Amanda Farmer has 3 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators. The most-rated is Once an Insider, Now Without a Church Home.
If You Leave This Farm
Summary
As a teenage Mennonite girl, Amanda lives with her close-knit family in south central Pennsylvania. Life revolves around hard work, faith, and commitment to the family. She doesn't question the daily routine; it's the only life she's known. Her father talks about buying a farm out west with a lot of land in one block. Not only will the family farm there together, but the parents hope to begin a new Mennonite community. To a 15-year-old girl, this move begins as an exciting adventure. In If You Leave This Farm, Amanda shares the story of her family's relocation to Minnesota and the subsequent challenges they face as farmers, a family, and Mennonites. She tells how the first crop year is a huge failure, and her father alone makes the decision to expand the new dairy in an attempt to recoup the losses. This memoir chronicles the years of struggle as Amanda and her younger brother Joseph seek to escape their father's suffocating and controlling behavior. Intermingled with the struggle on the farm is the effort to become an accepted member of the Minnesota Mennonite community. The change in Amanda's father's behavior and attitude during the first years in Minnesota alienates him and his family from others of the same faith. She shares a mix of emotions as she wrestles with the shame of her family's standing with the Mennonites and the crushing weight of constant submission to her father's misguided use of his God-given authority.
©2014 Amanda Farmer (P)2015 Amanda Farmer
No Longer a Child of Promise
Summary
This sequel to If You Leave This Farm chronicles the life adventures of this young Mennonite lady who, after choosing to walk away from her fathers farm at age 29, is now free to make her own choices as an adult. Amanda shares the joy of discovering the world away from the farm, of falling in love, and about her decision to eventually leave the Mennonite church. But that freedom and joy is tainted by the continuing intertwined and overpowering conflicts that result from unspoken and unresolved expectations in her family of origin. With an engaging style, Amanda provides an honest glimpse into her roller coaster journey of hope and love alternating with pain, hurt and bitterness as a result of misplaced familial values, favoritism, and the effect of the ultimate rejection disinheritance by her parents. No Longer a Child of Promise vividly portrays the struggle in one woman's heart to grasp the meaning of forgiveness, to experience triumph and acceptance in her personal journey, and to eventually release the all-consuming pain of rejection in her heart to God.
©2015 Amanda Farmer (P)2021 Amanda Farmer
Once an Insider, Now Without a Church Home
Summary
This is the story of one couple's faith crisis after realizing the church they have spent 25 years serving as leaders in has made subtle but profound changes over the years. It is their journey from being trusting followers of Jesus to questioning everything about their faith. Who is really following the Bible? Who is really interpreting the Bible correctly? This is a personal memoir that follows the changes in the American Evangelical Church as it becomes more popular to embrace Calvinism, Authoritarianism, Complementarianism, and Covenants and the effect this can have on one's faith. The story illustrates the pain of going from being an accepted member of a church - from being on the inside - to realizing that the leadership desires that you leave the fellowship.
©2018 Amanda Farmer (P)2019 Amanda Farmer