Back on the Farm2: Stories from the Promised Land

By Sophie Baker

Sophie writes about Gods love in our everyday situations. Each short story is a lesson of light and hope that God can lift you into a higher understanding of his love!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973630807

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Copyright © 2018 Sophie Baker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3081-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3082-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3080-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018907143

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/19/2018

Cover design and painting, The Promised Land, was created and drawn by the author’s husband, with written statement of ownership transferred to the author. Copyright © 2018 by Sophie Baker. All rights reserved.

Watercolor drawing of Our First Dairy Barn was drawn by the author’s husband, with written statement of ownership transferred to the author. Copyright © 2013 by Sophie Baker. All rights reserved.

Holley Rich Coleman, Literary Consultant and Pre-editing Review

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Contents

Dedication

Sophie’s Message

Sophie’s Books

The Beginning

Chapter 1 - The Cost of Freedom

Chapter 2 - The Other Side of the Story

Chapter 3 - God Bless the Children

Chapter 4 - Parents and Children

Chapter 5 - Daddy’s Cross

Chapter 6 - Family Worship

Chapter 7 - Heavenly Cattle

Cows, Critters and Kids

Chapter 8 - Come to the Farm

Chapter 9 - A Mother Remembers

Chapter 10 - A Mother’s Grief

Chapter 11 - Nate and the Young Bull

Chapter 12 - He’s Always Near: The Angel and the Bull

Chapter 13 - The Cow that Wouldn’t Get Up!

Chapter 14 - Kevin and Granny’s Cows

Chapter 15 - Minnie’s Big Lesson

Chapter 16 - Which Way Should We Go?

Chapter 17 - The Story of Billy Boy

Chapter 18 - The Story of Sweet Girl

Chapter 19 - The Baby that Couldn’t be Born

Chapter 20 - I Love My Lucy

Remember the Amish?

Chapter 21 - Can the World See Jesus in You?

Chapter 22 - Remember the Amish?

Chapter 23 - Amish at Heart

Chapter 24 - Less is More

Chapter 25 - Understanding the Plainly Dressed

Chapter 26 - Being Thankful

Lessons Learned from the Farm

Chapter 27 - Hailey and the Hillbilly

Chapter 28 - He Knows Us by Name

Chapter 29 - A Father’s Love

Chapter 30 - He Knows Our Every Need

Chapter 31 - God’s Gifts

Chapter 32 - The Little Girl Who Couldn’t Get Enough

Chapter 33 - The Flat Land Foreigner

Chapter 34 - Ducks out of Water

Chapter 35 - We Don’t Have all the Answers

Chapter 36 - Do You Believe in Angels?

God Speaks Through Ministry

Chapter 37 - Prayer

Chapter 38 - The Story of the Little White Church

Chapter 39 - The Story of the Picture

Chapter 40 - The Savanna Sale

Chapter 41 - The Story of Promised Land Ministries and Community Chapel

Chapter 42 - The Story of the Chapel

Chapter 43 - The Story of the Church Bell

Chapter 44 - The Story of the Church Pews

God Speaks Through Everyday Life

Chapter 45 - Happy Birthday to You!!

Chapter 46 - Meme’s Story

Chapter 47 - Mary: A Journey Through Grief

Chapter 48 - Reunions: A Time of Remembrance and Renewal

Chapter 49 - The Man Who Hungered for God

Chapter 50 - Living by The Spirit

Chapter 51 - The Gale and The Waves

Chapter 52 - The Story of Trust

Chapter 53 - Service to Others

Chapter 54 - The Vacation

Chapter 55 - A Life Without God

Chapter 56 - The Story of the Cabinet

Chapter 57 - Life After the Election

Chapter 58 - My Daughter’s Quilt

Chapter 59 - The Empty Nest

God Speaks Through Missions

Chapter 60 - Stewardship, Ministry and Missions

About the Author

Dedication

To my family who made all these stories possible.

Sophie’s Message

Welcome back folks!!! This is the second Back on the Farm book. Several of your favorite stories (twenty-three) from the first book have been included here, but the remainder of these stories are new (thirty-seven) and I know you will receive a blessing from reading each of them.

