A Lancaster Amish Miracle for Jacob: A Lancaster Amish Home for Jacob, #8

By Rachel Stoltzfus

Promises. Problems. A Miracle?

When orphaned teen Jacob Marshall makes a promise far too big for him, it's going to take a miracle to keep his word. Will Jacob find the strength to ask for help before it's too late? Or will pride be the cause of his greatest fall?

Desperate to get his adopted Amish community to like him, amnesiac Jacob Marshall volunteers to help anyone who needs it for five hours a day. But when the workload quickly overwhelms him, it's going to take a miracle for Jacob to keep his word and still find time for his own chores and the Amish family he's grown to love (for a second time). Will Jacob find the strength to ask for help before it's too late? Or will pride be the cause of Jacob's greatest fall?

Find out in A Lancaster Amish Miracle for Jacob, Book 8 of the Amazon bestselling series, A Home for Jacob.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Global Grafx Press
• Release date: Jan 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507052570

Book preview

A LANCASTER AMISH MIRACLE FOR JACOB

BOOK 8

RACHEL STOLTZFUS

Copyright © 2015 RACHEL STOLTZFUS

All rights reserved.

ISBN:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

A LANCASTER AMISH TREASURE FOR JACOB

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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I have to thank God first and foremost for the gift of my life and the life of my family. I also have to thank my family for putting up with my crazy hours and how stressed out I can get as I approach a deadline. In addition, I must thank the ladies at Global Grafx Press for working with me to help make my books the best they can be. And last, I thank you, for taking the time to read this book. God Bless!

Chapter 1

There was once a time when man, woman, and child lived under the protection of the star filled night, which guided their way through perils deep and wide, mighty and gentle. Men would take jobs, women would bear children, and animals would roam the grassy fields, their fates guided by the hand of man for better or for worse.

Time passed by, slowly for some, quickly for others, and the mud  huts that men resided in were replaced by wooden buildings. In some places, there were few buildings and houses, and in other places where were many. This would not change, but the types of buildings and their composition would certainly differ as the years went by.

From wood, to sprawling cities of stone, and finally brilliant landscapes of steel and glass with new jobs, new types of people, and a brand new way of life. The simple life which had once revolved around faith and family had gone away, and was replaced by new priorities, new language, and most importantly, a yearning to see the next big thing. To take the next step, and to the next big event.

There are places however, where the old way of life preservers, where people take seriously the bonds of family and the satisfaction of hard work. They are not much to be found any more, but there are these small patches containing the old, and for many, they are a shining star amongst a sea of darkness. One such place, Hope Crossing, was to see the light of day soon, though admittedly, not for a few hours.

Jacob lay in his bed, effectively dead to the world in a room which was, in the Amish style, bare and devoid of any significant detail. A desk sat beneath the window beside his bed, the only contents being a pad of paper, a black pen, and the leather bound Bible which had been printed in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect – a language which he still had not learned, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have remembered.

Unknown to him, however, was that in the bottom right drawer of the heavy wooden desk sat a simpler English King James 1611 Bible which he had with great difficulty and at great cost convinced Driver Dan, the community’s taxi driver (for lack of a better term) to drive into town and purchase for him. This Bible was in fact bound with a cardboard cover, though featured the gold inscriptions nonetheless. If Thomas had known such a book was in the house, being a firm believer in their Pennsylvania Dutch roots, he might have thrown a fit. Fortunately, neither of them knew it even existed at the moment.

He lay sound asleep, his face practically having become one with the pillow, and his eyes shut, shielding him against the oncoming threat of morning, which, while inevitable, he always tried to stave off by closing his eyes tighter, or even covering his head with the knitted quilt that adorned his bed. It was, however, coming, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Still, he wouldn’t be fighting the morning today. Every muscle in his body ached, and his consciousness had drifted off into that place where few dreamers dare to go. A dark void, empty of dreams but restful nonetheless.

What was there to dream about anyway? Ever since the accident, he had been unable to dream in more than a few fragments. Sometimes he saw flashes of a huge sprawling city, and other times he simply saw the familiar fields and roads of Hope Crossing, or at least he believed that’s what he was seeing. More importantly, at least to him, he would always see flashes of Elizabeth, the beautiful girl who he had grown close to both before and after the accident. She was always there, at least for the most part. Still, he couldn’t help but see the occasional flash of another dark haired girl, though he could never quite see her face. Sometimes her back was to him, and other times, just as she turned, her face became distorted, and eventually, she would fade.  Who she was, he had no idea, and he wasn’t certain that he wanted to find out.

So what had happened? How had he been left in this unthinkable, half empty state, lying on a bed in the midst of Amish country? To start with, Jacob had been a mere Englischer, though when he still retained his memory, that was a fairly big deal to him. Now, it wasn’t so much, or at least he didn’t think so. Then again, what did he think? Was it even relevant?

Jacob had started in the city, near Hope Crossing, but not exactly within walking distance. Though he had tried once. For reasons that would be better examined by a psychiatrist, he had been faced with the prospect of either making his way through the juvenile detention system for the remainder of his youth, or attempting to survive in Hope Crossing amongst a people he had never even heard of. While he liked to think he had a choice, he was never actually presented with one, and had been shipped off to Hope Crossing without so much as a word.

It had been a rough transition, but it was even rougher since the accident – and event that Jacob could not recall, though he could not recall much of anything before that either. The accident had left him unconscious, supposedly in a field, at least according to the Mast family – the Amish family of Hope Crossing that had been kind enough to host him here all this time, even after his accident. None of this mattered to him right now, none at all. He was lost in his dreamless sleep, silently dreading the morning which would begin for him in exactly eighteen minutes.

He had lived here for more than a year, and even when he did have his memory intact, he had not, even once, managed to wake up on his own. If he could remember the first morning, he would have been slightly annoyed, still, that Sarah Mast had simply dumped a bucket of water on him. He had been more annoyed at the way she giggled and