had given every indication he would, and she hadn t detected any change in his smiles until the Sunday evening he took the beautiful Laura Swartz home. The Swartz family had moved back to Possum Valley from the community here in Oklahoma, but Miriam hadn t paid the new family much attention. How could she have been so blind? And how could her heart have become entangled with a man who would drop her at a whim? On top of that, he had sought to renew their relationship after Mr. Bland left her his farm. Ivan had arrived at the Yoder home with professions of renewed love and affection.
How could the man think she wouldn t see through that? To make matters worse, he d done so while still dating Laura! Ivan claimed the inherited farm made little difference, but that wasn t true. Miriam rejected his advances. Soon after that, she traveled to the Oklahoma community with Shirley to help Aunt Fannie with her baby s arrival. Both Miriam and Shirley needed this fresh start. Shirley was trying to fight the temptation to be with Jonas Beachy, and Miriam was trying to recover from Ivan s betrayal.
The Lord had blessed the move, and soon after their arrival baby Jonathon had been born to Aunt Fannie and Uncle William. The baby was now a happy, chubby boy. Even now Miriam could hear his cooing downstairs. He was, no doubt, ready for bed. Miriam smiled at the sound. Babies were surely one of the Lord s great blessings to the world. They came as a reminder of all that was sweet and innocent. Would she and Wayne have children? Miriam s neck and face flushed at the thought. She shouldn t think of such things, even though she was promised to Wayne. But she did love the man, and he would make a wunderbah father-if the Lord chose to give them children. Miriam knew married life wasn t always smooth, but she was confident the Lord would continue to supply grace for whatever might lie ahead of them after their wedding. Hadn t He done so up until now?
Miriam flopped on the bed. Why did she think of trouble that might lie ahead? Had the letter from Mamm affected her? Miriam sighed. Yah , in part, though her heart had already been troubled about something else. Esther Swartz from Possum Valley had appeared in the Oklahoma community this past month. She was Laura s older sister, and all the memor