My journey to the farm started early in my life. I spent the first thirty years after high school preparing for my life’s work as a Registered Nurse until an accident at work prevented me from actively working as a nurse. It was during the latter days of my nursing career that God called me to the Dairy Farm, then into ministry, and later into Community Missions.

I had learned many things in my life, and the main lesson I had learned was to trust God when He was trying to tell me something. This time I listened. My young daughter and I moved to Missouri to become Dairy Farmers. I knew nothing about farming or cattle or milking them. So, what were we doing there? How did we survive as farmers? And, above all, what lessons could possibly have been learned there?

Come and join me as we journey together Back on the Farm…

Sophie’s Books

The Back on the Farm Books are a collection of short stories written about different events on the farm where God lifted Sophie, and her family, up into a higher understanding of His love and grace. The experiences she writes about are everyday situations; and the lessons learned in each one can easily apply to the situations in your life too. These stories were all inspired either directly or indirectly from the lessons learned on the farm and on her journey through ministry and life.

Back on the Farm: Inspirational Short Stories and Songs, Friesian Press, 2014, written by Sophie Baker, a pen name¹, is the first of Sophie’s inspirational writings. The Devil Made Them Do it at Tiny Town Church, WesBow Press, 2015, by Sophie Baker, is Sophie’s second published work². And again, writing as Sophie Baker, Back on the Farm2: Stories from the Promised Land is the third, and by far the most inspiring. The names mentioned in these stories have been changed to protect family privacy. All the pictures shown are from Sophie Baker’s personal albums.

There is no doubt that you will receive a blessing as you read Back on the Farm2. May God bless you in your journey: as you read the Word, live the faith, and love the Lord!

The Beginning

1

The Cost of Freedom

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Thou will show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11, NIV).

While all our ancestors came to this country from somewhere else, have you ever really thought about why? Why would someone want to leave their homeland and travel to a new land and start a new life? Did they just decide one day to pack everything they had and head down to the closest ship line and head out to a new land? The situations these families were experiencing would leave us breathless today. Yet, their hope for a bright new future for themselves and their families gave them new energy to keep striving to reach their dream.

So many of the immigration stories I have read about ended in the happy arrival in a new land. However, my family immigration came at a great price. I want to share this story with you.

My family consists of four immigrant lines. That is, both of my mother’s parents were immigrants from Italy and both of my father’s parents were descendants of immigrants from England and Ireland. My father’s family followed a more normal series of immigrations and assimilation all the way down to my father. However, my mother’s family immigration came at a high price.

While the influx of Italians immigrating to the United States began to trickle in during the late 1800’s, Italy’s conditions drastically began to change. With socioeconomic and political problems rising, the constant general stagnation of the economy, both agricultural and industrial pursuits failing to prosper, more and more Italians sought better conditions in foreign countries. These declining conditions led to a mass immigration from the south between 1906 and 1913. In this period approximately one-half of Italy’s immigrants to the United States came from Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Abruzzi, and Sicily.

The Italians who came to the United States were part of the great historical epic of immigration. This was considered the second major period of immigration from Europe, the New Immigration, and it took place between1880 and 1920. It was during this period of immigration that many southern and eastern European ethnic groups entered the United States: Greeks, Italians, Serbians, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Russians, Ukrainians, and Poles⁴.

More than four million Italians migrated to the United States by 1920. In 1910 the peak year, 2,564 Italians lived in the state of Oklahoma. Many more migrated to the state of Ohio. Oklahoma’s Italian population, for instance, was very concentrated with eighty-five percent living in the coal-mining communities of the southeastern section. Pittsburg County claimed the largest number of all immigrants in the coal-producing area and the second highest in the state. The principle Italian colony in the county, as well as in the state, was in the very small town of Krebs. Most of the immigrants in Krebs were Italians. They first arrived in 1875 and more continued to settle there as the mines prospered.

The largest contingent of immigrants came from Castiglione di Carovilli. Several dozens of these villagers moved to Krebs and later to Hartshorne, Wilburton, and other towns to the east just a few miles. Other immigrants from Carovilli were also located in the mining communities of Hubbard, Ohio, and Brookside, Colorado, with many residents from Carovilli moving about among those two towns and others in Oklahoma⁵.

Before the arrival of our first family member, a few friends of the family had already immigrated to Oklahoma, so that friends and family in Castiglione di Carovilli had employment and housing waiting for them when they arrived. My grandmother and her family were the most active and, without a doubt, the most dramatic and the most heartbreaking.

Antonio (1824) and Lucia had a son, Francesco (1860), my great grandfather (mother’s maternal grandfather). Francesco married Domenico, and he and Domenico had five children—Anna, Maria (mother’s mother), Joseph, Rosa, and Jim. According to the New York Passenger Lists and other travel manifests of 1820-1857, Francesco made approximately seven voyages to this country to immigrate his large family⁶.

On May 24, 1892, at the age of thirty-two, Francesco made his first voyage to this country to locate employment in the mines of Oklahoma. He arrived in New York by ship and then traveled by train to Oklahoma. He worked for a while there to save enough money for his voyage home. He returned home to prepare his family for the immigration process. His next voyage came two years later. Francesco arrived by ship into New York at the age of thirty-four. When he had saved enough money for his return voyage and the voyage of his oldest daughter, Anna, he returned.

At the age of twenty-two years, Anna arrived into New York by ship. She made the same journey her father had previously made to Oklahoma where she was greeted by family friends. Anna married not long after she arrived in her new land.

At the age of thirty-eight, Francesco returned by ship to New York and made his way by train to Oklahoma where he would greet his eldest daughter and her new family. Francesco stayed and worked for several years to earn his passage back home and the fare for other members of his family. He went home again for an undetermined amount of time and then returned to the Oklahoma mines⁷. From 1902-1907, Francesco made multiple trips back and forth from Italy to the United States earning money for his passage and one or more of his friends and family. His goal was to immigrate as many family members as possible including his wife and children and to save enough money to be able to purchase property for the homestead⁸.

Francesco returned to Italy approximately 1908 to prepare his second daughter for her immigration to the new land. The next year, at the age of seventeen, Maria, my grandmother, arrived. She traveled by ship for thirteen days and thirteen nights to reach New York. While traveling on her ship, Maria met and befriended a young boy who was traveling alone to the same destination. During our childhood years, she would tell the story about traveling with this young boy who was scared and couldn’t speak English, and how they both arrived on the train in Oklahoma with a tag around their necks containing their destinations because neither of them could speak English. Maria was greeted at the train by her older sister Anna and her new family. She would make her home with her sister and the new family⁹.

On May 13, 1910, Francesco returned to America. This trip would prove to be his last voyage to this country. Francesco arrived just in time for the 1910 census which verified his presence in the home of his eldest daughter, Anna and her husband. While in America, he sent for his next child, his son Joseph, who arrived at the age of about twelve. A few months later, he sent for his next child, Rosa, who arrived at the age of about thirteen. While in America, Francesco learned that his wife had given birth to their fifth child. His plan was to now go back to Italy and bring his wife and infant son to America. However, when he returned and started the immigration process for his wife, they learned that she would not be accepted for immigration because of poor eyesight caused by diabetes. Francesco stayed with his ailing wife and infant son in Castiglione di Carovilli, Italy, until their deaths. He never saw his children or the family he brought to America, again. He had spent all his adult years working hard in the mines in Oklahoma for his family to have a better life, and he and his wife never saw them again. They raised their young son in Italy, and to this day, descendants from him still live in the family home in Castiglione de Carovilli¹⁰.

It is interesting that with all the traveling Francesco did back and forth across the Atlantic, it seems to me that he could have stayed in one place and saved all the money he spent on travel, and then immigrated them all at once. I know it must have been terrible to be torn between two places. He had his family split in half for a while and then he soon had them all here in the United States except his wife and baby. My heart breaks for him and for his wife. I know how difficult it must have been to say goodbye to your family not knowing when you would see them again, and then having to make the decision not to make another trip across the ocean. And the children: I know it must have been difficult for them not to ever see their parents again. My grandmother carried this pain in her heart for the rest of her life.

There are all sorts of stories like this one throughout the immigration process, I am sure. It was such a difficult time for them. Look at the price he paid for the freedom for his children.

There is a story similar which happened many, many years before this one. It is the story of Jesus. God sent Jesus to live and dwell on this planet knowing that one day He would sacrifice Him so that all his children would be